Love Letters from Ladybug Farm Read online

  Or at least it would have been, if the mood of its occupants had not been so dire.

  “Well, the good news is,” said Lori, tapping the keyboard of her laptop, “you did put the ‘allow four to six weeks for delivery’ disclaimer on your order form. Or at least I did.”

  “Thank you, Jesus,” Lindsay murmured, and when Lori glanced at her askance, she amended quickly, “I mean, thank you, Lori.”

  “But you’ve got to acknowledge receipt of the order,” Lori went on, “and give them a shipping date. We can automate that if you like.”

  “Yes,” Bridget said quickly, “automate it.”

  “Hold on,” Cici said in alarm, “you can’t promise two hundred and fifty-six baskets—”

  “Two hundred seventy-three,” corrected Lori, and Bridget groaned loudly.

  “You don’t even have two hundred seventy-three baskets,” Cici pointed out, “much less the stuff to fill them with! How can you possibly fill all those orders and the wedding gift baskets?”

  Bridget slumped down low in the wicker chair, closing her eyes. “I’m going to cry.”

  “Don’t cry,” Lindsay soothed absently, pouring more tea. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “Cici’s right,” Bridget said. “I only have about fifty jars of jam left, and I barely have enough dried herbs left to make sachets for the wedding and don’t know where I’m going to get the hand lotion and bath salts ...”

  Lori shook her head sadly. “The only thing that causes small businesses to fail more often than apathy is success.”

  All three women waited for her to explain, but she merely shrugged. “It’s an axiom.”

  Cici drew a breath and turned to Bridget. “Okay,” she said. “Your first priority is to fill the wedding order. They’ve already tasted the pinot noir jam and smelled the hand lotion.”

  “You can make more jam for the orders,” Lindsay suggested. “And dry the herbs in the microwave.”

  “Microwave?” Bridget looked horrified. “How can I dry herbs in a microwave? And we don’t even start to harvest grapes until October! How can I—”

  “Strawberry,” suggested Cici.

  “You didn’t actually specify the kind of jam on the website,” Lori pointed out. “It just says ‘Ladybug Farm vintage wine jams.’”

  “Maybe,” Bridget said thoughtfully reluctantly, “a strawberry champagne jam. I’ve never actually made it but ...”

  “Perfect,” declared Lindsay.

  “Do you know how many strawberries that will take?” Bridget said, starting to sound panicky again.

  “We’ve got tons in the freezer.”

  “I’m not sure you can even make jam out of frozen strawberries.”

  Cici had been studying the extensive notes, drawings, and color swatches left behind by Catherine. Now she looked up, her expression sober. “We have bigger problems than frozen strawberries,” she announced. “You do realize that we have exactly eleven days to prepare a sit-down dinner for twenty, a wedding that includes a fifty-foot satin-lined processional with three arbors, a string quartet, a dance floor, and a buffet for one hundred people. Who’s ordering the wine, by the way?”

  Lindsay looked at Bridget. Bridget looked at Lindsay. Lindsay said, “I guess we are.”

  “Not to mention putting together all of those mini guest baskets and the big baskets for the wedding party, and, excuse me, but where are we going to get a hundred place settings and glasses?”

  “And who’s going to wash them afterward?” offered Lori.

  Cici looked at the other two with a mixture of severity and dismay. “None of this is in the contract. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We figured you had enough to worry about,” Lindsay said unhappily.

  “Besides, we gave our word,” Bridget admitted. “We’ve just got to figure out a way to make it work.”

  Lori looked up from the computer. “How much did you say you were charging for the buffet?”

  Bridget answered, “Forty-five dollars a head. That includes wine.”

  “Plus thirty-five each for the gift baskets, and I’m guessing the rehearsal dinner is at least fifty, wine inclusive ...” She did some calculations. “You’re going to be raking in some serious cash.”

  Bridget sighed. “When you deduct the cost of food and wine, not so much.”

  Cici regarded her warily. “But you did make certain you figured the profit margin before you quoted the price, right?”

