Vintage Ladybug Farm (5 page)

Derrick poured pink grapefruit juice into the glasses, and Bridget took a crystal bowl of fruit salad from the refrigerator. Ida Mae plucked golden brown biscuits from a baking sheet that was black with age and dropped them into a basket lined with a linen napkin. Lindsay set a heavy dish of white farmer’s butter on the table, along with a cut-glass relish dish filled with a selection of Bridget’s jams—cherry wine, rosemary-blackberry, and herbed apple. Cici poured coffee. “Now this,” she admitted as Ida Mae set a bowl of fluffy scrambled eggs seasoned with red and yellow peppers and another bowl of pale grits on the table, “was worth getting up for.”

“Did someone have a teensy bit too much of the bubbly last night?” Derrick teased her.

“Don’t mind her,” Lindsay said, bringing a platter of ham to the table. “She’s just depressed because Lori’s getting married.”

“Depressed? What is there to be depressed about? I love weddings!”

“The best time I ever had was planning my Katie’s wedding,” Bridget said.

“And it was gorgeous,” Lindsay said. “All those yellow roses.”

“Katie didn’t get married right out of college,” Cici reminded her.

“That wasn’t the plan,” Lindsay confided to Derrick.

“Ah,” said Derrick, pretending to understand.

Ida Mae set a platter of whole wheat pancakes drizzled with honey close to Derrick’s place setting and wiped her hands on her apron, looking at him sternly. “Them sausages is chicken,” she told him. “You can have two, but keep your hands off the ham. And there ain’t no yolk in the eggs. No butter or salt in the grits, either. Everybody else add your own.”

Derrick rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Ida Mae, you make a heart healthy diet almost worth having a heart attack for.”
Derrick’s heart condition was something they rarely talked about, but everyone knew it had been a precipitating factor in his and Paul’s decision to give up the stress of Washington, DC, and build a home in the country.

Ida Mae cast a sour look at Bridget. “It’s all Miss Priss’s doing. I believe in eating food the way God made it, and that means not trying to turn a chicken into a pig or milk into water. And if you can choke down them grits without butter or salt, you just let me know how you do it.”

Cici suppressed a grin and Paul quickly pulled out a chair for Ida Mae. “All right, everyone, let’s eat before it gets cold.”

Ida Mae sniffed and started to turn away. “Like I got nothing better to do than sit around jawing the morning away with the bunch of you.” Then she hesitated, eyeing the feast that was spread out before them, and conceded, “Well, maybe I will have just a bite of ham biscuit.”

She sat, and there was a happy confusion of scraping chairs and snapping napkins and exclamations of appreciation as dishes were passed and plates were filled. “So how did you guys ever get an architect to come all the way out here on New Year’s Day?” Bridget inquired, gamely spooning grits without butter or salt onto her plate.

“He’s a friend,” Derrick replied, discreetly passing the bowl of grits to Paul without taking any. “He understands about feng shui.”

Paul passed the grits on to Cici. “Also, we paid extra.”

Cici passed the grits to Lindsay without even glancing at them, then helped herself to the French toast. “What feng shui?”

“You know.” Lindsay hid the bowl of grits between the fruit salad and the chicken sausage, reaching for the ham platter. “Whatever you start on New Year’s Day always ends well. It’s good luck.”

“Like Farley and his greens,” suggested Bridget.

“That ain’t it.” Ida Mae slathered her ham biscuit with butter. “Everybody knows that whatever you’re doing on New Year’s Day is what you’re gonna spend the rest of the year doing.”

Paul looked uncertainly at Derrick. “I really don’t want to spend a whole year on this house.”

“Don’t worry,” Derrick assured him. “A good builder can build a 3500-square-foot home in a hundred twenty days.”

“Add two months to that,” advised Cici.

Paul did some quick calculating. “Still, that’s only six months. That’s not bad. We can move in by June.” His eyes brightened with excitement. “We can give Lori an engagement party by the pool!”

“Pool?” Lindsay said.

