“Oh, crap.”

She looked down at the sweaty, grungy clothes she’d stripped off and dragged a hand through her clean hair. “No, I am not crawling back into them.”

She’d have to disturb Ford after all. Bundling her underwear and baggy work shorts in her T-shirt, she tied it off and carried the bundle with her.

She opened the door to the kitchen, to a very surprised Ford.

“Oh, hi. Listen-”

“Ford, you didn’t tell us you had company.”

“I didn’t know I did. Hey, Cilla.”

Her expression went from slightly harried to mildly ill as she looked over and saw Ford’s mother sitting at the kitchen bar with an older man.

While she stood frozen, Spock dashed over to rub against her bare legs. “Oh God. Oh God. Just… God. I’m sorry. Excuse me.”

Ford grabbed her arm. “Back up like that, you’ll pitch right down the steps. You’ve met my mother. This is my grandfather, Charlie Quint.”

“Oh, well, hello. I apologize. I’m, well, what can I say? Ford, I didn’t want to interrupt you. I thought you’d be working. They had to turn the water off at my place for a while, so I ran over to use your shower downstairs-thanks for that. And then realized that when I was being distracted by varieties of spirea, I left my bag and my clothes sitting on the veranda. I came up to ask if you wouldn’t mind running over there and, you know, getting them. My clothes.”

“Sure.” He sniffed at her. “My soap smells better on you than on me.”

“Hah.”

“Cilla, I bet you’d like a nice glass of iced tea.” Penny rose to get a glass.

“Oh, don’t bother, I-”

“No bother. Ford, go on now, get this girl her clothes.”

“All right. But it’s kind of a shame. Isn’t it, Granddad?”

“Pretty legs on a pretty woman are easy on the eyes. Even old eyes. You look more like her in person than you do in pictures I’ve seen of you.”

How much more awkward could it be? Cilla wondered when Ford winked and slipped out. “You knew my grandmother.”

“I did. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her on the movie screen. She was just a little girl, and I was just a boy, and that was the sweetest kind of puppy love. You never forget your first.”

“No, I guess you don’t.”

“Here you go, honey. Why don’t you sit down?”

“I’m fine. Thanks.” She stared at the glass Penny offered and wondered how to take it as she had one hand holding the bundle of filthy clothes, and the other clutched on the towel.

“Oh, are those your dirty clothes? Just give those to me. I’ll toss them in Ford’s machine for you.”

“Oh, no, don’t-”

“It’s no trouble.” Penny pulled them away, pushed the cold glass into Cilla’s hand. “Daddy, why don’t you show Cilla the pictures? We were going to drop by to do just that,” Penny continued from the mudroom. “Just stopped to say hi to Ford first. My goodness! You must’ve worked up a storm today.”

Casting her eyes to the ceiling, Cilla moved closer to the counter as Charlie opened the photo album.

“These are wonderful!”

At the first look, she forgot she was wearing only a towel and edged closer. “I haven’t seen these before.”

“My personal collection,” he told her with a wistful smile. “This one here?” He tapped a finger under a picture. “That’s the first one I ever took of her.”

Janet sat on the steps of the veranda, leaning back, relaxed and smiling in rolled-up dungarees and a plaid shirt.

“She looks so happy. At home.”

“She’d been working with the gardeners-walking around with them, showing them where she wanted her roses and such. She got word I took pictures and asked if I’d come over, take some of the house and grounds as things were going on. And she let me take some of her. Here she is with the kids. That’d be your mother.”

"Yes.” Looking bright and happy, Cilla thought, alongside her doomed brother. “They’re all so beautiful, aren’t they? It almost hurts the eyes.”

“She shone. Yes, she did.”

Cilla paged through. Janet, looking golden and glorious astride a palomino, tumbling on the ground with her children, laughing and kicking her feet in the pond. Janet alone, Janet with others. At parties at the farm. With the famous, and the everyday.

“You never sold any of these?”

“That’s just money.” Charlie shrugged. “If I sold them, they wouldn’t be mine anymore. I gave her copies of ones she wanted, especially.”

“I think I might have seen a couple of these. My mother has boxes and boxes of photos. I’m not sure I’ve seen all of them. The camera loved her. Oh, this! It’s my favorite so far.”

Janet leaned in the open doorway of the farmhouse, head cocked, arms folded. She wore simple dark trousers and a white shirt. Her feet were bare, her hair loose. Flowers spilled out of pots on the veranda, and a puppy curled sleeping at the top of the steps.

“She bought the puppy from the Clintons.” Penny stepped beside her father, rested a hand on his shoulder. “Your stepmama’s people.”

“Yes, she told me.”

“Janet loved that dog,” Charlie murmured.

“You need to make copies for Cilla, Daddy. Family pictures are important.”

“I guess I could.”

“Granddad’s going to make copies for Cilla,” Penny announced as Ford walked in with Cilla’s bag. “He has the negatives.”

“I could scan them. If you’d trust me with them. Here you go.” Ford passed the bag to Cilla.

“Thanks.” Sensing Charlie’s hesitation, Cilla eased back. “They’re wonderful photographs. I’d love to look through the rest, but I have to get to the hospital. I’m just going to…” She held up the bag. “Downstairs.”

“You look more like her than your mother,” Charlie said when Cilla reached the door. “It’s in the eyes.”

And in his lived such sadness. Cilla said nothing, only slipped quickly downstairs.

CILLA DID a mental happy dance as the first tiles were laid in the new master bath. She glugged down water and executed imaginary high kicks through the first run of subway tiles in what would be her most fabulous steam shower.

The black-and-white design, retro cool Deco, added just the right zing. Stan, the tile guy, glanced over his shoulder. “Cilla, you gotta get the AC up.”

“We’re working on it. By the end of the week, I promise.”

It had to be running by week’s end, she thought. Just as the bed she’d ordered had to be delivered. Steve couldn’t recuperate in a steamy house, in a sleeping bag.

She went back to framing in the closet in the master bedroom. In a couple of weeks, she thought, if everything stayed on schedule, she’d have two completed baths, the third, fourth and the powder room on the way. She’d be ready for Sheetrock up in her attic office suite, the replastering should be about wrapped. Then Dobby could start work on the ceiling medallions. Well, he could start once she’d settled on a design.

She ran through projections while she checked her level, adjusted, shot in nails.

And in a few weeks, she’d take the contractor’s exam. But she didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think if she didn’t make it, she’d have to ask one of her own subs for a job by the end of the year. If she didn’t make it, she couldn’t afford to buy that sweet little property down the road in the Village that she knew would make an excellent and profitable flip.

If she didn’t make it, it would be another failure. She really thought she was at her quota already.

Positive thinking, she reminded herself. That’s what Ford would say. No harm in trying.

“Gonna make it,” she stated aloud and stepped back from the framing with a nod of approval. “Gonna kick exam ass. Cilla McGowan, Licensed Contractor.”

Gathering her tools, she started out to check on the progress of her exterior office stairs with a quick peek at the tile work on the way. She joined the carpenter crew as the painters, working on her new scaffolding, added the first strokes of red to the barn.