Love Letters from Ladybug Farm Read online

  Farley tipped his hat to her as he climbed off the still running tractor. “Thought I’d see if you had any storm damage over this way” he said. “I’ll go push some of them big limbs out of your driveway and over the bank, if you like, or I can help the boy cut up some stove wood.”

  “Yes,” said Bridget breathlessly. “That would be wonderful. And then later ... if you’re not doing anything, that is ... I was wondering if you might consider being my escort to the wedding we’re having here this afternoon?”

  Bridget held her breath as he returned her gaze for a long and thoughtful moment. Then he said, “Why Miss Bridget, I don’t mind if I do.”

  She beamed at him. “Wonderful! But first come inside and have some breakfast. And,” she added as he drew up beside her, “do you mind if I ask—is Farley your first name or your last?”

  They managed to rescue most of the chairs, although there was nothing to be done about the tents or the buffet tables they had once protected. Cici and Paul dragged sheets of plywood out of the workshop, arranged them atop sawhorses, and covered them with linen tablecloths. They robbed the bedrooms of full-length mirrors and set them in the middle of the tables, surrounded by green leaves—which were available from the yard in abundance—and apricot roses.

  The rose garden itself was stripped to bare, naked rose twigs, and the beautifully decorated arbors were smashed beyond recognition. Lindsay’s eyes filled with tears when she saw it. “We can’t let Traci see this,” she declared, forcefully recovering herself. “The photographer will be here in two hours.” She whirled on Cici. “Do we have any beanpoles left?”

  “I’m way ahead of you!” Cici called over her shoulder, running toward the barn.

  They built a wedding canopy out of eight-foot-tall beanpoles, tulle, and beribboned rose bouquets. Paul swept all of the fallen rose petals into a colorful path for the processional. The fallen silk dogwoods were hosed off, fluffed up, and set in the sun to dry. Lindsay put Lori to work with twist ties, silk ivy, and apricot roses, trying to recreate the look of the real rosebushes that had fallen.

  “I don’t believe this,” Cici said. “You’re tying florist roses and silk ivy onto real rosebushes.”

  “It’s a wedding,” Lindsay assured her hurriedly, thrusting an armful of freshly washed candles into her hands. “It’s all about the fantasy.”

  They lined the processional path with the pillar candles, now stripped of their soiled tulle and arranged in holders of every size and description—from plant stands to lazy Susans—that they had gathered from the house. Every holder was decorated with apricot roses, accented with a variety of green leaves gathered from the yard and tied together with draping ivory satin ribbon. The look was charming, eclectic, and hopelessly romantic.

  Paul stood back with arms crossed on his chest, one finger resting aside his nose, to survey their work. “Well, dip me in chocolate and fry me in butter,” he murmured. “I think we pulled it off. The place looks like a freakin’ fairyland.”

  The girls, sweaty and lank-haired, with fingers thorn-pricked and bleeding, stared at him for a moment, and then burst into laughter. They laughed for almost thirty seconds, leaning on each other, catching Lori when she almost overbalanced on her crutches, and then they each hurried on to their next task.

  Chain saws buzzed all morning. The tractor roared. Bridget flew through the house, hiding lanterns and flashlights, freshening bathrooms, dusting and polishing. In the kitchen, Ida Mae cut the cheese biscuits—which Bridget had made herself—into perfect little circles and placed them in the oven to bake, sliced the ham, and battered the chicken breast strips. Two five-gallon clam steamers filled with sliced potatoes simmered away on the back burners, and the pressure cooker, filled with a combination of the season’s first blackberries, onions, apple vinegar, and hot peppers, hissed and groaned as it labored to turn the concoction into Bridget’s signature sweet-sour dipping sauce. Heritage tomatoes were marinating in olive oil and herbs. Four dozen baby beef Wellingtons were wrapped in pastry, arranged on cookie sheets, and stored in the refrigerator—which no one dared open for fear of allowing whatever precious cool air remained to escape—waiting to be baked. Ida Mae gathered three dozen eggs and began whipping them into quiche filling.

