A Wedding on Ladybug Farm (12 page)

She jerked her
arm away and for a moment they glared at each other, her nostrils flared, his lips set tight.  The silence grew a little awkward, both of them realizing that they did not want to spend whatever time they had together fighting, but neither one of them knowing quite how to end it.

Lori muttered, “You always were a prick.”

He replied, “And you always were a brat. Now it seems to me you’ve got two choices.  You can stalk away in righteous indignation, or you can let me buy you that dinner.  What’s it going to be?”

In another moment she sank back down beside him, her hands clasped loosely between her knees, still scowling.  “It had better be expensive.”

He grinned a little, and nudged her gently with his elbow, and this time, after only a slight hesitation, she smiled back.

~*~

“Yes’m, it was a blow, a real blow,” said Farley solemnly.  “She was a fine woman.  I appreciate all them cakes and casseroles you left, though.”

Lindsay patted his arm sympathetically, and Cici added her own murmurs of sympathy.  This was the first time they had seen Farley since his sister-in-law’s funeral.

Bridget’s eyes were brimming with compassion.  “It’s never easy to lose a family member.  You just let us know if there’s anything we can do, you hear?  And I wrapped up a cherry pie for you this morning.  Don’t leave without it.”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Bridget.”  He touched the brim of his camo cap respectfully, his ginger-bearded face softening as he looked at her.  “That’s right kind of you.”

He was a gruff mountain man with a limited vocabulary and a rather unpleasant chewing tobacco habit, but in all the years the ladies had lived in the old house he had never failed to show up when they needed him, whether it was with tiles to repair the roof or a sheep dog to gather escaped livestock or a tractor to clear their snowed-in driveway, and he never charged them more than ten dollars. Not ten dollars an hour; just ten dollars.  It was no secret that he had a tiny crush on Bridget, which was hardly discouraged by the fact that she was always sending him home with pies and cakes and plates of cold chicken—which was only fair, she insisted, considering all the cheap labor he gave them.

He turned to Lindsay. “I hear you’re getting married, Miss Lindsay.”

Lindsay beamed at him.  “That’s right.  Next month.  We’re going to have a big party here afterwards.  You’re invited, of course.”

He replied by spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the soda can he carried for that purpose.  “You need anybody to say the words over you, you let me know.”

Lindsay looked briefly horrified, but disguised it quickly with a smile. Farley, as it turned out, was a mail-order cleric who had saved their spring blessing of the vines ceremony when he stepped up to the occasion. Weddings were, of course, another matter entirely.

“Thank you, Farley,” Lindsay said, “but I’ve already spoken to Reverend Holland.”

“Well,” he agreed, shifting the tobacco wad to the other cheek, “wouldn’t want to cut into his business none.”

Cici came to Lindsay’s rescue, even though she was barely able to keep a straight face herself. “Farley, we’d better get started before it gets too hot.”

For the next two hours the house rocked with the clatter and crunch of demolition and disposal.  Nails screeched and posts fell. Farley lowered four-by-sixes through the window and into the waiting bed of his pickup truck with a thunderous clatter while Cici filled barrels with smaller pieces of debris.  Lindsay decided this would be a perfect time to drive over to the Hummingbird House to consult with Paul on some wedding details, and Bridget locked herself in the workroom with six dozen gift bags to fill.  Ida Mae turned up the radio, opened the kitchen windows, and started a batch of apple-cheese bread that could be frozen until it was time to turn it into finger sandwiches for the wedding.

