At Home on Ladybug Farm (32 page)

“Will you all stop pestering me about stuff that happened way back in the old days?” the older woman demanded. “Can’t a person have a bite to eat in peace?”

“We don’t mean to pester you, Ida Mae,” Bridget said, sounding a little hurt. “But you could be a little more generous with your information, you know. You know everything there is to know about this house and the people who used to live here, but every time we ask a question you brush us off. All we want you to do is tell us your stories. Why won’t you do that?”

Ida Mae dabbed a drip of soup from her chin, crumpled her napkin, and replied flatly, “Because those stories are mine. I can tell them or not tell them. This is your house now. Get your own stories.” And with that, she gathered up her dishes and took them to the sink, effectively closing the subject.

They gathered on the porch at dusk, but this time they did not even make it to the rockers. They sat on the front steps to remove their ruined work gloves and filthy boots, and they were too tired, for a moment, to go further.

Finding the winery—and later, uncovering the briar and vine-encumbered door that was cut into the hillside—had provided a welcome distraction from the drudgery of the cleanup, but eventually the inevitable could be postponed no longer. Lori had practically fallen asleep over dinner, and Noah had gone to his room directly afterward. Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget had returned to work until daylight died.

“You know,” said Bridget, resting her chin wearily in her hands, “I just realized something. I am really old.”

“I definitely can’t keep up this pace,” admitted Cici. “Especially on no sleep.”

“I’ve got to wash my hair,” Lindsay said, but made no move to get up. “I’ll never get the smell of smoke out of it. I’m going to look like crap in the morning.”

They were silent for a time, trying to wrap their minds around the fact that a crisis of a much different kind awaited them in town tomorrow. On another evening, they would have talked about the upcoming meeting, expressed their feelings, tried to prepare themselves for it. Now they could barely imagine it.

“One crisis at a time,” Bridget murmured.

Cici wearily rubbed the back of her neck. “Sounds like a slogan for the Ladybug Farm twelve-step program.”

“This is not going to make us look very good in the eyes of Social Services.”

Cici gave Lindsay a puzzled look. “Why? It’s not like we planned the fire.”

“I know. But it makes it look as though . . . I don’t know. As though our lives are out of control.”

“Right now I feel as though our lives
are
out of control.”

“It’s not an interview,” Bridget had to remind them unhappily. “It really doesn’t matter what we look like in the eyes of Social Services, does it?”

And the other two, wearily, had to agree.

“By the way,” Cici said with an effort, after a moment, “Ida Mae said the fire marshal called while we were out cleaning up this afternoon. The reports are in, and it looks as though the fire started with that electrical outlet we were using yesterday for the power tools.”

Bridget gasped and sat up straight. “Oh, no! I was supposed to put all the tools away and I did, only—I left the extension cord plugged in. I thought we would be back at it this morning, so I just wound it up and—”

But before she was halfway through, Cici started shaking her head. “No, no, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t your fault. It was old wiring, that’s all, and probably chewed on by mice . . . It might have overheated while we were using it, but how could we know that? It’s no one’s fault.”

“I guess not.”

“Funny how things work out,” she said after a moment. “If the barn hadn’t burned, we never would have known the winery was even there.”

“I’m not sure it’s much of a trade-off,” Cici said.

“It might be,” Lindsay offered, rousing herself with an effort, “if we can sell the equipment.”

“Maybe for enough to rebuild the barn.”

“Maybe,” agreed Cici. “But I’m really too tired to even think about it now.”

“One crisis at a time.”

Cici sighed. “Right.”

And, one by one, they pushed themselves to their feet and went to prepare for what awaited them tomorrow.

18

In Another Time

It was only six weeks, but six weeks can be a lifetime. She set to work with her sketchbook and her paints and an air of fierce concentration that endeared her to Andrew in a way he couldn’t entirely explain. They walked at sunset through the vines, and they talked. They had picnics in the vineyard, and talked. And as much as they talked, they laughed. And then one day he kissed her flushed, upturned face, and she kissed him back. They sank to the couch in the sun-dappled folly, shedding their clothes like impatient teenagers, and they made love.

With her, he did not feel like a forty-five-year-old man chasing a twenty-three-year-old girl. With her, he simply felt happy.

It was an extraordinary summer. Although he was running unopposed for the fall election, there were dinners and barbecues and speeches; the law practice still demanded token attention, if for no other reason than good public relations. He worked in the winery, he carried a briefcase, he shook hands and made speeches. But he led two lives, and the only one that mattered began and ended in a folly in the woods where a face dearer than life awaited him.

In the midst of all else, Blackwell Farms Winery was about to bottle its finest Shiraz yet. It was so fine, indeed, that Andrew and Robert still argued whether to bring it out under its own unique label. In the end it was Emmy’s opinion that won out, as of course it would. Andrew was impressed by how much she had learned from Robert and Dominic during the days she spent in the winery with them, and she was beginning to develop a respectable palate. When she tasted the subject of the dispute, she did so with care and reverence, and stood gazing thoughtfully at the glass for a moment before declaring softly, “A wine fit for kings. And it definitely deserves its own label.”