  The bridesmaids arrived with the hairdresser, the makeup person, and so much paraphernalia that their dresses had to be stored in the hallway. Jason, now banished from the kingdom of the women, wandered around looking lost until Paul put him to work making bows. To the young man’s credit, he didn’t object and actually did a passable job. It turned out that sober—and away from the influence of his buddies—he was really quite nice.

  “Ice!” Paul demanded as he burst into the kitchen. “What are we going to do about ice?”

  “Send someone to town for it,” Bridget said, taking a tray of cheese biscuits out of the oven. “We have a cooler in the cellar.”

  “It’s going to take more than one. I should go myself. We need at least another case of champagne. There’s a liquor store in this county, right?”

  Cici admitted reluctantly, “Well, about that... ”

  Lindsay suggested, “Maybe we can call the hotel and have Catherine stop on her way out and pick up what you need.”

  Traci suddenly burst into the kitchen, wearing a short silk robe and a full-length bridal veil. “Listen,” she said, “I know there’s no electricity or anything, but the photographer is going to be here in twenty minutes and we really need to plug in the curling iron...”

  It was at that moment that the pressure cooker exploded. The pressure valve sailed across the room, dented a copper teapot on a display shelf, and knocked over a serving tray. Blackberry sauce spattered the ceiling and everything else within a six-foot radius. Ida Mae dived to protect the cheese biscuits with her arms. Cici and Lindsay covered their heads. Traci screamed and ducked, but not in time to avoid a shower of blackberries over her hair, her robe, and her veil.

  For a moment no one moved. Bridget, crouched beside the stove, caught Cici’s eye and mouthed, Bad luck.

  Then Paul plucked a blackberry from the tip of his nose, examined it for a moment, tasted it, and decided, “Needs more salt.”

  Bridget tried to rinse out the veil, but there really wasn’t much to be salvaged. Traci watched, looking shelled-shocked, as Bridget spread it over the line outside to dry, saying something about the sun bleaching out the dark spots. “I tried to tell you, sweetie,” Paul said, “a hat, not a veil.”

  It was at that point that Lindsay rushed upstairs, tossed her closet, and came back down with a white linen portrait hat. While Cici and Bridget tried to wash the blackberry stains out of Traci’s hair without completely ruining her style, and while the stylist bemoaned the lack of a blow-dryer and the bridesmaids hovered around with eyelash curlers and bobby pins, Lindsay draped the hat in white tulle, wrapped the brim with ribbon and roses, and, to everyone’s amazement and delight, Traci actually smiled when she put it on.

  The mothers arrived, and Cici assured them that the front lawn would be cleared of chicken feathers before the ceremony. She then looked around in amazement, because, until that moment, she hadn’t even noticed that last night’s storm had somehow swept up so many feathers from the chicken yard and deposited them on the front lawn that it looked as though someone had opened a feather pillow.

  The groomsmen arrived, and they actually remembered to bring the groom’s tuxedo. Noah got a rake and tried to sweep up some of the chicken feathers. Cici made what repairs she could to the flower beds. Lindsay stapled bows and banners and swags and drapes on every possible surface, then began to trim down the smallest of the fallen leafy branches, supplement them with apricot roses, and arrange them in baskets that she hung from the porch rafters with ribbons. Catherine noticed and declared the touch “Utterly charming!” as though she had approved the plan from the beginning—which she no doubt thought she had.

  The chain saw stopped buzzing, and Farley’s tractor puttered back down
the road toward his house. Cici brushed some of the dirt off her hands as she came up the steps, and Lindsay, standing on a chair, made a final tuck in the satin banner over the doorway and stapled it. “Okay,” Cici said, “I guess we might as well get cleaned up, and then see what we can do to help Bridget in the kitchen.”

  Lindsay stepped off the chair and pushed it aside. She glanced around. “There’s not much more we can do,” she admitted.

  “Not without an army.” They heard a car turn into the driveway. “That’s got to be the photographer.”

  But it wasn’t. As the car drew closer their looks of curiosity turned to astonishment, then to joy. Lindsay called through the screen door, “Paul!”