“It’s going to be gorgeous,” Derrick said. “Flagstone lined, two waterfalls, a fern grotto, and swim up bar. Salt water, of course.”

“And solar heated,” added Paul.

“Wow.” Lindsay put the biscuit she was about to eat back on her plate. “If I’m going to fit into a swimsuit by June, I’d better start now.”

“Feng shui,” Cici felt compelled to point out politely, “doesn’t really have anything to do with New Year’s Day.”

“For us it does,” Paul assured her, cutting into his French toast. “We met on New Year’s Day, we moved in together on New Year’s Day, and we’re going to site our house so that the front door is in exact alignment with the rising sun on New Year’s Day.”

“That way we’re always looking toward the future,” Derrick added.

Bridget beamed at them. “That’s beautiful.”

Cici leaned her chin on her hand, smiling at them. “You both look ten years younger. I’m so glad this is working out for you.”

“That’s what having an adventure will do for you,” Lindsay agreed. “We were the same way when we moved in here, remember?”

Ida Mae harrumphed and got up from the table, taking her plate with her. “I never heard the like of foolishness. That swimming pool is gonna freeze.”

“We’ll drain it,” Derrick assured her.

“Waste of water.”

“Spring fed.”

She scowled at him. “You gonna eat them grits?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dutifully, he took the bowl and plopped a spoonful on his plate.

Bridget casually hid her portion of grits under a half a biscuit and some unfinished egg whites, and served herself another half-piece of French toast. “The best time of my life was when we moved in here,” she said reminiscently. “Well, except for when my children were born, of course.”

“And you still look ten years younger,” Paul declared and raised his juice glass in a toast. “To old friends,” he said, “and new beginnings.”

“To your grand adventure,” added Cici as she raised her glass.

Glasses clinked and then Paul noticed the time. He and Derrick finished their breakfasts hurriedly and hugged both cooks before they left, promising to return in plenty of time for the traditional New Year’s feast of black-eyed peas and roast pork loin. The ladies sat at the table for a while after they were gone, nibbling at leftovers and sipping coffee, talking about how much fun it was going to be to have their friends around more often and debating just how easily the sophisticated gentlemen from Baltimore would adjust to life in rural Virginia.

Then Cici said, “You know something? I envy them.”

“Me, too,” said Lindsay with a sigh. “That house sounds gorgeous.”

“Our house is gorgeous,” Bridget objected.

“Except for the roof,” Lindsay said.

“We’ll fix the roof. We always fix things.”

“It’s not that,” Cici said thoughtfully, sipping her coffee. “I mean, look at them. Look at Lori. Look what they have planned for the year. Lori’s getting married. Paul and Derrick are building a house. And what are we doing?”

“Fixing the roof?” suggested Lindsay.

Cici gave her an impatient look. “Growing tomatoes. Reading a book. Making soap.”

“Those are good things,” Bridget said defensively. “Those are the kinds of things we moved here to do.”

Lindsay glanced at Bridget with a wry smile. “But she’s right. Not very adventurous.”

“Well, what do you want to do? Raft the Amazon?”

“I just don’t want to sit around and watch other people starting brand new lives while I’m looking back on mine,” Cici said. “That’s
not
why we moved here.” She drew in a determined breath and pushed back from the table with both hands. “This year,” she declared, “I want to do something important, too. Something big. Something ambitious.”

A slow consternation crept into the faces of her two friends. “Like what?” asked Lindsay cautiously.

Bridget added, “I was only kidding about the Amazon, you know.”

Cici frowned with a sharp mixture of impatience and uncertainty as she gathered up the dishes nearest her and took them to the sink. “I don’t know. Something.”

Bridget said, “Making soap is something.”

“Something significant.”

Ida Mae took the dishes from Cici and plopped them into a sink full of soapy water. They had a dishwasher, but Ida Mae refused to use it. “Y’all need to tend to your roof,” she advised, “and leave the adventuring to the young folks.”

