A Wedding on Ladybug Farm (20 page)

“Well, they won’t be moving into the folly for a while,” Cici pointed out. “It’s going to take a lot of work to turn it into a real house.  And even then, they’ll still be here.”

“But it will be different.”  Bridget’s words were almost a sigh.

“We’re not promised tomorrow,” Cici reminded her.

Bridget said after a time, “I just wish they were here, both of them.  Right here on the porch sipping wine and rocking with us.  That’s all I wish.”

Cici smiled sadly to herself in the dark. “Yeah.  Me, too.”

~*~

Bridget and Cici arrived early the next morning at the hospital with two overnight bags and a basket of muffins that Ida Mae had arisen at 5:00 a.m. to bake.  The horses had been fed and the golden retriever had been comforted and played with.  Bridget announced her intention to ask Dominic’s permission to bring his dog home with them to Ladybug Farm that evening, and to start moving in the cats the next day.  Cici argued that the cats would fare better than the horses or the dog without supervision, and that they needed to prioritize.  They were still debating the question when they reached Dominic’s door.  Cici knocked, and Bridget called, “Yoo-hoo!”  They pushed open the door.

Lindsay was standing beside the empty bed, and when she turned to them, she looked stricken.  A kind of cold fear rose off of her in waves, and it was something they could feel as they walked into the room.

“Lindsay.” Cici’s voice sounded hoarse, and she stared at the empty bed. “Where’s Dominic?”

Bridget put down the bag she was carrying and looked around anxiously.  “Lindsay, what happened?  Is everything okay?”

Lindsay held open her arms for them wordlessly, and started to cry.

~*~

Signora Bastioni, their landlady, had felt sorry for the young lovers and had donated a mattress that Kevin and Lori dragged, pushed, folded, and manipulated up the stairs and into their new apartment.  They found two folding wooden chairs and a table that was not quite big enough to hold two plates—which was just as well because they did not have two plates—and Lori covered it with one of her colorful scarves and set it before the window.  With his first paycheck from the language school, Kevin bought a lamp for the table, because the days were growing shorter, even in Italy.  Lori got a job as a cellar worker in a winery half an hour away—all it had taken was one phone call from Signor Marcello—and although it was temporary, backbreaking work with no promise for employment after harvest, and paid wages that wouldn’t have kept her in biscotti without Kevin’s help, she was as pleased as though she had landed a position as president of the company.  And now that she was actually interested in what her coworkers were saying, she found that her Italian was improving noticeably.

Kevin fixed the window lock and Lori planted flower seeds in a terra cotta pots and placed them on the roof.  It didn’t matter that winter was coming.  She was convinced the flowers would bloom in the spring.  In the evenings they sat on the roof with a bottle of wine, sometimes with a blanket wrapped around their shoulders to protect them from the chill, and watched the stars and the lights from the village and talked. They never got tired of talking, even when—sometimes especially when—the conversations took the turn of the quick hot arguments that were so inevitable between them, and that were just as inevitably, passionately, and quickly forgiven.

As her days and nights grew full with the intense joy and wonder of her own life, Lori talked less and less about Ladybug Farm, although there were moments, such as this one, that always took her back.  The Tuscan sky was painted with the brilliance of a gold and rose sunset that seemed to go on forever, and the vintner had rewarded all the cellar workers for a particularly difficult week with a bottle of surprisingly good wine.  She and Kevin made a picnic of bruschetta with fresh pesto from the shop down the street, and a sweet orange panforte that the signora had left outside their doorstep before she closed the shop for the day.  Now they sat on the roof sipping the wine, bathed in the radiance of the sunset and the simple presence of each other. 

Lori said, snuggling into the curve of his shoulder, “Do you think we’ll ever get tired of this?”

“I think,” replied Kevin, kissing her hair, “that anyone who could get tired of something this beautiful doesn’t deserve to have it.  And yes, I mean you, not the sunset.”

