Vintage Ladybug Farm Read online

  VINTAGE LADYBUG FARM

  By Donna Ball

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

  Copyright 2012 by Donna Ball, Inc.

  Published by Blue Merle Publishing

  Drawer H

  Mountain City, Georgia 30562

  www.bluemerlepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and places in this book are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and no effort should be made to construe them as real. Any resemblance to any actual people, events, or locations is purely coincidental.

  ~*~

  ~ONE~

  Dreams

  and

  Schemes

  ~*~

  CHAPTER ONE

  Resolutions

  On the last night of the old year, the house stood as it had for a hundred twenty years, nestled in the shadow of the mountains of the Shenandoah Valley, smoke drifting from its chimney tops, golden light spilling from its windows. A steady rain washed the faded brick clean, glistening on the clay tiles of its mansard roof and gurgling in the copper gutters. The stately wraparound porch with its white columns and wide front steps was as welcoming on this wet December night as it had been in the full bloom of a blowsy summer day when fern baskets swayed from the eaves and a pitcher of lemonade sweated on the white wicker table that sat between the rocking chairs.

  Only yesterday the windows had been decorated with lighted Christmas wreaths and the columns draped with garland, but as everyone knew—at least, according to Ida Mae Simpson, who had kept the old house and all of its occupants in order for close to fifty years—it was bad luck to have the Christmas tree up on the first day of the New Year. So, in a frenzy of activity that had been repeated every New Year’s Eve since they lived there and yet still never failed to take the current occupants by surprise, every member of the household spent the afternoon skimming ornaments off the tree, whipping down red bows and gold angels, lugging boxes back up to the attic, and dragging crisp greenery through the rain out to the compost pile.

  Of course, that was before they realized they were giving a New Year’s Eve party.

  This had come as very little surprise to Ida Mae, who just gave a contemptuous sniff and shuffled back to the kitchen, where she proceeded to put together a batch of her prize-winning homemade cheese straws, as though she didn’t have enough to do. It seemed to her that those city women (as she still called them in her mind, even though she’d grown quite tolerable of them over the past few years) never were much for planning ahead. If they had thought about it for even a minute, for example, they never would have walked away from their fancy Baltimore houses and sunk their life savings into this old place—which had surely been a beauty in her time, but it was clear to anybody with half a brain they’d bitten off more than they could chew when they decided to give up their city ways and turn the place into what they now called “Ladybug Farm.” What did they know about sheep? Or grapes, for that matter? Or tending sixteen acres of fruit trees, vegetable gardens, flower gardens, outbuildings, berry bushes, and even chickens and goats?

  On the other hand, Ida Mae had to admit they’d earned her respect over time. Cici—that was the smart one—could handle a hammer and saw as well as any man, and the redhead, Lindsay, sure had a green thumb, and that was no lie. Bridget, who Ida Mae liked to call “Miss Priss” because she could be a tad on the bossy side, was a pretty fair cook if you liked fancy food, and though they’d had a tiff or two in the course of things, they’d finally come to an uneasy agreement as to who was in charge of the house (it was Ida Mae, of course).

  If the truth were told—and Ida Mae, being a good Christian woman, liked to tell the truth whenever possible—those women hadn’t done a half-bad job, all things considered, when they moved in and started to put the shine back on the place. The old house had really started to feel young again when Cici’s college-aged daughter, Lori, had moved back home from California. And when Lindsay, the redhead, had gone crazy and decided to adopt the county vagrant Noah, even though he was fifteen years old and practically a grown man, Ida Mae locked herself in the pantry and cried for twenty minutes, and that was the God’s honest truth. Because she still knew some things those women didn’t. And she still prayed for Noah, morning and night, every day of her life.

  The thing she didn’t understand and could never quite reconcile in her mind was what had ever taken hold of them in the first place and persuaded them to move way out here in God’s country to live together in the first place. They weren’t even related, for heaven’s sake. Three women, and not a husband among them, taking on a big old house and trying to turn it into a working farm. What were they thinking?