Dominic, who had taken his father’s side in the dispute, laughed and tugged at one of her curls in the familiar way of young people. “There you have it, Mr. Blackwell, you’re outvoted. And by the royal princess of the vines, no less!”

Emmy started to make a face at him, and suddenly her eyes went wide and she set down the glass on the tasting table. “Wait!” she said excitedly. “I have it. I have the perfect label for your wine.”

She scrambled through drop cloths and under scaffolding until she found her sketch pad and the nub of a pencil, and she quickly sketched out a rough likeness of a heraldic crest featuring a winged horse. “The horse is supposed to be a symbol of supremacy or something,” she explained as she drew. “At least that’s what my mother said. I think this was our family crest a long time ago. Mother actually has a quilt with this design sewn into it, which has been handed down for generations. Of course it’s all patched and worn-out now, but . . . here.” She tore the sheet out of the pad and handed it to him. “What do you think?”

He smiled as he looked at it. The sketch was quick and amateurish, but he wouldn’t have cared if it had been done in crayon. “Well, what do you know about that? The princess of the vines is actual royalty after all.”

She struck a pose and an affected accent. “Perhaps not royalty, my dear man, but definitely of the peerage.”

He laughed and tucked the sketch into his pocket. “I would be foolish indeed then, to turn down such a commission—if, of course, you’re sure your ancestors won’t mind. Can you do a full color sketch for the printer?”

Because of course he would not deny her anything.

He showed the sketch to his mother that night after supper, and told her of their plans for the new label, but she did not seem much impressed—either by the design, or by their guest’s lighthearted claim to highborn ancestry. She tossed the little paper away, which was a shame, because Andrew would have liked to have kept it.

He thought he was living the best time of his life. The Shiraz was going to put Blackwell Farms on the wine-making map. He was going to be elected a District Court judge. And every day he came home to that beautiful face, sometimes smeared with paint, sometimes deep in concentration, and always making him feel he could spend hours simply gazing at it.

He planned a party in the winery for the end of the month, to show off the new mural, promote the winery, and honor the artist. His mother loved the idea, and so did Ida Mae, and the two of them buzzed around the house like hummingbirds in a field of poppies. Emmy started the much smaller murals in the living room, and when they were finished, she would go. He could not, of course, let her go. He began to fantasize about taking her to Paris, after the election, of course, and staying there for a month or so, just the two of them in a little hotel on the Rue Sancerre, where the morning sun came through the windows and painted the room gold, and then he began to fantasize about what she would say if he were to ask her, and he tried to imagine how he would ask her. He thought it would be at the party, when the paintings were finished. He would take her off alone, and he would tell her his plans, and he would watch her eyes light up with delight, and he would live on her joy the way other people lived on food and wine.

It happened one afternoon when he came in to find her stretched out in an awkward position in one of the alcoves. There were canvas drop cloths on the floor and paints all around, and she had snagged her hair on a rough board while prepping the area for the first coat of paint and could not get free. So he crawled in with her and tried to unwind the curl and as he did her hair ribbon came loose and her hair tumbled around her face and then she was free and she came up laughing with her breath spilling into his pores and her lips almost brushing his and he stole a kiss with her face held hot between his hands, sweet and hot, the two of them tangled together on the floor in a moment of shameless rapture, and when they broke apart his mother was just leaving the room.

Emmy was embarrassed, but he was amused, until the following day when she told him that she had a job waiting for her in Boston—wasn’t that exciting?—and she wouldn’t meet his eyes when she said it. He grasped her hands and the words rushed out of him before he could stop them: “Come with me to Paris instead.”

There was a flare of something in her eyes—Anger? Hope? Desperation?—which was replaced almost immediately with another expression, one he had never seen before, something cool and calculating and distant. “And then what, Andy?” she said. “After Paris, then what? Will you bring me back here and put me in one of the servants’ rooms? Or maybe you’ll find me a little apartment in Charlottesville and visit me on weekends.”

He didn’t recognize the woman who was speaking to him. He did not know what to reply. All he could manage was a hoarse, “It doesn’t have to be like that. Don’t make it sound like that.”

Was that regret or pity he saw in her eyes? She said, softly, “What would it be like, Andy? What would it be like for us? Would it be happily ever after? Would it be marriage?”

Over and over, for the rest of his life, he would wonder what might have happened had he answered her then. Had he not hesitated. Had he found the words. But even as he drew a breath, not even knowing what he was going to say, she shook her head.

“No,” she said, and her smile was strained and far away. “I didn’t think so. Face it, lover, it was fun, but that’s all it was. I knew that, even if you didn’t. This is 1967, and I’ve got a life. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to it.”

She picked up her palette, and her brushes, and turned away from him. And within the week, she was gone.