Vintage Ladybug Farm (20 page)

Labors of Love

“

A
pril
twenty-third,” Bridget announced. “That’s when the ancient Romans held their spring festival to honor Venus, the goddess of the fruit. They called it
venalia prima
. The blessing of the vines. So I think that’s when we should hold our blessing. On April twenty-third.”

Her words were a little choppy with exertion as she struggled to wind a length of wire cable tightly around a clamp on a support post. They were all, at that moment, laboring in the vineyard among the vines that were waiting to be blessed. Dominic and Noah worked a row or so ahead of them, digging post holes and pounding uprights into the ground. It was Cici’s and Bridget’s job to string and tighten the wire between the posts while Lindsay dug the holes and carefully placed the new vines in the ground. It was dirty, sweaty, back breaking work, but on this glorious spring day, it was also a labor of love.

Lindsay straightened up now, arching a pain out of her back, and said, “I don’t know, Bridge, seems to me these vines are already blessed enough with my blood, sweat, and tears.” But her gaze was on the two men who worked on the row beyond them, and her expression was vaguely troubled. Noah, in muddy jeans and T-shirt with his sweatshirt tied around his waist, steadied a post while Dominic pounded it into the ground with a short-handled sledge. Dominic had his hair tied back with a bandanna and wore a plain black T-shirt, now stained with sweat. He had the muscles of a man half his age.

Cici noted the direction of her gaze. “Can you imagine if we had tried to do this by ourselves?”

Lindsay gave a short, quick shake of her head, as though to clear her thoughts, and picked up her shovel again. “I didn’t even know you were supposed to tie up the vines. I mean, I guess I did because I can see someone else did it here with the old vines, but I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to begin.”

“Not just that. Everything.” Cici used a screwdriver to tighten down the clamp that held the wire, gritting her teeth with the effort. When she was done, she pushed back her baseball cap and wiped the sweat from her forehead, leaving a smear of mud from the back of her glove. “Maybe Bridget is right. We have an awful lot of be grateful for. A little show of appreciation to the gods might not be a bad idea.”

“Seriously,” agreed Bridget. She carefully removed one of her gloves to examine a blister that was beginning to form on her palm. “After all this, are you willing to take a chance on
not
blessing them?”

Once again, Lindsay found her gaze straying toward the two men who worked ahead of them, and she quickly brought it back to her work. “So what did the Romans do at this festival?” she asked.

“Well,” said Bridget, pulling her glove back on, “they drank, of course, and danced and had food. And then they blessed the wine from the previous year before releasing it to be served, and they asked the weather gods and the fruit gods to bless the vines that would produce this year’s harvest. It was really very sweet, when you think about it.” She bent to pick up the heavy spool of wire and dragged it to the next post. “Kind of symbolic of the full cycle of nature and the humble role of man within it.”

“You read that on the Internet, right?” Cici screwed in another clamp.

“Right.”

“Hey, ladies!” Domnic called back to them, grinning. “A little less conversation, a little more action, eh? We’re getting ahead of you.”

Cici and Bridget grinned back and waved to him, but Lindsay’s answering smile was brief and the other two women noticed she didn’t quite meet Dominic’s gaze as she dug her shovel into the ground. “Well, a party sounds like fun,” Lindsay admitted. “I just don’t know where you’re going to find anyone to bless the vines. The Episcopals used to do a blessing of the animals back in Baltimore, remember? We took Lori’s cat to it one year. But I don’t know anyone who blesses vines.”

Bridget grunted as she grabbed the wire and pulled it taut, while Cici tightened the clamp. “I’m sure,” she said, digging in her heels, “there’s someone …” She pulled harder. “On the Internet.”

Bridget slipped backwards and almost fell; Lindsay shoved her hard in the small of the back and Bridget righted herself, casting Lindsay a grateful look.

Cici reached out a hand to steady her. “I don’t know if we’re up to a big party,” she said. “Not that soon, anyway. We still have a hole in our roof, remember?”

“It wouldn’t have to be big,” Bridget said, breathing easier as Cici finished tightening the clamp and she could release the tension on the wire. “I’m thinking just us, and Derrick and Paul, and Lori and Mark of course, Dominic, Frank Adams and his wife, and maybe Farley. Everyone who’s helped us with the winery.”

“Then we’d better include Mark’s parents,” said Lindsay, tamping the last of the soil around the cutting she’d just planted. “I still think they’re our secret investors.”

“Oh great, how awkward would that be?” said Cici.

“Of course,” added Bridget innocently, “we’d give tours of the winery, and it
would
be the perfect time to preview The Tasting Table.”

Cici stared at her. “Bridget”—her voice was incredulous—“we’ve spent four months trying to get a hole in our roof repaired, and you think we can build a restaurant in two weeks?”

“It doesn’t have to be
built
,” Bridget insisted. “Remember, technically I’m just catering events. I don’t have to have a real restaurant or a restaurant license or anything like that. Just a place.”

Cici and Lindsay exchanged a glance and a wry smile. “Well,” Cici said, “as long as it’s just a place …”

“Ladies!” Dominic swiped the back of his arm over his wet face. “Daylight’s burning!”

Bridget bent to pick up the spool of wire again and Cici centered another clamp. “So glad we found him,” she muttered.

But Lindsay, glancing quickly across the row at the two men, only smiled vaguely and did not reply.

~*~

In Ida Mae’s Kitchen

~*~

Lindsay was stirring up a pot of cabbage soup—
Guaranteed to lose ten pounds the first week!
according to the testimonials on the website—and trying not to hold her nose at the smell when Ida Mae came in from the porch with a basket of fresh mint in one hand and a collection of envelopes in the other. Ida Mae wrinkled her nose and shrank back from the odor emanating from the stove.