  Of course, trying to figure that out was one of the things that kept Ida Mae around.

  ~*~

  The call had come at three thirty in the afternoon, just as the final box was shoved into the attic—tangled lights to be sorted out next year—and the last Christmas candle had been wrapped in newspaper and put away in the cellar. Cici came into the parlor, where Bridget was running a dust cloth over the mantle and Lindsay was sweeping up the last of the pine needles into the dustpan that Noah held. Ida Mae polished the staircase just outside the room.

  “That was Paul,” Cici said, looking puzzled. “He and Derrick are on their way down. They’re bringing champagne.”

  Bridget said, “As in, party?”

  Cici shrugged. “Paul said we should see the New Year in together.”

  Lindsay stopped sweeping. “But they just left. I mean, we had the big Christmas party. I thought we’d have a quiet New Year’s Eve.”

  “I’ve got that church thing tonight,” Noah spoke up quickly. He knew from experience how out of hand the ladies’ parties could get.

  Cici looked skeptical. “What church thing?”

  “You know,” Bridget volunteered, “that lock-down thing.”

  “Lock out,” Lindsay corrected.

  “Lock in,” Noah said patiently. “And I promised Amy I’d help with the little kids.”

  A look passed between the three women that said without saying, Amy?

  Lindsay said, “I’ll give Paul and Derrick your regrets.”

  Noah looked cautiously hopeful. “Does that mean I can borrow your car?”

  “As soon as you sweep the porch.”

  “‘The laborer is worthy of his reward,’” he declared cheerfully as he grabbed the broom from Lindsay. “First Timothy 5:18.” He made a quick job of sweeping the last of the pine needles into the dustpan and rushed to the porch.

  Bridget stared after him. “Since when does Noah quote scripture?”

  Lindsay shrugged. “Since some church contest about memorizing a verse a day. I think there’s a pony at the end.”

  “Rodeo tickets,” Cici corrected. “Two tickets to the Sherriff’s rodeo in May to the boy or girl who can quote the most verses at the end of thirty days.”

  “Wow. Noah must really like the rodeo.”

  “He really likes Amy,” Lindsay said.

  Cici raised an eyebrow. “So it’s Amy now?”

  Lindsay shrugged. “Apparently they got to know each other painting scenery for the Christmas pageant.”

  “At least she’s the pastor’s daughter,” Bridget offered.

  Cici said, “The pastor’s going to be there, right?”

  “Right.” Lindsay hesitated. “I think.” She frowned a little. “Guess I’d better make a call.”

  While Lindsay moved toward the kitchen and the nearest phone, Bridget said, “I suppose we could make crepes.”

  Cici lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh, that s
ounds easy.”

  “Well, it is New Year’s Eve, and we have all that shrimp and lobster left from the Christmas party and … oh!” Bridget’s eyes lit up. “Ida Mae can make cheese straws. I just need to make sure we have enough cheddar.”

  She thrust the dust cloth into Cici’s hand and moved quickly toward the kitchen, passing Lindsay, who was on her way out.

  “Totally supervised, plenty of chaperones,” Lindsay said, looking relieved. “Just like I thought. They’re having a midnight bonfire with s’mores,” she added a little wistfully. “Do you remember doing things like that when you were a girl?”

  “No,” Cici said. “How are they going to have a bonfire with all this rain?”

  Lindsay drew a breath to reply, realized she didn’t know the answer, and started back toward the telephone. Cici stopped her with a wave of her hand. “They’ll figure it out.”

  She cast a critical eye around the suddenly barren-looking parlor. The elegant mantle, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the carved plaster moldings all looked suddenly bleak without their Christmas finery. “What do you suppose Derrick and Paul want to come all the way back out here for on New Year’s Eve? It’s not like they don’t have plenty of options in DC.” And now it was Cici’s turn to look wistful. “Remember when we used to get all dressed up and go into Washington for New Year’s Eve? We’d get a room at the Washington Plaza and party all night.”