  “Of course I did. But they just kept adding things and assuming things, and,” she finished unhappily, “I have a feeling our profit margin is a lot smaller than it started out to be.”

  Cici said, “I have to go look at the contract.”

  And Lindsay added, standing, “We should let Lori get some rest.”

  “We should try to pick the rest of the strawberries, if there are any left,” Bridget said. “We’re going to need every last berry if I’m going to turn them into two hundred fifty-six jars of wine jam.”

  “We need to get Noah away from that goat house and into the cherry trees with a bucket,” suggested Lindsay. “What kind of wine jam can you make from cherries?”

  Lori said, without looking up from her laptop, “Leave the cookies.”

  Cici lingered as the other two women left the room. “You should take a nap,” she said, coming over to the bed and reaching for the laptop. “There’ll be plenty of time for this later.”

  But Lori held up a staying hand. “No, it’s okay, Mom. I’m not tired, and it’s nice to feel useful.”

  Cici smiled as she sat down on the edge of Lori’s bed. “Well, there’s never a lack of anything useful to do around here. And I guess you want me to leave you alone so you can e-mail your boyfriend in Italy.”

  Lori shrugged and tapped another key on the computer, changing screens. “He’s not my boyfriend. Never was, really. And now ...” She shrugged again.

  “But you were able to take your exam,” Cici pointed out. “You could still ...”

  Lori was shaking her head before she finished. “I withdrew my application,” she said. And although she did not meet her mother’s eyes, the heaviness in her voice betrayed her disappointment. “You heard what the doctor said. I won’t be back to normal with this leg for months yet, and this was a hands-on job in a working vineyard and winery. It wouldn’t be right to cheat them out of the help they were expecting, or to take the opportunity away from someone who could actually do the work.”

  Cici nodded thoughtfully, and then slipped her arm around Lori’s shoulders and kissed her hair. “Have I told you lately how proud I am of you?”

  Again Lori shrugged, but this time she returned a lopsided smile. “I’ll get to Italy,” she told her mother. “Eventually.”

  “You bet you will, sweetie. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if your friend—your non-boyfriend—is waiting for you when you get there. You are worth waiting for, if I do say so myself. After all, I waited—”

  “Nine months and eighteen days for me to be born,” Lori supplied. “I know.”

  “Eighteen excruciating days,” Cici reminded her.

  “Well, Italian college boys aren’t exactly known for their patience, and I’m sure he will have forgotten me long before I get there.”

  Cici waited. Lori clicked another key.

  “He keeps writing me,” she admitted, “but I don’t answer.”

  “Over him, huh?” Cici said sympathetically.

  “No,” Lori interjected quickly, and with surprising fervor. “I mean ... I don’t know.” She sighed again. “It just seems kind of ... pointless. I miss him, and we were really having a lot of fun, texting back and forth. I mean it was almost like we were, you know, dating ... Perfectly innocent, of course,” she assured her mother. And then she sighed. “I guess I’ll never know what it might have been. It’s probably better that way.”

  “Then why don’t you just e-mail him and tell him it’s over?”

  “Because,” Lori said a little he
lplessly, “I’m just not sure it is.”

  Cici considered and rejected a dozen things to say, some of them pointed, some of them not, none of them particularly helpful. Finally she simply smiled, patted her daughter’s hand, and advised, “Take a nap. I promise there will be plenty of opportunities for you to feel useful when you wake up.”

  Cici found Lindsay and Bridget sitting on the floor in the big parlor they called the living room, surrounded by baskets, boxes, tissue paper, and cellophane. She sat across from them, forming the third point of a triangle, and folded her jeaned legs under her. “Lori is in love with an Italian,” she said.

  “Good for her,” Lindsay said and passed her a basket. “Fill those champagne glasses with colored candy, wrap them with cellophane, tie each one with an apricot ribbon, and put one in each basket.”

  Cici gave her a skeptical look. “You’re the one who said I should by no means let her go to Italy.”

  “You’re only young once,” advised Bridget. She carefully cut and folded a sheet of pale green tissue paper into a triangle, and used it to line another basket.