  The car stopped in front of the steps and the two women grinned at each other as the driver got out.

  “Derrick!” Cici called happily. “What are you doing here?”

  “Friend of the bride.” He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a cream-colored invitation, smiling his greeting. The screen door squeaked open, and the smile softened to something else as his eyes went over their shoulders. “Besides,” he added, “I heard a friend of mine needed some help.”

  “Well, that depends.” Paul spoke in measured tones, a glue gun in one hand and a cluster of silk flowers in the other. “How are you with a glue gun?”

  “Passable.”

  Derrick came up the steps, the two embraced, and just then the lights inside the house flickered on.

  The bride, wearing a strapless gown and aportrait hat, walked the rose-strewn path to the silken sounds of a chamber quartet playing the wedding march, escorted by her father—looking stiff and hungover but otherwise pleased—and preceded by six bridesmaids in apricot silk. The groom and his attendants were handsome and composed in gray cutaways. When the groom kissed the bride, Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay all reached for tissues—partly because of the tenderness of the moment, but mostly because it was over.

  The storm had cooled and cleaned the air to a pleasant seventy degrees, and left behind a perfect summer blue sky decorated with fluffy, lavender-bottomed cumulus clouds that played out a slow-moving shadow show across the mountains and the lawn. The guests talked a lot about the storm that had swept through the night before, but if they noticed any of the alterations it had made to their surroundings, they said nothing. Many of them admired the ingenuity of the rose garden, and declared how clever it was to strip off the original blossoms and replace them with roses in the bride’s own color scheme.

  Once the lawn was covered with laughing, drinking guests in party wear, the damage to flower beds, trees, and wedding decorations was difficult to spot. If there weren’t enough tables for everyone to sit down, that only encouraged people to mingle, and no one cared that the buffet was not under a tent once they tasted Bridget’s food.

  Lori’s date, Mark, was entertaining and attentive, helping her with her crutches, bringing her food and drink, and being extremely polite to her parents. When Bridget asked Lori to sit behind one of the buffet stations for a few moments, Mark took off his jacket and worked as her assistant. For the first couple of hours all of them worked—carrying food out from the kitchen, making certain there were plenty of napkins and silverware and that the serving dishes were never empty. Derrick rolled up his sleeves and helped Richard open bottles and fill glasses, while Paul, clipboard in hand, kept everything neat, tidy, and on schedule. Noah, who had already made a small fortune parking cars, barely complained at all about bussing the tables and loading the dishwasher and carrying boxes of clean glasses out of the kitchen and dirty glasses in. Farley, who looked surprisingly handsome in his blue suit, struck up a conversation with the mother of the groom, who declared him to be one of the most fascinating and amusing people she had ever met, and kept everyone happy by keeping her happy. Dominic mingled effortlessly with the crowd, but always kept an eye on Lindsay, and whenever there was a table to be unfolded or a chair to be moved or a heavy tray to be lifted he was there, taking care of it.

  When the bride and groom had their first dance and the DJ cranked up the music, Dominic caught Lindsay’s hand and pulled her, laughingly protesting, onto the dance floor. Cici grabbed a glass of wine and sank down at a table in the shade across from Paul and Derrick. She had just taken her first sip when Richard dropped his hands on her shoulders.

  “Come on,” he said, drawing her to her feet. “They’re playing our song.”

  She groaned. “I’m tired. Besides, we don’t have a song.”

  He said, “We do now.”

  She listened, and smiled, and let him lead her to the dance floor to the music of “Through the Years.”

  “Lori said you built the dance floor,” he said as they fell into an easy, natural rhythm.

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  “She’s been showing me all the things you’ve done to this place.”

  Cici tilted her head up to look at him. “You didn’t know I could use power tools?”

  “All in all,” he admitted, “I think that’s something I was better off not knowing. There’s a lot I don’t know about you, I guess.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “We’ve been apart a long time.”

  They danced in silence for a while. His fingers absently stroked her hair. He said, “You were right, you know.”

