A Year on Ladybug Farm #1 (39 page)

“Do you know,” Lindsay whispered to Cici in a brief free moment between greeting and serving, “I don’t even know the names of half these people.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Cici replied, and the smile that spread over her face was of pure contentment. “They’re our neighbors now.”

Bridget, sailing by with a tray of canapés in her hands and a smile on her face big enough to illuminate the entire, electricity-deprived Eastern Seaboard, declared, “Have you ever in your life had a better party?”

Cici was about to agree that she had not when the door opened again with a gust of snowflakes and a blast of cold air, admitting yet another head-to-toe bundled guest. “Oh-oh, that one’s going to need hot cider,” she said, and turned to make her way toward the drinks table.

Lindsay caught her arm. “Cici,” she said softly.

And Bridget, too, stood still, holding the tray, staring at the newly arrived guest as she unwrapped herself. “Oh . . . my,” she breathed.

Cici turned at Bridget’s urging and watched as a snow-stiffened scarf dropped away from familiar features, a backpack dropped to the floor with a familiar shrug, an ice-encrusted toboggan cap was stripped away to reveal a cascade of fiery red hair. Feeling as though she was moving underwater, Cici made her way slowly through the laughing, jostling crowd toward her daughter.

Lori’s eyes were big with wonder as she looked around, and her face was filled with delight. “Mom,” exclaimed the girl who spent weekends in her father’s Bel-Air mansion, who partied with celebrities, who had forgone a ski trip to Aspen to be here. “Look at this place!” She opened her arms expansively, her expression filled with disbelief as she tried to take in everything at once. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’re rich!”

A laugh bubbled up from Cici’s chest and out through her lips, and by the time she had embraced her daughter in a fierce, one-armed hug, it had become mixed with hot, happy tears. “Yes,” she declared, and couldn’t seem to let go of Lori. “I am!”

Then, wiping her running nose with the back of her hand, laughing again when she couldn’t find a tissue, touching Lori’s hair, her sleeve, her cold face, she demanded, “How did you get here? Why didn’t you call?”

To which Lori returned, “Why didn’t
you
call? I had to hear that you almost died from a
stranger
? Your only daughter, and you don’t think I’d be interested to know that you fell off a roof? What were you thinking?”

Cici stared at her, the tears and the laughter drying up into pure astonishment. “What? How did you know? Who called you?”

Lori unbuttoned her parka, shrugging out of it impatiently. “Some woman who said she works for you. Housekeeper or something. Like you couldn’t call me yourself? Or get Aunt Bridge or Aunt Lindsay to call?”

Lori waggled her fingers at Bridget and Lindsay across the room, while Cici searched the crowd until she caught Ida Mae’s eyes. The older woman gave her a superior look and a half nod, and turned back to serving punch.

“But it’s not like I wasn’t coming here for Christmas anyway,” added Lori, and her eyes grew dark with concern. “Mom, are you okay?”

So many emotions were wrestling for first place inside her chest that all Cici could do, for the moment, was nod. She tucked a strand of hair behind Lori’s ear, brushed a melting snowflake off her shoulder, and finally regained her voice. “How did you get here?” she asked again. “The airports are closed, nothing is running . . .”

“Well,” replied Lori, and her expression livened with the excitement of the tale, “it was quite an adventure. I got out of Chicago on the last flight, I mean, the literal last flight, but can you believe when I got to Washington Dulles was closed? So they rerouted us to Atlanta, and I rented a car. I drove all night to get to Virginia, and then when I got to Staunton, well, I was lucky to get that far. I’m telling you, the snow was over my hubcaps, and that was even after I stopped and had chains put on.”

By this time Cici’s heart was in her throat as she tried not to think about her daughter, driving alone through a blizzard at night on an interstate that was by now either closed or about to be closed due to hazardous driving conditions.

“I bogged down about five miles outside of town,” she reported happily, “but then I met this kid on a motorcycle—”

Cici couldn’t help gasping, “A motorcycle?”

Lori nodded. “And when I told him where I was going he said he knew right where it was, so here I am.”

Cici said carefully, trying to catch her breath, “You got on a motorcycle . . . with a stranger . . . in a snowstorm?”