She smiled and sipped her wine.  “Of course you do. You know how to treat a lady.”

“My mama raised me right.”

“Oh, crap.”  She put down her wine and sat forward, digging her phone out of her back pocket.  “I had a message from Mom at lunch.  I didn’t get a chance to check it.”

She turned on her phone and gave a small grunt of surprise when she saw the screen.  “Two voice mails and three e-mails,” she said, scrolling through.  “I guess I forgot to check last night too.  Boy, is she going to be mad.”

She was silent as she retrieved the e-mails, and Kevin, whose fingers were lightly stroking her back, felt her change.  She sat up straighter, her muscles stiffened.  He sat forward to better see her face.  “Lori?  Everything okay?”

She turned to him with eyes that were dark with distress.  “We have to go home,” she said.

~*~

Chapter Eleven

Hopelessly Devoted

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Dominic

Hi Mom,

Any news?  Landing at Dulles at 6:00 a.m.  We’ll be in Staunton around noon.  Should we stop at the hospital?

L

PS Forgot to say that Kevin is on the same flight

To: Bridget @LadybugFarmLadies.net

From: KSTLawguy@ hotmail.com

Subject: See you soon

Hi Mom,

I was with Lori when she got the news from home & could tell she was upset. Decided to fly home with her and help with the drive.  Needed to get back anyway.  I’ll talk to you when we get there.  Hope everyone is holding up okay.  Keep us informed.

Kevin

To: [email protected]

From: Cici @LadybugFarmLadies.net

Subject: Re: Dominic

Hi Sweetie,

Apparently it was a pneumothorax (sp?) from the broken rib that punctured his lung.  He’s out of surgery now but in ICU and it’s touch and go.  The head injury complicates things.  I didn’t mean for you to come home.  Please be careful driving after flying all night.  We’ll be at the hospital.  Even Lindsay’s not allowed in to see him.  Did I tell you they got married already?  Sorry, haven’t slept.  I love you.

Mom

PS Did you say Kevin is coming too?

To:[email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject :Re: See you soon

Oh, Kevin, how sweet of you—and what a surprise.  Thank you, darling.  I’m afraid things are not going too well here.  Don’t say anything to Lori, but we may have bad news by the time you land.  We all care so much for Dominic, and to see Lindsay like this is breaking my heart.  It will be so good to have you here.  I wish it could be under better circumstances.

Love,

Mom

To: Bridget @LadybugfarmLadies.net

From: [email protected]

Subject: See you Soon

Me too.

Love,

Kevin

~*~

Lori put her phone away as her suitcase came up on the carousel, pointing it out to Kevin.  “Mom said there’s no change,” she said.  She wore no makeup, and her normally pale complexion was pasty in the light-flooded airport, emphasizing the dark circles under her eyes and the frizzy curls that escaped from her untidy topknot.  “She was trying not to cry, but I could tell … it’s pretty bad.”

Kevin lifted her suitcase off the carousel and set it beside his on the floor.  “Seeing you will make her feel better.  Seeing both of us, really.  Sometimes all it takes is a break in the routine to change the way you look at things.”

“But,” she said, looking at him helplessly, “it can’t change
things
.”

“Not usually,” he agreed, and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze of reassurance.

She snapped the handle on her rolling suitcase in place and looked at him with concern.  “Are you okay to drive?  Did you get any sleep?”

“A few hours.”  He hoisted his duffle.  “Seriously, Lori, you didn’t leave your car in long-term parking for four months.”

“Cheaper than taking a cab.”

And, even considering the cost of having the airport’s auto service jump-start the battery, he supposed it was.

“It’s weird,” Lori observed softly when they left the Beltway and pointed the car west, toward the rolling hills of the Virginia countryside. “It’s like you close your eyes in one world and wake up in another.  You take a breath, and before you exhale everything has changed.”

Kevin said, “There’s not much more to life than that, if you think about it.”