  “Candles,” Lindsay said abruptly, staring at the mantle. “What did we do with all the white candles?” She rushed to the front door and opened it. “Noah! Run out back and cut me some cedar boughs, will you?”

  Cici heard him protest, “It’s raining!”

  “No, it’s not. That’s just the sound of your New Year’s Eve date with Amy slowly dripping away.”

  “But we just spent all day throwing out green stuff!”

  “And don’t track mud on the porch.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lindsay closed the door just as Bridget was coming back from the kitchen. “Ida Mae already started the cheese straws,” Bridget reported happily. “We’ve got plenty of ham for breakfast and there’s enough smoked salmon and roasted red peppers left over from Christmas to make hors d’oeuvres.”

  “If I can find the box with the silver and gold rope beads in it, I can put them in champagne glasses and really sparkle up the mantle,” Lindsay said. “We can spray-paint some cedar boughs gold and make a fabulous centerpiece for the coffee table.”

  “The white candles are in the cellar,” Cici said, “in a box marked ‘white candles.’”

  An excited spark came into Lindsay’s eyes. “Do we have any silver spray paint left? If we paint the tapers silver and use the hall mirror as a runner on the dining room table with gold and silver Christmas balls, it will look fabulous!”

  “We just packed up all the gold and silver Christmas balls,” Cici reminded her.

  “It’ll only take me a minute to find them.” Lindsay rushed toward the stairs and then turned back. “What do you suppose Paul and Derrick want to come all the way back out here for on New Year’s Eve?”

  Bridget looked at Cici; Cici looked at Lindsay. As one, the three women shrugged.

  “Oh well,” Bridget said happily. “Who cares? It’s New Year’s Eve, right? Let’s party!”

  ~*~

  And so, with only four hours’ notice, they pulled together an intimate but elegant New Year’s Eve celebration for five: evergreen boughs and white candles on the mantle, champagne glasses filled with miniature gold and silver balls and draped with rope beading on the coffee table; greenery in the windowsills; and fires dancing in all five of the house’s wood-burning fireplaces. On the menu were Ida Mae’s homemade cheese straws served with Bridget’s smoked salmon and roasted pepper spread, an artichoke-parmesan soup made with the canned artichoke someone had sent them in a gourmet gift basket for Christmas, seafood crepes in a sherry sauce baked with a gouda topping, and—because it was a holiday—Ida Mae’s black chocolate cake served with a warm chocolate ganache and whipped cream.

  Parties, even of the impromptu kind, were one thing the ladies did very, very well.

  Lindsay had pulled back her auburn hair and donned a satin shirt and black velvet slacks, but her shoes, which had begun to hurt her feet approximately five minutes after she put them on, were discarded in favor of bedroom slippers. Cici, a tall, freckle-faced honey-blonde, honored the occasion with a deep blue velour track suit trimmed in gold piping that made Paul, who wrote a syndicated style column for the Washington Post, roll his eyes in dismay. “Darling,” he said as he kissed her, “let me know when visiting hours start at the assisted living home.” To which Cici responded by bopping him on the head with her rolled-up copy of the Post, just before accepting the platter of lobster puffs he brought for the party. Bridget, a petite platinum-blonde who loved dressing up more than her two younger friends combined, had pulled together a silver lame´ turtleneck and a long peacock-blue skirt with slouch boots and a chunky beach glass necklace that was to die for and which caused Paul, when he saw it, to kiss his fingers to the air and declare, “I am unworthy!”

