you get in?"
Guilt pricked her conscience. "Listen, let's go out on the front porch. It's not too bad out front, and I have a cooler sitting out there holding a cold-cut sub with our names on it. Just let me wash up, then we'll catch up."
It wasn't as bad in front, Cilla thought when she settled on the sagging steps with her father, but it was bad enough. The overgrown, weedy lawn and gardens, the trio of misshaped Bradford pears, a wild tangle of what she thought might be wisteria could all be dealt with. Would be. But the wonderful old magnolia rose, dense with its deep, glossy leaves, and stubborn daffodils shoved up through the thorny armor of climbing roses along the stone walls.
"I'm sorry I didn't call," Cilla began as she handed her father a bottle of iced tea to go with half the sub. "I'm sorry I haven't called."
He patted her knee, opened her bottle, then his own.
It was so like him, she thought. Gavin McGowan took things as they came-the good, the bad, the mediocre. How he'd ever fallen for the emotional morass that was her mother eluded her. But that was long ago, Cilla mused, and far away.
She bit into her portion of the sub. "I'm a bad daughter."
"The worst," he said, and made her laugh.
"Lizzie Borden."
"Second worst. How's your mother?"
Cilla bit into her sub, rolled her eyes. "Lizzy's definitely running behind me on Mom's scale at the moment. Otherwise, she's okay. Number Five's putting together a cabaret act for her." At her father's quiet look, Cilla shrugged. "I think when your marriages average a three-year life span, assigning numbers to husbands is practical and efficient. He's okay. Better than Numbers Four and Two, and considerably smarter than Number Three. And he's the reason I'm sitting here sharing a sub with the never-to-be-matched Number One."
"How's that?"
"Putting the song and dance together requires money. I had some money."
"Cilla."
"Wait, wait. I had some money, and she had something I wanted. I wanted this place, Dad. I've wanted it for a while now."
"You-"
"Yeah, I bought the farm." Cilla tossed back her head and laughed.
"And she's so pissed at me. She didn't want it, God knows. I mean, look at it. She hasn't been out here in years, in decades, and she fired every manager, every overseer, every custodian. She wouldn't give it to me, and it was my mistake to ask her for it a couple years ago. She wouldn't sell it to me then, either."
She took another bite of the sub, enjoying it now. "I got the tragedy face, the spiel about Janet. But now she needed seed money and wanted me to invest. Big no on that followed by big fight, much drama. I told her, and Number Five, I'd buy this place, named an amount and made it clear that was firm."
"She sold it to you. She sold you the Little Farm."
"After much gnashing of teeth, much weeping, various sorrowful opinions on my daughterly behavior since the day I was born. And so on. It doesn't matter." Or hardly mattered, Cilla thought. "She didn't want it; I did. She'd have sold it long before this if it hadn't been tied up in trusts. It could only be sold and transferred to family until, what, 2012? Anyway, Number Five calmed her down, and everyone got what they wanted."
"What are you going to do with it, Cilla?"
Live, she thought. Breathe. "Do you remember it, Dad? I've only seen the pictures and old home movies, but you were here when it was in its prime. When the grounds were gorgeous and the porches gleaming. When it had character and grace. That's what I'm going to do with it. I'm going to bring it back."
"Why?"
She heard the unspoken How? and told herself it didn't matter that he didn't know what she could do. Or hardly mattered.
"Because it deserves better than this. Because I think Janet Hardy deserves better than this. And because I can. I've been flipping houses for almost five years now. Two years pretty much on my own. I know none of them was on the scale of this, but I have a knack for it. I've made a solid profit on my projects."
"Are you doing this for profit?"
"I may change my mind in the next four years, but for now? No. I never knew Janet, but she's influenced almost every area of my life. Something about this place pulled her here, even at the end. Something