Love Letters from Ladybug Farm Read online

  Now, however, it was blissfully quiet. Richard sat with Lori on the porch, where a surprisingly brisk breeze had blown up to cut the humidity. Paul and Noah finished putting away the bar supplies and carrying the cases of wine for the reception up from the cellar. Noah set up another ten decorative tables on the porch. It was just after ten o’clock when Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay joined the others on the porch.

  “Richard,” Cici said wearily, “what are you still doing here?”

  “He’s staying over, Mom,” Lori declared cheerfully.

  “We don’t have any extra rooms,” Cici told her flatly.

  “I’ll sleep on the sofa.” Richard smiled.

  “Fine.”Neither Cici’s tone or expression changed. “You’re in my chair.”

  He politely stood up and offered her the rocking chair.

  “Whose chair am I in?” Paul wanted to know.

  “Mine.” Lindsay sat on his knee and leaned back. “What a night.”

  “I made seventy-five dollars in tips,” Noah said, practically chortling as he counted it. “And that was just for thirteen cars! Wait till tomorrow.”

  Bridget sat down thoughtfully in one of the folding chairs that had been set up for tomorrow’s guests. A gust of wind blew her hair across her face and she absently pushed it back. “I think I’ve figured it out,” she said.

  “Thank God,” muttered Cici, with no idea what she was talking about.

  “No, I mean about Ida Mae.” She leaned forward earnestly and lowered her voice. “I think the problem is—she can’t read.”

  “How can that be?”

  “That’s not possible!”

  And then Lindsay said, looking interested, “No, a lot of illiterate adults spend their lives hiding the fact that they can’t read. They get quite good at it.”

  “It would explain everything,” Bridget went on, her voice growing excited. “All her problems began when we started the business, and everything was written down—recipes, instructions, shipping labels. And then tonight—the mistakes she made were on recipes she didn’t know, don’t you see? She had to read them!”

  “Are you talking about that old lady in the kitchen?”

  The voice belonged to Traci, who was standing inside the screen door, head down, futilely pushing buttons on her phone. “She can’t see. I asked her to help me pin on my veil this afternoon and she couldn’t even find the bobby pin. My granny was like that before she had her cataract surgery. Are you people ever going to get telephone service?”

  Lindsay, Cici, and Bridget looked at each other in dawning amazement. “Cataracts,” Cici said.

  “Of course,” Bridget agreed with a slow shake of her head. “Of course.”

  “I’m going to make an appointment with the ophthalmologist first thing Monday,” Lindsay said.

  Bridget turned in her chair to beam at Traci. “I guess it took a stranger to see what we were all too close to her to notice.”

  Traci pushed open the door and came outside. “There’s no television in my room.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Lori said, a little apologetically. “They moved it downstairs to mine.”

  Traci gave her a somewhat incredulous look. “What do you people do at night?”

  “This, mostly Lindsay said, relaxing back against Paul’s shoulder.

  “We do have telephone service, by the way,” Cici pointed out. “It’s called a landline.”

  Traci looked at her for a moment as though she had just said, “Telegraph.” Then, “I need to call my maid of honor and tell her to bring my overnight bag out here.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t make her turn around and drive all the way out here tonight,” Bridget protested.

  “I’ll loan you a nightshirt,” Lori volunteered.

  “It’s her job,” Traci replied, folding her arms as she leaned against one of the columns and fixed her gaze on the darkened lawn. “She’s the bridesmaid and I’m the bride.”

  Another stiff gust of wind made a flapping sound against the plastic of one of the tents and Cici said, “We might get a little storm.”

  Paul asked worriedly, “Noah, you did stake down the tents, right? Maybe we should have waited until morning to put up the scrim.”

  Traci turned on him accusingly. “It had better not rain on my wedding day!”

  And although everyone on the porch, it seemed, drew a breath to reply, only Bridget actually spoke. “Honey, are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  Cici stared at Bridget in disbelief. So did Lindsay, so did Paul, and even Lori. But in the end all they could do was wait for Traci’s reply. It was brief and sharp. “Why shouldn’t I? I deserve this. It’s my day.”

  “What I mean is ...” The wind rattled the wind chimes loudly and everyone’s attention was momentarily diverted. Bridget repeated, “What I mean is, you’re about to make a lifetime commitment. Do you love Jason?”

  Traci shrugged, but did not turn around to look at Bridget. “Whatever that is.”

  Paul winced. “The last person who said that ended up at the center of one of the most famous divorces of the twentieth century.”

  Traci’s expression was puzzled.

  “Prince Charles?” he prompted.

  “Prince who?”

  “He married Princess Diana,” added Lori helpfully, and Cici reached across to pat her daughter’s knee proudly.

  “But before the wedding,” Lindsay said, “he did this famous interview where a reporter asked if he was in love with her, and the prince replied, ‘whatever that means.’ ”

  “I think we all knew that was the beginning of the end,” Paul said sadly.

  “Did he ever figure it out?” Traci wanted to know. “What love means?”

  That had them all momentarily perplexed. “I don’t think anyone can tell you that,” Bridget ventured after a moment. “Not entirely. It means so many different things.”