Her brow puckered a little as she gazed out the window.  “All the time I was gone, this place was going on without me.  The leaves were turning, the grapes were ripening, the grass was growing … and now, back in Siena, it’s as though we just walked out of our lives there.” She looked over at him. “Do you think Signora Bastioni will remember to water the flowers?  Do you think they’ll bloom next spring, even if we’re not there?”

“Sure they will.”   

She was quiet for a moment, clearly not believing him. “Everything even looks different here.  Not like I expected.”

“For me too,” Kevin said.  “Of course, it was summer when I left.”

The trees were about a week past their brilliant yellow and orange peak, but there was still plenty of color on the branches, and in the background a swath of multicolored pastels defined the area between sky and earth.  There were bright coral and yellow and rust colored mums planted around mailboxes and in pots on suburban porches, and as they drove deeper into the country, the occasional tendril of smoke could be seen wafting from a chimney.

“It’s more than that,” Lori said thoughtfully, looking around.  “It’s like … all this time I had a picture in my mind of what coming home would feel like, and this is not it.”

“These are not exactly the best of circumstances,” he reminded her.

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Also …” He glanced at her as he made the turn onto the highway ramp.  “You’re not the same woman who left here.”

She smiled, a little tiredly.  “That’s very true.”

“Try to get some rest, baby.  We’ve got a couple of hours.”

She turned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes.  “Wake me if you get sleepy.”

“I will.”

But they had barely gone ten miles before she turned her head toward him again and said, “Do you know what I was thinking on the flight?  I was thinking …”  Her voice grew tight, and a little high, as though she were speaking through a curtain of tears.  “What if that text hadn’t been from Mom?  What if it had been from Aunt Lindsay or Aunt Bridget and it had been my mom in the hospital or—or worse?  And then I was thinking that one day that call will come.  It will.  And I don’t know if I can stand it.  Do you ever think about that, Kevin?”

He was quiet for a moment, watching the road.  When he spoke his voice was somber.  “When my dad died, it was like somebody had pulled the rug out from under me.  The thing you thought would go on forever suddenly … didn’t.  I didn’t even know how to feel.  Maybe I was afraid to feel because it hurt so much.  After the funeral, I knew my mom needed me, but I didn’t know what to do for her.  So I just left.  I could have had two weeks off.  HR wanted me to take the time off, but I went back to work.”

“You were only twenty-four,” Lori defended him.  “You had just started a new job.”

“I wasn’t a very good son to my mother,” he said.  “I want to be a better one now.”

She reached across the seat and closed her fingers around his.  “Is that why you came back with me?”

He shook his head slightly.  “I came back because of what you said.”

“What did I say?”

“When you got the text from your mom, you didn’t say ‘I have to go home.’  You said ‘
We
have to go home.’  I always knew that one day, when it was time, that’s what you would say. We’re a ‘we’ now.  Whither thou goest, babe.”

Lori smiled and closed her eyes.  She slept the rest of the way, holding his hand.

~*~

Kevin and Lori were directed to the Intensive Care waiting room when they arrived.  It was the most dismal, terrifying place Lori had ever seen, a tiny beige room dotted with the bleak faces of hopeless people, blankets draped across chairs, a coffee machine in one corner, a door marked “No Admittance” in the other.  Lori flew to her mother when she saw her and hugged her with the kind of ferocity she had not known since she was seven, clinging to her mother as though for dear life and trying with all her power not to burst into sobs.  Kevin hugged his own mother, and then they both hugged Lindsay and there were probably a few tears then, on all the women’s parts. 

Lori couldn’t help thinking how old they all looked.

And then Cici, pushing aside the wet tendrils of hair from Lori’s face, said, “You look so much older, sweetheart.  Are you okay?’

Lori just hugged her again.  “Mommy,” she whispered, “I’m so glad to be home.”

Then, somehow, she managed to pull all the pieces of her scattered energy together, to straighten her backbone, and to turn to Lindsay.  “Tell me,” she said.