  “I usually am.”

  He smiled. “It’s been great being back on the East Coast, seeing trees that are taller than a palm, spending time with Lori, and you ... but this isn’t the life for me. I don’t belong here.”

  She almost missed her step, and when she looked up at him she was surprised by the stab of disappointment she felt. “But—what about the dream? What about retirement? You made so many plans!”

  He chuckled. “Hell, sweetie, if this is what you call retirement, I’m going back to L.A. where I can get some rest. You people work too hard for me.”

  She said, “It’s not like we have tornados and weddings every day.”

  The look he gave her was both amused and regretful. “If it wasn’t a tornado, it would be something else. But it’s not that. It’s just ... there’s no room for me here. You don’t need me anymore. If you ever did.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder again, and was quiet for a time. Then she asked, “What was this fascination you had with a horse farm, anyway? You don’t even like horses.”

  For a moment he seemed surprised, and then he chuckled. “You don’t remember, do you? When we were first married, that’s all we talked about. Moving to the country, buying a horse farm. That was the big dream.”

  Cici looked at him for a long time, sadly. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t remember.”

  The music faded into a hip-hop number, and they left the dance floor. Richard’s arm was around her waist, and she leaned into him. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, but I’m not sorry you came. I think it’s been good for us.”

  His fingers squeezed her waist. “Maybe we can try relating to each other on a more adult level a little more often now.”

  She pretended to consider that as they reached the table where Paul and Derrick sat, looking completely relaxed and as comfortable as though they had never been apart. They were sipping wine and pointing out to each other the idiosyncrasies of various members of the wedding party. “That would be different,” she agreed. “We could give it a try.”

  “Now,” he said, holding her chair for her, “all I have to do is figure out what to do with eighty-seven acres of prime Virginia horse country, fenced and cross-fenced.”

  Paul stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. Derrick looked at Paul. Paul looked at Derrick. They both looked at Richard.

  Derrick said, “I don’t suppose you would entertain an offer?”

  Paul, Derrick, Richard, and Dominic moved through the crowd, filling glasses with champagne. The bride and groom were finishing up their last dance before the toast and the cake-cutting, and they couldn’t take their eyes off each other. The
groom’s mother was dancing with Farley. He kept glancing worriedly at Bridget, but she waved him on gaily. Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay stood together behind the serving station near the cake, saucers and cutlery at the ready, cautiously relaxing as the day began to draw to a close.

  “Well.” Bridget released a cautious sigh of relief. “I can’t believe it, but it looks as though we pulled it off.”

  “Thanks to you.” Cici slipped her arm around Bridget’s waist in a brief hug. “The buffet was spectacular.”

  Bridget glanced anxiously at the cake, which was beautifully decorated with cascades of sugared fruit and Apricot Delight roses. “They haven’t cut the cake yet.”

  “The cake is fine,” Lindsay assured her.

  “Dominic seemed to have fun,” Cici commented, teasing her a little. “You two looked cute together.”

  “He is fun,” Lindsay agreed. It was impossible to tell whether the slight flush on her cheeks was from sun, champagne, or pleasure. “Funny how I never noticed before.” She looked at Bridget. “And how about Farley? He really cleaned up nice, didn’t he?”

  Bridget smiled, her eyes seeking, and finding Farley. She waved again. “What a surprise. I suppose there are all sorts of things we don’t notice about people if we never look for them.”

  Cici’s smile was a little sad as she watched Richard, laughing and charming the bride’s grandparents as he filled their glasses. “Yeah.”

  There was a disturbance in the crowd, squeals and laughter, toward the edge of the yard. The DJ lowered the music and said, “Ladies and Gentleman, fill your glasses for the toast to the bride and groom. Fill your glasses!”

  The laughter seemed to take on more of the tone of shouts, and the squeals sounded more like screams. Heads turned. Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget stood on tiptoe. “What in the world ...”

  They all saw it at once, an outrageous tumbling, streaking, galloping whirl of a creature wrapped in white gauze tearing through the crowd like a mad ghost on steroids.