  “Like being willing to put someone else’s dreams ahead of your own,” Paul said quietly. “Even when you don’t think those dreams are the best thing for him.”

  Lindsay looked at him sympathetically. “Or,” she added, with a small reminiscent smile, “like trying to keep someone’s voice alive in the only way you know how, years after she’s gone.”

  Cici caught Noah’s gaze and held it gently. “Or like letting go of someone you love so that he can have a better life.”

  Noah’s brows drew together briefly, and then eased. He smiled a little, uncertainly at first, and then with more confidence. “Yeah,” he said.

  Lori glanced across at her mother with a lopsided grin. “Or like arranging a video date for your invalid daughter even though you’d rather chew your own arm off than have her fall in love with an Italian.”

  Cici looked surprised, and then she returned the grin and caressed her daughter’s cheek.

  “Or,” Bridget said softly, “giving someone a goat.”

  They all turned to look at her, and then Noah suddenly sprang to his feet. “Man!” he exclaimed. “I forgot to let the animals out of the barn!”

  “Listen.” Richard had been so quiet in the shadows of the steps that they had almost forgotten he was there. He stood slowly. “What is that sound?”

  Lindsay heard it first—a distant rushing, roaring sound. “Rain,” she said. “You can hear it coming down the mountain before it gets here.”

  Cici stood, too, peering out into the yard at the pale underside of tree leaves, stripped upward by the wind. Noah started past her toward the steps, and just then a gust of wind caught one of the decorative tables and sent it tumbling across the porch. Traci squealed. The roaring sound grew closer, and Cici said, “I don’t think that’s just the rain.”

  She grabbed Noah’s arm as the wind suddenly tunneled across the porch, sending the wind chimes straight out at a ninety degree angle, overturning more tables, tearing a ribbon off the porch and sailing it into the night. “Forget the animals!” she cried.

  There was a cracking sound from
a nearby tree and Lindsay leapt to her feet. So did Bridget.

  “Inside!” Cici had to scream now to be heard over the roaring of the wind. “Everybody inside! Hurry!”

  17

  Here Comes the Bride

  The thundering wind, the explosive crack and crash of trees, the slam of debris caroming off the side of the house, and the somehow even more alarming tinkle of broken glass lasted less than five minutes. The roar of rain and hail lasted considerably longer. The residents of Ladybug Farm huddled together in the cellar, where Ida Mae, wearing flannel pajamas, a barn jacket, and hiking boots, distributed emergency flashlights about two minutes before the power went out. Traci, terrified, covered her head with her arms and sobbed. Lori buried her face in her father’s chest. Cici held Lindsay’s hand. Lindsay held Noah’s. Bridget held Paul’s.

  When the roaring of the rain faded to a steady drumming, and finally to a patter and then at last to nothing more than a steady drip-drip from the eaves, they cautiously made their way back up the stairs to the light of their combined flashlights. Lindsay ran to close a window that had been left open in their haste to escape the storm, The breeze was playing with a sodden flap of lace curtain, a lamp had been broken, and there was enough water on the floor to splash when she walked, but she noticed no other damage inside.

  They opened the door and moved slowly out onto the porch. Paul had to pick up a rocking chair, which was partially blocking the front door. Tables and chairs were overturned and piled against the far railing. A tree limb rested against the front railing. The floor itself was not visible for the covering of green leaves, two or three inches deep in places.

  “Good God,” Richard said softly. He set Lori, whom he had carried up the stairs, on her feet.

  “Holy cow,” echoed Noah.

  They directed their flashlight beams over the yard. A half moon chose that moment to appear from behind a tattered scrap of cloud, illuminating a lawn that looked as though it had been seeded with crystal, a glittering white carpet as far as the eye could see.

  “Snow!” gasped Traci. “In June!”

  “Hail,” Cici corrected, a little overwhelmed by the sight herself.

  Lindsay’s flashlight beam slowly climbed up the trunk of the giant poplar nearest the house. “Good heavens,” she said. “Is that a chair in that tree?”

  Bridget cried suddenly, “The cake!” and ran toward the pantry.

  “It must have been a tornado,” Paul theorized, with a kind of dreadful wonder in his voice.

  Traci’s voice started to tear up again. “We could have died!”

  “Well, we didn’t,” Cici said briskly. She had to set her teeth to keep them from chattering, but she wasn’t sure whether that was because of the cool layer of air that rushed up from the hail-covered ground, or the leftover terror. “But we do have a lot of cleaning up to do. So let’s get to work.”

  “I’ll check the animals,” said Noah, dashing off.

  “I’ll start the coffee,” Ida Mae said.

  Lindsay disappeared into the house and returned a moment later with a broom, which she thrust into Traci’s hands. “You can start,” she told her, “by sweeping the porch.”

  They gathered in the kitchen an hour later for coffee. The hail was melted, the floors had been mopped, the glass swept up, and reconnaissance, as much as could be done in the dark, was complete. An oil lamp on the kitchen table provided a pale yellow light that did not come close to reaching the corners of the big room.

  “At least the cake is safe,” Bridget reported glumly.

  “And we have gas for cooking and hot water,” Lindsay offered helpfully.