  Paul and Derrick were their oldest friends from the days of Huntington Lane, when they all had been neighbors in the suburbs of Baltimore. Though the couple had initially been as skeptical as everyone else when the three women decided to pool their resources and buy a neglected old mansion on sixteen acres in the Shenandoah Valley—complete with overgrown gardens, crumbling outbuildings, and, as it turned out, livestock—they’d quickly come to love Ladybug Farm almost as much as Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay did. Paul was always on hand with the perfect drapery swatch or an online source for vintage reproduction wallpaper patterns. Derrick owned an upscale Georgetown art gallery and had effortlessly taken Noah, who was himself a budding artist, under his wing, even shepherding him through an internship in the gallery over the past summer. When they had all lived within walking distance of each other on Huntington Lane, they spent every holiday together, celebrated birthdays together, took the train to New York for dinner and a show together. Now that they lived almost three hours apart, it sometimes seemed they saw Paul and Derrick even more often than when they lived next door. Though neither of them claimed to be the bucolic type, Paul was wild about Ida Mae’s cooking, and Derrick never tired of admiring the details of the old house’s architecture. Ladybug Farm had become like a second home for Paul and Derrick, but it did not explain why their good friends would have made it a point to drive down from the city twice in the space of two weeks for a holiday visit.

  They gathered in the parlor before the fireplace with a little over half an hour to spare before midnight. White candles glowed on the mantelpiece; silver candles sparkled among the beads and champagne glasses on the coffee table. Rain drummed on the roof and logs crackled in the fireplace. Paul made the circuit, topping off everyone’s glasses, and Derrick, settling down into the sofa with his arm stretched along the back, said, “So, Noah is doing the church thing—which I must say I’d find very odd if there weren’t a girl involved—but where’s our princess? Not back at school already?”

  Cici held up her glass to be topped off. “Lori and Mark had dinner reservations at some fancy restaurant in Charlottesville. She said they’d try to drop in tonight, but …” she glanced worriedly toward the window, “I’m not crazy about the idea of them driving in this rain.”

  As Paul filled Lindsay’s glass with bubbles, an eyebrow lifted. “We like Mark?”

  “We adore Mark,” Bridget assured him, holding out her glass. “Even though he did break Lori’s leg.”

  “Oh, that Mark,” said Derrick, rolling his eyes.

  “It was an accident,” Lindsay said, “and he was so sweet afterward that of course she fell in love with him.”

  “His mother’s a surgeon,” added Cici, “and his father was in the House of Representatives.”

  “State or national?” asked Derrick.

  “State.”

 
“Republican or Democrat?”

  “Republican.”

  Paul thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, at least they’re rich.”

  “They have a house in Maui,” Cici said.

  “Some of the greatest romances in history started with a broken leg,” Derrick agreed benignly.

  Paul shot him a look. “Name one.”

  Derrick drew a breath and Cici supplied firmly, “Mark and Lori.”

  “What happened to that fellow in Italy?” Paul wanted to know.

  Cici shrugged and sipped her champagne. “He’s in Italy.” She smiled and lifted her glass. “Lori is not.”

  The other four raised their glasses in unison, grinning. “Hear, hear.”

  “So seriously, you guys,” Cici said, when toasts were drunk and Paul settled down on the sofa beside Derrick, “it’s not that we’re not honored, but what made you decide New Year’s Eve wouldn’t be complete unless you drove three hours in the rain to spend it with us?”

  “Ida Mae,” declared Paul, lifting his glass again. He looked around. “Where is she, anyway?”

  “Asleep,” said Lindsay, licking bubbles off the side of her glass. “She’s a hundred twenty, for heaven’s sake.”

  “But really,” Bridget said, sipping her champagne. “It’s not that we don’t love you, but you couldn’t get better dates for New Year’s Eve?”

  Paul and Derrick exchanged a look and a half-grin, and Paul said, “Really? You don’t know?”

  Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay looked at each other, each hesitant to admit that yes, in fact, they did not know what Paul and Derrick were referring to. This gave Derrick a chance to go to the hall tree and retrieve a gold-wrapped package from his coat pocket.

  “Four years ago,” Paul announced, rising as Derrick returned to the room, “you signed the papers on Ladybug Farm. Happy anniversary, darlings.”

  As he spoke, Derrick presented the package with a flourish. For a moment the women just stared at it, motionless. “It’s for all of you,” Derrick prompted, and Bridget snatched the present with a squeal of delight.