Lori nodded, looking around curiously. “He said he was coming in. Of course, he had to push the bike most of the way up the driveway. Oh!” Her face brightened as the door opened again on a blast of sunlight and cold air. “There he is.”

Cici turned around to greet the stranger, and then she started laughing again. She couldn’t help it. She laughed as Bridget and Lindsay surged forward, exclaiming over the newcomer, and she laughed as she made her way over to the door to greet him, holding tightly to her daughter’s hand.

“Noah,” she said, beaming at him. “Merry Christmas. And thanks for bringing my daughter home.”

He was wearing only a thin nylon jacket that was stiff with cold and moisture, and his hair was frosted with snow. His face was bright red, though whether that was from the cold or embarrassment over the fuss that was being made over him, it was hard to tell. He looked around uneasily. “Ya’ll having a party or something?”

While Cici took Lori into the kitchen to warm up, Lindsay pulled Noah over to the fireplace in the big parlor, where he refused to take off his coat but stretched his hands out for warmth. “Noah,” she said gently, “I’m so sorry about your father.”

He didn’t take his eyes away from the fire. “Weren’t no account anyhow,” he muttered.

She touched his arm. “You’re not like him,” she said softly. “You’re worth something. You’re worth a lot. And I’m glad you came back here, so I could tell you that.”

He slanted her a look that flashed, for one brief moment, the first genuine emotions she had ever seen from him—surprise, and gratitude.

But it was gone as quickly as it had been there, swallowed in embarrassment and awkwardness as he shifted his scowling gaze quickly back to the fire. To cover, Lindsay punched his arm lightly and injected outrage into her voice that wasn’t entirely feigned.

“You spent the money we paid you on a
motorcycle
?” she demanded. “Do you even have a license?”

His answer was a shrug. He said, without looking at her, “You still got that ole deer hanging around here?”

Lindsay hid a smile. “We do. We made a place for him in the barn like you said.”

He grunted. “Maybe I’ll go have me a look, after a while. Surprised somebody ain’t et him.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she assured him.

Again he slanted a glance at her. “You shore are the craziest bunch of women.”

This time she didn’t try to hide the grin. “We’ve been called worse.”

And then she added, “We really missed you around here.”

Flames patterned color across his face. “Oh yeah?”

“There’s an awful lot of work piling up, with Cici being hurt and all.”

He grunted.

She said nothing else. He stood there, warming his hands over the fire in silence, for the longest time. Then he said, without looking at her, “I reckon I might be able to help you out some.”

“We were talking about taking somebody on permanently,” Lindsay said casually, “to live on the place and help take care of things. Of course, whoever we hired would have to agree to a few rules.”

“I ain’t much for rules,” he said warily.

“Like no smoking on the premises.”

He shrugged. “Hell, I can’t afford smokes on what you pay nohow.”

“And staying in school.”

He scowled fiercely. “What you running, a damn prison?”

She shrugged, and started to turn away. “Well, I have to get back to my guests.”

He said, without turning from the fire, “Maybe I’ll think about it.”

She smiled. “Why don’t you do that?”

She started to walk away again, and again he stopped her. “Hey,” he said.

She turned.

He reached inside his jacket and brought out a slender cardboard tube of the size that might once have held a roll of paper towels. “Here.” Awkwardly, he handed the tube to her.

She took it slowly, gently prying out the cylinder of paper inside, unrolling it. “Oh . . . Noah,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

It was a charcoal sketch of their house, painstakingly rendered in exquisite detail. The hydrangeas and clematis were in bloom and the hollyhocks seemed almost to nod in the breeze. Shadows stretched across the front porch, and three rockers awaited their occupants. Mountains swelled in the background and in the foreground a long drive wound toward a road. At the end of it was a hand-painted sign: Welcome to Ladybug Farm.

Lindsay looked at him, her eyes full, hardly knowing what to say.

“I kept a picture of it in my head,” he said simply.

Lindsay had to look quickly away, before she embarrassed herself and him with tears, and she smiled as she carefully rolled the sketch and replaced it in its crude container. “Come on,” she told him huskily, “let’s get you something to eat.”