  “Also,” Cici said, pouring a measure of candy into a champagne glass, “I looked at the contract and we are screwed. They have to pay for materials, but there’s no limit on how much labor we signed up for—at no extra charge. How do these go in?” she asked, tying the ribbon around the cellophane.

  Lindsay demonstrated how the champagne glasses fit against the side of the baskets, between the wedding-mix CDs and the tulle-wrapped scented candles. “Save room for the monogrammed chocolates in the middle,” she reminded them. “They’re supposed to be delivered today.”

  “Catherine invited us all to the wedding,” Bridget said, trying to make that sound like a good thing. “Even Lori. Plus-ones, too.”

  “What?”

  “Dates. She meant dates.”

  “I know what plus-one means. I just don’t know why she felt it necessary to invite us. I mean, we live here. We’re the hostesses.”

  “Actually” confided Lindsay “I think she just wanted seat fillers, in case some of her fancy friends from DC can’t find their way out here. You know, like at the Academy Awards.”

  “Of course,” added Bridget with a glance at Lindsay “we do have to wear those outfits. Apricot Delight or Hint of Spring green only. And Nearly Nude Shimmer & Silk stockings.”

  Cici gave a snort of derision. “Maybe you do.”

  “We were bulldozed,” Bridget admitted glumly, passing a tissue-lined basket to Lindsay. “We should have called you before we agreed to anything. It was stupid.”

  Cici released a heavy breath, and a long silence fell. “That’s okay” she said unhappily. “I did something even stupider.”

  Lindsay slipped a CD into the case, snapped it shut, and placed it in the basket. “You mean sleeping with Richard?”

  Cici stared at her. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, please.” Bridget cut another square of tissue. “You sleep with him every time you see him. The man is like cat-nip to you.”

  Cici shifted her gaze away, poured more candy, tied more ribbon. Then, making a wry, resigned face, she said, “You’d think by now I’d know better.”

  “Well,” replied Lindsay, “the good news is that neither one of you is in jail, so I guess it didn’t end in violence.”

  “He’s talking about retiring,” Cici said.

  “I can picture Richard in Palm Springs,” Bridget said thoughtfully. “Golf carts, swimming pools ..

  “Bikinis,” added Lindsay.

  “Not unless you count the ones on eighty-year-old women,” Bridget said, and the two women burst into giggles.

  Cici did not laugh. “Here. He’s talking about retiring here.”

  The giggles evaporated. A kind of slow dread filled Lindsay’s eyes. “You don’t mean ... here.”

  And Bridget echoed, “Here?”

  Cici met their gazes grimly. “He called a real estate broker.”

  Bridget stopped folding paper. Lindsay stopped placing CDs in cases. A warm breeze fluttered the lace curtain at the window, a grandfather clock ticked loudly across the room; otherwise all was still. Had there been crickets, they would have been chirping. The three women looked at each other somberly for a long time.

  “That,” intoned Lindsay, “is not good news.”

  Cici nodded heavily. “You’re telling me.”

  Into the grim silence that had fallen over the room a sudden clatter of activity spilled: Rebel’s excited barking, the braying of a goat, the clang of a cowbell. Noah shouted, “Yo! Dog!” Bridget got up and went to the window. “Someone’s coming,” she said, surprised. And then surprise mixed with pleasure as she added, “It’s Paul!”

  They reached the front porch in time to see Noah dragging a still-barking border collie away by the collar as Paul’s blue Prius slid to a stop in front of the steps. Paul got out of the car, pushing his sunglasses up into his hair, and they bounded down the steps to meet him.

  “Paul! What a surprise!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Where’s Derrick?”

  “Why didn’t you call? The house is a mess!”

  “You look great!”

  And again, “What are you doing here?”

  “I have come,” declared Paul, kissing Cici’s cheek, “to solve”—he kissed Lindsay’s cheek—“all your problems.” He kissed Bridget.

  “Well, it’s about time someone did,” responded Cici fervently, and he laughed.

  “I heard you’d had a few setbacks,” he said. “Where is our little broken princess, anyway?”