Farley left with a truck full of scrap lumber, ten dollars in his pocket, and a cherry pie on his front seat.  Bridget tied back her hair, grabbed a broom and dustpan, and went upstairs to help Cici.  The space was still covered with plaster dust and plastic drop cloths, the furniture from both rooms had been piled in the hall, and the wallpaper still clung to the grayish, bedraggled walls in a few stubborn patchy spots.  But for the first time, with the dividing wall gone, the room was revealed for what it must have been in its prime and soon would be again: a light open space with high whitewashed ceilings, dark wide plank floors and soft sunshine filtering through the two big, wavy-paned windows.  When they first moved in, Cici had built a closet for each room and had spaced them against the far walls, so that a nook was now opened up on either side of the big room.  The fireplace with its painted mantel was now perfectly centered, rather than crowded against the door as it once had been, and already Bridget could envision two wing chairs drawn up before it, maybe with a comfortable ottoman between them holding a tray and two wine glasses, and a pretty shawl casually tossed across the arm of one chair.  She had already purchased five gallons of Wedgewood blue paint, because Lindsay said that was one of Dominic’s favorite colors, and bright white for the trim and the paneled wainscoting that defined two walls and was now a rather nondescript eggshell color.  There was an Oriental carpet in the attic done in shades of blue and gold, and Lindsay had some gorgeous cobalt pieces that would look stunning on the bookshelves Bridget intended to persuade Cici to build.  She couldn’t wait to get started.

“Wow, Cici, this room is going to be gorgeous.  What a difference!  You know what we should do?  We should put up a curtain and keep this place off-limits to Lindsay until it’s finished, then do a big reveal just like they do on those television shows.  Oh!  We could put a bow across the door, and bring Dominic and Lindsay up to see it at the same time!”

Cici looked around the room in satisfaction, leaning on the snow shovel she had used to scoop up the demolition debris from the floor.  “It’s a little more work than I thought,” she admitted, “but it’ll be worth it when it’s done.”  She looked at Bridget a little anxiously. “It
will
be done on time, right?  Because it won’t be much of a wedding gift if all we have is a big empty room with dusty floors and stripped-down walls.”

“Oh, sure,” Bridget said.  “All we have to do is paint and bring in some furniture.”

“All I had to do was take down a wall,” Cici reminded her, “and that took two weeks.”

“But we also got the wallpaper down and all the stuff moved out.  The floors are mostly covered already so we don’t have to worry about drop cloths.  I’ll start taping off the trim tonight, and once that’s done everything else goes pretty fast.”

“Well, I guess we’ve done this enough times by now to be experts.  Will you have time to make curtains?”

Bridget turned a mildly challenging look on her. “Will you have time to build bookshelves?”

Cici considered that for a moment, then gave a resigned, lopsided grin. “Deal,” she said.  “But I don’t know how you’re going to be able to do all this, plus bake a wedding cake, plus make all the food for the reception—I mean, vine-burning party—if I’m going to be too busy building shelves to help.”

“You’ll have those shelves done in no time,” Bridget assured her.  “You’ll have plenty of time to help.”

“That’s a relief,” Cici murmured with a small roll of her eyes.

Bridget ignored her sarcasm and looked around the room, her expression a little wistful.  “Did you ever think when we bought this place that one day we’d be making room for a man to move in?”

“We made room for Noah,” Cici reminded her.

“That’s different.  He was a child.”

Cici nodded.  “I know what you mean.  It is a little strange.  This has always been a woman’s place. Our place. And now …”  Her smile held a trace of nostalgia.  “Well, everything is different, isn’t it?”

Bridget nodded.  “And it’s about to get a lot more different.  You know, I really can sympathize with Lindsay letting herself get so crazy about the wedding.  It’s a lot easier to focus on the things you can control, like musicians and photographers, than things you can’t, like how your life will never be the same once a man moves into your bedroom.”

Cici nodded, sighing.  “Isn’t that the truth?”  Then, “Fortunately, she has friends to make sure he has a bedroom to move in
to
.  Come on, let’s get the rest of this dust swept up and I’ll help you tape the trim.”