 

 

Cici and Lori sat on the floor beneath the Christmas tree, where Lori quickly emptied a plate filled with one of everything on the serving table, and drank two glasses of nonalcoholic eggnog. “Mom, this fruitcake is outrageous,” Lori declared. “Have you tasted it?” She offered her mother a bite from her fork, but Cici held up a hand.

“No, thanks.”

“Seriously, this doesn’t even taste like fruitcake. It’s like—I can’t even describe it. You’ve got to have some. I think it’s the best thing Aunt Bridget has ever made.”

“Aunt Bridget didn’t make it,” Cici said quickly, “so don’t you dare tell her it’s the best thing she’s ever made. Lori, you did tell your dad you were coming here, didn’t you?”

Lori scraped her plate. “We had a talk,” she told her mother. “The thing is, I think I’m kind of over L.A. Maybe I’ll stay out here for a while, if it’s okay with you.”

Cici stared at her. “Okay?” she repeated blankly.

Lori gave a self-conscious smile as she licked her fork. “Well, okay, I know you don’t like to hear this, but . . . maybe you were right. A little right, anyway, about how you can get mixed up when you’re away from home, and maybe I haven’t been thinking exactly straight lately. It was all so much fun. It was a great adventure and I got to do some terrific things but . . . it just wasn’t going anywhere, you know? And after a while that starts to get old.”

For a moment, Cici couldn’t even speak. Finally she managed, “What about Jeff?”

Lori couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “Married,” she said. “And boring.”

Cici reached across and squeezed her fingers. “I’m sorry.”

But Lori’s heart, if it had in fact been broken, was recovering quickly. “So now that I’m here,” she said cheerfully, “things are going to be different. Lucky for me you’ve got such a super place, right? I mean, who knew? Too bad you can’t do anything about the weather.”

Cici’s own heart was so full that her chest couldn’t hold the emotion, and the simple, quiet joy radiated up into her eyes and spread across her lips in a smile that she could neither explain nor contain. “I love you,” she told Lori.

And Lori replied easily, “Love you, too.”

“And I also hate that you’re so young and cute you can go two days without sleeping and so damn skinny you can eat five thousand calories at one sitting without even belching. And,” she added sternly, “I haven’t even started telling you what I think about you driving a rental car across three states in a blizzard, or getting on a motorcycle with a strange boy. However,” she added when Lori started to protest, “since it’s Christmas, I thought I might skip the lecture and”—she reached under the Christmas tree and brought out Ida Mae’s bottle of wine—“invite you to share a glass of Christmas wine with Lindsay and Bridget and me. This is the secret fruitcake ingredient,” she told her. “Ida Mae gave us the last bottle for Christmas.”

Lori took the bottle, regarding it with the respect it deserved. “It’s older than I am,” she observed in awe, reading the label. And she added with a sly upward glance, “Which, if you do the math . . .”

“Means you’re still not twenty-one,” Cici said, with an airy wave. “I know. But someone told me you’re grown-up when your mother says you are. And this is, after all, a very special occasion.”

The smile in Lori’s eyes indicated she understood the significance of her mother’s invitation, and appreciated it. “Thanks, Mom,” she said softly.

“Cici!” Bridget was waving to her across the room, making her way toward her through the crowd. “Derrick and Paul are on the phone. I’ve got them on speaker in my room. They want to wish us all a Merry Christmas.”

“We’ll be back in a minute,” Cici told Lori. “You can open the wine.”

Lori offered her arm for balance as Cici struggled to her feet, and then, grimacing, brushed something out of her hair. “What is that?” she asked her mother.

Cici laughed as she saw the ladybug take flight. “Ladybugs,” she told her. “The heat brings them out. You’ll get used to them.” And she winked. “You’ll get used to a lot of things.”

Paul was regaling Lindsay and Bridget with horror stories about the Christmas blizzard blackout as Cici came into the room. “It’s like something out of Dante, truly,” he told them. “I expect people to start eating each other any minute now.”

Cici laughed. “Peace on earth, goodwill to men. Merry Christmas, Paul.”

“Merry Christmas yourself,” he returned. “There you are in the boonies having the time of your lives while we’re freezing to death in the heart of civilization wearing every piece of Armani we own.”