Lindsay had lines around her mouth and her eyes, and her usually lustrous red hair looked lank and dull, twisted back at her neck with an elastic band.  Even her clothes fit differently, her tee shirt sagging on her shoulders and her jeans clinging to her hips.  She twisted a ring—her engagement ring, Lori realized—around and around on her finger as she spoke.  “I got to see him for a few minutes.  He wasn’t aware, of course, and there’s a ventilator … they’re going to remove that tonight, and if all goes well … The doctors seem more optimistic than they did this time yesterday.”  Her eyes clouded over.  “It’s just that … it was so sudden, you know?  We didn’t think it was all that serious. We were so happy.  We got married, did your mom tell you that?  And … it just happened so suddenly.”  She seemed to banish despair with an effort and smiled bravely.  “I’ll tell him you’re here, Lori.  He’ll be so pleased.”

Suddenly Lori felt her throat and her eyes go hot and she couldn’t speak.  She blinked hard to control the tears, and Kevin came forward.  “What do you need us to do, Aunt Lindsay?”

“Oh, Kevin.”  She smiled at him weakly.  “I didn’t expect you to come.  It’s so sweet of you.”

“We’re here now,” he said strongly, “and we’re your arms and legs.  So make a list.  We’ll get it done.”

Lindsay looked as though she might burst into tears then so Lori spoke up quickly.  “What about Noah?  Do you need me to call him?”

“Oh … I didn’t want to bother him until I knew something definite…”

“I’ll call him,” Lori said.

“There’s a communications blackout …”

“We’ve got this,” Kevin assured her.  “Do you have your cell phone?  We’ll have him call you here.”

Lindsay’s eyes were swimming with tears so Bridget said, “That would be great, Kevin.  Noah has the number.”

Lindsay pressed her fingers briefly to her lips, cleared her throat, and said, “Dominic’s children are coming in tomorrow morning.  I thought I should call them, but I didn’t want to make it sound worse than it was, but I forgot they were coming in for the wedding anyway.  Paul and Derrick are putting them up at the B&B …”   

She looked suddenly as though she had lost her train of thought, and Bridget put an arm around her waist.  Cici spoke up gently. “Paul and Derrick are going to stay with Lindsay tonight, and  then the  children will be here, so as soon as … well, as soon as we know everything is okay, Bridget and I are going to drive back.  We promised to take care of Dominic’s place, and …”

Kevin said, “What needs to be done?”

Bridget said, surprised, “Oh, Kevin, you don’t even know where his house is.”

Lori said, “I do.”

“But there are horses and a dog and—”

“We’ll take care of it.”

“But you’ve both been flying all night and …”

Lori repeated firmly, “Mom.  We’ve got this.  I know what has to be done at Ladybug Farm.  We’ll take care of the horses.  I’ll call Noah.  It’s okay.  Don’t worry about anything.  We’ll see you when you get home.”

There were more kisses, more reassurances, and a frantic list of things to check on. When they were gone, Bridget and Cici stood looking after them with a faintly puzzled look on their faces.  “How did they grow up so fast?” Bridget asked.

Cici gave a small shake of her head.  “You know that moment every mother dreads?  When the child becomes the parent?”

Bridget looked disturbed.  “We’re not there yet, are we?”

Cici said. “We’re getting closer every day.” 

Then with an uncertain look toward the door by which the two people left, Cici added, “Bridget, this may sound strange, but did you notice anything …”

She let the question trail off, and Bridget just looked curious.  “About what?”

Cici gave a shake of her head. “Nothing.  It was just nice of Kevin to come back with her, wasn’t it?”

“They’re good kids,” Bridget agreed, smiling, “both of them.  But …”  The smile faded. “He didn’t say a thing about the job.”

“Neither did Lori,” Cici said, noticing that for the first time. 

And then, wearily, she smiled and went to get Lindsay another cup of coffee.

~*~