  “She’s sleeping,” replied Cici. She peered into the car, which was packed to the roof with boxes. “What is all this?”

  “No, she’s not!” Lori called from the porch, leaning on her crutches. “Hi, Uncle Paul. What are you doing here?”

  Paul called up to her, “I came to see you, of course!” And he added to Cici as he started up the steps to greet Lori, “Be careful with those boxes. Some of the stuff in them is breakable.”

  Cici looked after him in astonishment, and Lindsay opened the back door of the car as Noah, having released Rebel in the sheep meadow, came jogging around the corner. Bridget surveyed the packed car. “Is all this for us?”

  “I guess so.” Cici pried a box from the top of the stack and handed it to Noah. “Help us unpack this, will you, Noah?”

  Noah took the box and cast an appraising eye over the remainder. “Whoa, dude,” he said as he started up the steps with the box. “What’re you doing, moving in?”

  Paul turned with an odd, rather rueful smile on his face. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  The boxes were sorted by content between the pantry, the ofhce, and the living room/workroom. Two enormous suitcases were hauled to the guest room. Ida Mae brought tall glasses of iced tea laced with sprigs of mint to the porch, along with the last of the peanut butter cookies, grumbling all the while about how some folks didn’t have the decency to give a person time to change the sheets before he showed up on her doorstep. Paul called after her, grinning, “I’ll change my own sheets, I promise! I’ve been looking forward to it all the way from Maryland!”

  They brought extra chairs onto the porch for Lori and Paul, along with a footstool for Lori to rest her leg. Noah relaxed on the steps with his shoulders resting against a column. All of them waited for Paul to speak.

  Paul took a sip of his tea, gave the glass an appraising look, and murmured, “Interesting.” He gazed around the porch.

  “I’m sure you have your own ideas,” he said, “but I would keep the porch decor simple for the wedding. Satin bows and rose bouquets, natural greenery, swags over the door and windows.”

  Noah stretched for a handful of cookies. “If ya’ll are going to talk about that wedding I’m outta here. I’ve got things to do.”

  Lori said, “Not me. It took me too long to get here. Besides,” she added meaningfully to Noah, “the good stuff always s
tarts as soon as we leave.”

  Lindsay looked uneasy. “Noah, maybe you’d better get back to the goat house. We want to talk to Paul.”

  Noah started to rise, but Paul lifted a staying hand. His tone, like his expression, was weary. “No, let him stay. I’m tired of keeping secrets.”

  Paul’s face suddenly looked older than it had when he arrived; his eyes were puffy and his skin sagged. He looked again at his glass, but did not drink. And then he looked at each of them in turn—Noah, Lori, Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay—for a moment before he spoke. “Derrick didn’t want you to know, didn’t want anyone to know. Some stupid, ridiculous Superman fantasy of his.” He took a breath. “Last winter ... he had a heart attack.”

  The chorus of gasps and soft “Oh, my God!”s was punctuated by a single flat “Crap” from Noah. Derrick had been a long-distance mentor to Noah, had encouraged his art career, had written a letter of recommendation to John Adams Academy. Even as feminine hands flew to their throats, their eyes went to Noah.

  “He’s okay,” Paul said quickly. “At least physically. As okay as he can be, at any rate. It was a mild heart attack. They sent him home after three days on a regimen of diet, exercise, and statins—and no stress, of course.”

  Lindsay Cici, and Bridget released a breath, and Lori said, “God, Uncle Paul, you scared us to death.” Noah relaxed marginally, but his eyes stayed fixed on Paul. His life experience so far had taught him to be skeptical of happy endings.

  “Yeah, I was pretty scared, too,” Paul said. He took another sip of his tea, and grimaced. “But Derrick wanted to pretend that nothing had happened. He was back at the gallery the next day. I’m talking the very next day after he got home from the hospital. I couldn’t believe it. Here I had made arrangements to take the whole week off, and he’s acting as though he’s just taken some time away for a brow lift or something. What is that? At first I thought it was vanity, but now I’m thinking Messiah complex.”