“What are you stinking up my kitchen with now?” she demanded.

Lindsay abandoned the soup and came over to her eagerly. “Is that the mail?”

“That’s what it looks like to me.”

Lindsay took the envelopes and sorted through them quickly, her expression falling as she failed to find what she was looking for. “I just don’t understand,” she said, placing the envelopes on the table for someone else to deal with. “We should have heard
something
by now. I checked with all the websites and none of them are running behind.”

Ida Mae covered the soup pot with a lid, trying to fan away some of the odor with her apron. “If you’re gonna keep this on simmer, you better start opening some windows.”

“Ida Mae, are you
sure
we haven’t gotten something official looking from a college? It would probably have an emblem or watermark or something on the envelope and say ‘university’ somewhere.”

Ida Mae gave her a dry look as she spread out the mint in a colander and ran it under water. “I reckon I know what a college is.”

Lindsay wrestled with the stubborn lock on the east-facing window. “All the colleges get their replies out by April. They just can’t say nothing. They have to send something—yes or no. They
have
to.”

Ida Mae said, “I didn’t say they hadn’t.”

The window flew up on its sash with a rattle, and Lindsay staggered back a little. She whirled to Ida Mae. “Do you mean we
did
get something from a college?”

“Got four or five of them, as near as I can tell. Course, I don’t always see the mail first.”

Lindsay stared at her. “What? Why didn’t you tell me? Where are they?”

Ida Mae shook the water off the mint placidly. “Weren’t addressed to you.”

“But …” Lindsay fell back with a puzzled frown. “You mean Noah has them?”

“That’d be my guess. Seeing as how his name was on them.”

“But why wouldn’t he tell me?”

“Why should he?”

“Well, because … Why shouldn’t he?”

“Maybe because it don’t involve you.”

“Well, of course it does!” She was indignant. “I’m his mother, even if I haven’t been for very long, and more importantly, his teacher! I have a right to know what college he’s been accepted into. Of course I do! Do you know how worried I’ve been? Do you know how important this is? You just wait until he gets home from school. I’ll get to the bottom of this!” She turned on her heel to go.

Ida Mae blew out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, if that ain’t just like you to go prancing off in your high-heeled shoes to fix the world without giving thought one to whether or not it
needs
fixing. Or wants fixing, for that matter.”

Lindsay looked down at her sneakers, puzzled. “I’m not wearing high heels. What are you talking about?”

“You took in a wild boy,” said Ida Mae, “and you didn’t do a half-bad job taming him; I’ll give you that. But he took care of hisself for more years than you been taking care of him; you remember that.” She stacked the mint on the cutting board and sliced off the stems in one efficient roll of the knife. “Maybe he don’t want to be ruled over by a pack of women. Maybe he likes to keep some things to hisself. Maybe he feels like he needs to hold on to that part that took care of hisself for all that time, just in case he ever needs it again. And maybe you’re forgetting he ain’t a boy no more. He’s already got one foot over the line of being a man. And maybe this here ain’t as much of your business as you think it is.”

Lindsay was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I forget sometimes, who he is and what he’s been through. I guess if I were him I’d want to guard a little independence for myself, too. It really is his decision. He’s earned it. Thanks, Ida Mae.” She turned to leave.

Ida Mae didn’t look up from mincing the mint. “And if you think for one minute you’re going to go off and leave that mess simmering on my stove, you got another thing coming.”

Abashed, Lindsay murmured, “Yes, ma’am,” and returned to stir the soup.

~*~

The planting and staking of the new vines took the remainder of the week, and the women went to bed aching with exhaustion each night, too tired even to complain. But at the end of the week, their bedraggled, neglected, winter-torn vineyard looked like a picture postcard. Neat orderly rows curved down the hillside, trellises stood tall and straight; baby grapevines hugged each post; and mature vines began putting out sweet green shoots. The white gravel road swept from the driveway to the vineyard entrance to the winery below the barn, and a new cedar sign glistened in the dew of early morning: Ladybug Farm Winery. Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay stood on the side porch in their pajamas and robes with their morning coffee as the mist was rising off the vines, and they simply admired the view.

“Funny,” observed Bridget, “I can hardly even remember how much my back hurts now.”

“I should get my camera,” Lindsay said, sipping her coffee. “This would be a perfect picture for our brochure.” But she made no move to actually go inside.

“We can afford brochures,” said Cici, wonderingly. “Life is good.”

“Well, almost.” Lindsay frowned a little. “I just wish Noah would talk to me about his college choice.”

“It’s a big decision,” Bridget said. “The first step toward being an adult.”

“Remember what I went through with Lori?” Cici said.

“I just don’t understand why he would be so secretive about it,” Lindsay said. “Why he wouldn’t want to at least discuss it with me.”

Both women were deliberately silent, gazing at their cups.

Lindsay’s expression sharpened. “What?” she demanded. “What are you thinking? I know that look.”

Cici and Bridget tried not to roll their eyes as they shared a glance. “Well,” said Bridget carefully, “you know you can be a little hands-on, particularly when it comes to matters of education.”

And as Lindsay’s eyes widened to the point of bulging out of her head, Cici added quickly, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You’re a teacher. Listen, it’s hard to let go. It’s the hardest thing about parenting. But the best thing about you—the thing I admire most about you—is how hard you’ve tried to respect Noah’s boundaries. I don’t think he could have grown up to be as responsible as he has if you hadn’t done that, so … just a little longer, okay?”

“You really
did
make such a big deal on his birthday about giving him the choice,” Bridget reminded her. “I think he might be taking that a little too seriously. Just give him some time.”