  “And the dishes were done before the power went out,” said Cici, who hated doing dishes by hand almost more than she hated cleaning the chicken coop.

  “The animals are all okay,” Noah said. “Good thing they were locked in the barn. Except,” he added, “the goat ran away when I opened the door. Do you want me to go look for her?”

  “No!” shouted all three women at once. Bridget patted his hand gratefully. “Maybe in the morning.”

  “We lost two cases of wine,” Paul reported heavily, sinking into a chair. “And all the tents. Half the chairs are mangled. I can’t even find the tables.”

  “There are tree branches down all over the driveway,” Richard said. “Some of them as big as a car. There’s no way traffic can make it to the house tomorrow.”

  “All my pretty candles,” Lori mourned. “Covered in mud or blown away completely. And my bows!”

  “I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get ahead of the game,” Paul said. “We should have waited until the morning to start the decorating and setup.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Lindsay tried to comfort him. “There’s no way we could have gotten all that done in one day.”

  Traci sat huddled at the table with her hands wrapped around her coffee cup. “We could have died,” she repeated brokenly.

  Bridget reached across the table and patted her hand helplessly.

  There was a muffled, distant, mechanical bleating coming from outside, which they managed to ignore for a time. Then Bridget said, frowning, “What is that? A storm siren?”

  “There aren’t any storm sirens out here,” Cici pointed out.

  “It sounds like a car horn,” Lindsay said. She got up and opened the back door, the others following. The sound was much clearer now, and it was definitely a car horn. When it stopped, a faint, small voice echoed through the night: “Traci! Traci!”

  Traci gasped. “Jason!”

  She pushed past them and scrambled around the porch. Lindsay thrust a flashlight into her hands just before she bounded down the steps. “Jason!” she cried. “Jason, I’m here! I’m here!”

  They watched her run down the debris-littered driveway, flashlight beam bobbing to meet her true love. “Just like in a movie,” Bridget observed contentedly, folding her arms across her chest in satisfaction.

  Jason was soaked and covered in mud and scratches, and Traci couldn’t hold onto his arm tightly enough. “He came through the storm to make sure I was okay!” she told them, beaming at him. “He did that! He came through the storm!”

  They got him dried off and somewhat cleaned up, and fed him hot coffee and strawberry crumble as he told how, upon arriving at the hotel, he had heard about the coming storm on the radio, and had driven through hail and sleet and falling trees to get back here and save the woman he loved from whatever fate had befallen her. While the older members of his captive audience took his tale with a grain of salt, Traci was enraptured with her newly anointed Prince Charming.

  Proving the axiom that men and small children will always rise to the level of your expectations, the groom-to-be swept Traci into his arms at the bottom of the stairs and demanded, “Which room are we in?”

  Traci, with eyes sparkling so brightly electric lighting was hardly needed, looked over his shoulder to catch Bridget’s eye. “Now,” she said, “I know what it means.”

  She turned her flashlight to light the way upstairs.

  Lori sighed. “That is so romantic.”

  “They’re going to have sex on our nice clean sheets,” Lindsay said, grudgingly. “I just know it.”

  Bridget looked worried. “If it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding, just imagine what kind of luck it is if he has sex with her.”

  Cici stared at her. “We just endured the worst rehearsal dinner in the history of rehearsal dinners. Our house was almost blown away by a tornado. We have people arriving for a wedding in less than twelve hours, and there is a fallen forest on our driveway. How much worse can our luck get?”

  “The goat could eat the wedding cake,” Bridget suggested morosely.

  “The goat ran away!”

  “The lovebirds could burn down the house with scented candles,” Lindsay said.

  Lori rolled her eyes. “You guys,” she said, “are really old. I’m going to bed.”

  “Me
, too,” Lindsay said, and Bridget agreed, “There’s not much more we can do until we have enough daylight to assess the damage.”

  Paul said thoughtfully, “If no one is using the phone, I think I should make a call.”

  “It’s after midnight,” Cici pointed out.

  “That’s okay. I happen to know the person I’m calling is still up.” And he smiled. “Besides, as the girl said—we could have died. I don’t think this phone call can wait any longer.”

  Cici and Richard stood alone at the bottom of the stairs in a foyer lit only by the two flashlights in their hands and the battery-operated lantern on the table a dozen feet away. Cici looked at him.

  “Richard,” she said, with some difficulty. “Tonight—when you swept Lori up in your arms and carried her down to the cellar, without even hesitating or asking a single question, just like some kind of, I don’t know, hero or something... ” He smiled at her in the pale yellow light, and she smiled back, uncertainly. “And then, walking down the driveway in the dark to check the damage after the storm ... I just wanted to say I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier. And I’m glad you stayed.”

  He curved his hand around the back of her neck, and kissed her cheek. “How about bringing me a pillow,” he said, “and showing me the sofa?”

  Rodrigo sounded the alarm at five thirty. By six, Noah had fired up the chainsaw, and at seven fifteen, Farley’s blue tractor puttered around the side of the house, climbing over broken tree limbs and navigating around ditches. Bridget, who was taking an egg casserole out of the oven, ran out to meet him with the casserole still clutched between her oven-mitted hands.