“Paul and Derrick are the same age we are,” Cici pointed out. “Adventures come in all shapes and sizes.”

Lindsay took the bowl of leftover fruit salad to the work island, where she transferred it to a plastic storage container. “Maybe we could take a trip,” she suggested.

Bridget carried the rest of the dishes to the sink. “Who would take care of the animals?”

“We don’t need a trip,” Cici said. “We need a plan.”

“We’ve got a wedding to plan,” Bridget pointed out. “And two graduations, and a roof to repair, and a kid to get off to college. Not to mention a garden to plant and fruit trees to prune and berry bushes to net and a flock of sheep, a goat, a dog, a deer, and chickens to take care of. Isn’t that enough? And,” she added, almost under her breath, “I’m still going to learn how to make goat’s milk soap.”

The book Paul and Derrick had given them lay on the counter where Cici left it when she brought the last of the champagne glasses to the dishwasher the night before. She ran her hand over the cover absently, then thumbed a few pages.

“It’s not as though we don’t have anything to do,” Lindsay agreed with Bridget. But her gaze was fixed thoughtfully on the vista through the kitchen window: the muddy lawn, the bare branches, the stark winter orchard and abandoned vineyard that marched in sad, straggling rows behind the barn. “It’s just that it’s all kind of routine by now. We need something new.”

“I don’t,” Bridget protested. “I’ve done enough new things in the past four years to last a lifetime.”

“You know,” Lindsay said slowly, turning from the window. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be something completely new.”

A light dawned in Cici’s eyes as she looked up from the book. “Maybe,” she said, “it could be something we didn’t finish.”

“The winery,” they both said at once.

Alarm flashed briefly in Bridget’s eyes. “But—our vines are dead. The hailstorm killed them.”

Lindsay turned to her excitedly. “Not all of them. Only the new ones. Dominic said there was a good chance some of the old ones would come back this spring. And don’t forget, he took all those cuttings just in case.”

“And the old vines are all we need,” Cici said. “If we’re going to restore this place, we should
restore
it—back to the way it was.” She held up the book like a Bible. “House, gardens, winery, tasting room, everything!”

“Now that’s what I call a project,” declared Lindsay with satisfaction.

“That’s what I call an adventure,” Cici returned, grinning.

Ida Mae stared at them. “You all don’t have the kind of money it takes to run a winery.”

“We’ve got a barn filled with equipment,” Lindsay said, “and that’s the most expensive part.”

“Come on, Ida Mae,” Cici said. “Wouldn’t you like to see Blackwell Farms the way it used to be? Complete with Blackwell Farms wine?”

“It ain’t never gonna be the way it used to be,” she declared flatly and turned back to washing dishes. “And you can’t make Blackwell Farms wine.”

Lindsay and Cici grinned at each other. “But it sure would be fun to try,” Cici said.

“It takes more than a few old vines to make wine,” Bridget said. “Ida Mae is right. I don’t think you should get your hopes up.”

“Well,” conceded Lindsay, “we’ll have to get Dominic out here, of course, and see what he says.”

Cici and Bridget shared a quick glance and a suppressed smile. Dominic had been the county extension agent until he elected to take an early retirement a few months back, and he was an expert vintner. More importantly, it had been his father who established the original Blackwell Farms Winery in the sixties, and Dominic had served as his apprentice. He’d grown up on Ladybug Farm. When the ladies had their brief flirtation with the idea of restoring the vineyard the previous year, he’d been almost as excited as they were—and almost as disappointed when a freak hailstorm destroyed their efforts overnight.

It was no secret that Dominic had a huge crush on Lindsay. What was slightly less well known—and what had, in fact, been the source of much teasing and speculation over the past year—was how Lindsay felt about him.

“Well,” Bridget conceded, now that the hint of romance was in the air, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him.”

“Of course,” agreed Cici, straight-faced. “We have to talk to him.”

Lindsay looked sternly from one to the other, and just as Cici and Bridget were about to burst into giggles, the back door opened and Noah came in.