Tribute

into sleep, the ghosts from the next room drifted through the wall. She heard Janet Hardy’s glorious voice lift into a song designed to break hearts.
    “Perfect,” Cilla murmured as the song followed her into sleep.
    SHE SAT on the lovely patio with the view full of the pretty pond and the green hills that rolled back to the blue mountains. Roses and lilies stunned the air with perfume that had the bees buzzing drunkenly and a hummingbird, bold as an emerald, darting for nectar. The sun poured strong and bright out of cloudless skies to wash everything in the golden light of fairy tales. Birds sang their hearts out in Disneyesque harmony.
    “I expect to see Bambi frolicking with Thumper any minute,” Cilla commented.
    “It’s how I saw it. In the good times.” Young, beautiful in a delicate white sundress, Janet sipped sparkling lemonade. “Perfect as a stage set, and ready for me to make my entrance.”
    “And in the bad times?”
    “An escape, a prison, a mistake, a lie.” Janet shrugged her lovely shoulders. “But always a world away.”
    “You brought that world with you. Why?”
    “I needed it. I couldn’t be alone. There’s too much space when you’re alone. How do you fill it? Friends, men, sex, drugs, parties, music. Still, I could be calm here for a while. I could pretend here, pretend I was Gertrude Hamilton again. Though she died when I was six and Janet Hardy was born.”
    “Did you want to be Gertrude again?”
    "Of course not.” A laugh, bright and bold as the day, danced through the air. “But I liked to pretend I did. Gertrude would have been a better mother, a better wife, probably a better woman. But Gertrude wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting as Janet. Who’d remember her? And Janet? No one will ever forget her.” With her head tilted, Janet gave her signature smile—humor and knowledge with sex shimmering at the edges. “Aren’t you proof of that?”
    “Maybe I am. But I see what happened to you, and what’s happened to this place, as a terrible waste. I can’t bring you back, or even know you. But I can do this.”
    “Are you doing this for you or for me?”
    “Both, I think.” She saw the grove, all pink and white blossoms, all fragrance and potential. And the horses grazing in green fields, gold and white etched against hills. “I don’t see it as a perfect set. I don’t need perfect. I see it as your legacy to me and, if I can bring it back, as my tribute to you. I come from you, and through my father, from this place. I want to know that, and feel it.”
    “Dilly hated it here.”
    “I don’t know if she did, always. But she does now.”
    “She wanted Hollywood—in big, shiny letters. She was born wanting it, and lacking the talent or the grit to get it and hold it. You’re not like her, or me. Maybe . . .” Janet smiled as she sipped again. “Maybe you’re more like Gertrude. More like Trudy.”
    “Who did you kill that night? Janet or Gertrude?”
    “That’s a question.” With a smile, Janet tipped back her head and closed her eyes.
    BUT WHAT WAS THE ANSWER? Cilla wondered about that as she drove back to the farm in the morning. And why did it matter? Why ask questions of a dream anyway?
    Dead was dead, after all. The project wasn’t about death, but about life. About making something for herself out of what had been left to ruin.
    As she stopped to unlock the old iron gates that blocked the drive she debated having them removed. Would that be a symbol to throwing open again what had been closed off, or would it be a monumentally stupid move that left her, and the property, vulnerable? They protested when she walked them open, and left rust on her hands.
    Screw symbols and stupidity, she decided. They should come down because they were a pain in the ass. After the project, she could put them back up.
    Once she’d parked in front of the house, she strode up to unlock the front door, and left it wide to the morning air. She drew on her work gloves. She’d finish tackling the kitchen, she thought. And hope the plumber her father had recommended showed up.
    Either way, she’d be staying. Even if she had to pitch a damn tent in the front yard.
    She’d worked up her first sweat of the day when the plumber, a grizzle-cheeked man named Buddy, showed up. He made the rounds with her, listened to her plans, scratched his chin a lot. When he gave her what she thought of as a pull-it-out-of-his-ass estimate for the projected work, she