~*~

They were late gathering on the porch.  Dominic had joined them for supper, then returned to his office to finish up paperwork, as he often did.  The lights still burned in the barn.  Bridget had wanted to finish prepping the walls and taping off the trim, and Cici had gathered a bushel basket of apples which seemed to have fallen to the ground overnight.  She threatened to send them all home with Dominic for his horses, but knew that the thriftiness within all of them would have them peeling, blanching, canning, freezing
, and drying apples for most of the day tomorrow.  Still, she secretly looked forward to the day when Dominic’s horses would move in and save them all the bother.

The dove gray sky brought with it a pale, chill breath that tasted of snowy winters and wind-stiffened days yet unborn.  A lone star twinkled in the distance, and faintly, on the hillside, there was dull patch of washed-out color, courtesy of early
turning leaves.

Bridget pulled her cardigan around her shoulders.  “Fall will be here before you know it.”

Lindsay smothered a groan.  “You don’t have to tell me.  Twenty-five days left.”

They didn’t have to ask what she meant.  The only calendar that mattered to anyone on Ladybug Farm these days was the calendar that counted the days to the wedding.

“What if it snows?” Lindsay worried out loud now.  “Remember we had three inches on Halloween last year.  I should have thought of that.  How could I not think of that?”

By now her friends had come to accept the uselessness of trying to convince Lindsay of the absurdity of her catastrophizing.  Instead, Cici sipped her wine and observed, “I can’t think of anything more romantic than an outdoor wedding in the snow.”

And Bridget added, “I have a gorgeous fur-trimmed white cape you could wear, with a hood.”

Lindsay said excitedly, “I love that cape!”  Then she settled back and took a sip of her own wine.  “I hope it snows.”

The kitten, who was currently called Rumplestilskin, strolled nonchalantly across the porch.  All three women watched him warily, protecting their glasses.  But he surprised them by leaping lightly into Bridget’s lap and curling up contentedly on her knee.  Bridget looked smug.

“We need to start gathering up those walnuts before the squirrels do,” Cici observed
, rocking easily in her chair now that she knew where the cat was.  “And Ida Mae says if we don’t cut back the blackberry bushes they’re going to take over the raspberries.  She’s probably right.”

“Noah always does that,” Lindsay said.  And then she corrected herself firmly, “Did that.”

Bridget sighed.  “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we may be getting too old for this.”

“Bite your tongue,” said Cici. She cast a glance over her shoulder and added in a lower tone, “Especially around Ida Mae.  I have this ongoing nightmare that if she ever does realize how old she is, that will be the end of her.”

“I don’t have time for blackberry bushes. I only have twenty-five days before the wedding.”

“And I have four hundred sixty miniature fondant grape leaves to make next week,” Bridget sighed.

“We’ll help,” Lindsay and Cici volunteered quickly.

She smiled.  “Thanks.  But you’re going to be busy making the miniature grapes.”

Lindsay let out a sigh and sank down in her chair, resting her head against the back and cradling her wine glass against her chest.  “You know what we’re too old for, don’t you?  Weddings.”

The other two raised an objection but she insisted, “I’m serious.  There’s a reason people get married in their twenties.”

Cici, after a moment, gave a reluctant nod of agreement.  “Their parents are still alive to take charge of everything.”

“And if you think about it,” Lindsay went on, “this really was Lori’s party.  Everything from the dress to the vineyard theme to the colors to the decorations, I completely stole from her.”

“That’s not true,” Bridget objected.  “Lori’s colors were cabernet and rose.  Yours are—”

“Garnet and rose,” replied Lindsay placidly.  “I defy you to tell the difference.”

The other two considered that for a moment.  “Well,” said Bridget at last.  “That may be true, but you have better bridesmaids.”

The three of them lifted their glasses to one another in a salute.

“Besides,” Cici said, taking a sip of her chardonnay, “if you think about it, none of those choices were really Lori’s.  We kind of pushed her into all of them.  So it really was our wedding from the beginning.”

“Well, maybe,” Lindsay agreed.  “But I still think the world would be a happier place if there was a rule that everyone over forty had to be married at the courthouse in front of a justice of the peace and two witnesses.”