At Home on Ladybug Farm (38 page)

By now even Cici was gazing at her with rapt attention, too caught up even to ask questions.

“As long as he was here,” Lori went on, “and since he did know something about wineries—his name is Dominic something, by the way, nice fellow, and he said you should give him a call if you had questions—I asked him to look at all that equipment down in the old winery. He said it was state-of-the-art for the time, and all it really needed was to be cleaned and polished and it would be ready to go. It doesn’t even matter that all that stuff is over forty years old. In the wine-making business, old is good. In Italy, some of the finest wineries still crush their grapes by hand—or foot, as the case may be.

“But the best part is,” she continued, “with the winery already set up like it is, and the vines still producing, you can actually use the equipment to secure a small business loan for start-up costs. You’ll have to hire a vigneron to run the place, of course, and laborers for the vineyard, but that won’t be until Year Two. You’ll age and warehouse the wine here, just like the Blackwells did, but there will be bottling, shipping, and marketing costs—but we’re talking Years Three and Four—before you start making a profit. It’s all there in the folder. The main thing you have to worry about right now is restoring the vineyard, caring for the vines, and bringing in some new stock. With luck and good weather, you’ll have everything in place for first harvest by next fall.”

They just stared at her, lips parted, breaths caught on questions they couldn’t quite form, looking like first-year students at a fourth-year lecture. Then Bridget cleared her throat, dropped her gaze to the folder in her lap, and said, “Um, catering. Fine foods?”

“Exactly,” replied Lori with a wide, pleased grin. “That’s exactly what I was talking about. Since you won’t make a profit for three to four years, you’re going to have to look to other sources, just like the Blackwells did. Not all the grapes are good enough for wine—it’s in the folder—so you’ll use those to make your wine jams, Aunt Bridget, just like we talked about. All you need is a commercial kitchen license and clearance from the health department, and with the way you and Ida Mae run this kitchen I don’t think there will be a problem with that.”

Bridget’s eyebrows went up in amazement. “That’s all we need? I thought it would be harder.”

“You can have specialty labels printed up on the Internet for three cents apiece, and your choice of adorable glass jars and lids for under a dollar each. You’ll have to invest in an industrial jar sealer, but even so, if you market directly to the public you’re looking at a profit of six dollars a jar, easy, and it goes up when the jams are part of a gift basket.”

Bridget’s eyes lit up. “Gift baskets?”

“It’s all in the folder.”

Bridget started searching through the folder, and Lori addressed the other two. “I know we talked about a bed-and-breakfast, and you’re right—too much work, too little profit. But have you ever thought about renting out the garden for weddings, anniversaries, things like that? If you offered catering as well, you could make as much in one weekend as a B&B could in a whole season.”

Lindsay’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Cici. “Miriam Wilson spent eight thousand dollars to rent a hotel ballroom for her daughter’s reception, and God knows what she spent on the wedding itself.”

“And the rehearsal dinner.” Bridget looked up from her folder. “Do you remember the rehearsal dinner I did for Katie?”

“And you did that for free!” Cici said.

“All we’d have to do is get the word out to Paul and Derrick,” Lindsay said, “and we’d have more business than we could handle—for jams and weddings!”

Lori smiled. “All it took was a little research. And oh, by the way, don’t worry about hiring a marketing director. I’m enrolled for the fall in the business school at UVA, and after that I’ll transfer to Cornell for my degree in enology and viticulture. I should be ready to take over the business by the time you’re ready with your first vintage.”

“Enology?” repeated Bridget blankly.

“Viticulture?” said Lindsay, sharing Bridget’s puzzled look.

Cici rose slowly and crossed the floor to Lori, where she wrapped her arms around her daughter and hugged her hard. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for my Mother’s Day present.”

Lori returned her embrace, only a little embarrassed. “You ask for a business plan, you get a business plan.”

“I don’t mean that.” Cici’s eyes glistened, and her nose was red, and she tucked a strand of Lori’s hair behind her ear fussily as she smiled. “I mean you.”

Lori hugged her again, grinning, and replied, “You’re welcome.”

As they broke apart, laughing, Lori added, “And another thing. I’d try to hold on to that boy, if I were you. He may not look like much now, but he’s a quick study, and I think he’s got potential. He can be a lot of help to you in the vineyard while I’m away at college.”

They assured her gravely that they would do their best to hold on to Noah.

“So, I guess I’ll leave you alone to look over your folders,” Lori said. “If you have any questions, I’ll be sitting on the hill behind the house, trying to get a signal on my phone so I can search the web for bargains on shipping materials. By the way . . .” She paused at the steps and held up a finger. “The Internet? Wave of the future.”

And so they wandered off their separate ways: Lindsay to the fountain, Bridget to the kitchen, Cici to a nap in her room. But one by one they were drawn to open the folders and to glance through them, first in a desultory fashion, and then with more interest, and then with great intensity. Cici came down the stairs with her calculator. “Girls, you won’t believe this, but I just went over the cost analysis page and we might really be able to afford this.” They sat at the table. They turned pages. Lindsay said at last, with great hesitancy and no small amount of wonder, “This could actually work.”

“Of course there are a lot of variables.”

“Just like with any other business.”

Bridget said, “I never wanted to be a businesswoman.”

“I never wanted to be a farmer,” Cici put in.

And Lindsay added, “I never wanted to be a mother.”

They looked at each other for a moment, thinking about it. Then Cici closed her folder, leaned back in her chair, and announced in a voice that indicated she could not quite believe it herself, “Ladies, it looks like we are opening a winery.”

22

Stories

After supper, they drifted onto the porch again, sipping chardonnay and marveling over the possibility that, in a few short years, the wine in their glasses might come from their own vineyard.

“I’ve never actually tasted a Virginia wine, have you?” Bridget said.

“I think I did, once, at a restaurant in Georgetown,” Cici replied.

“They probably don’t sell it in grocery stores,” added Lindsay.

Bridget held up her glass, turning it so that it caught the spark of a brilliant sunset. “We’ll have to get our wine on the menu at a White House dinner. Our future would be set.”

“That sounds like a job for the marketing director,” Lindsay said. “And given her ambition, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we all weren’t
drinking
our wine at a White House dinner before too long.”

Cici allowed herself a smile of secret pride.

The screen door opened and Lori came out. “Did I hear my name?”

Lindsay looked at her. “Enology?”

And Bridget said, “Viticulture?”

“It’s the study of wine making,” Cici said. When they all turned to look at her, she shrugged. “I looked it up in the dictionary. You don’t have to have the Internet to get answers, you know.”

“But you do have to have Internet access to run a website,” Bridget said with a certain amount of determination, “which I’m going to need in order to sell my wine jams and gift baskets online.”

“Go, Aunt Bridget.” Lori grinned and plopped down on the steps with her back against the rail, drawing up her knees.

“Well,” agreed Cici reluctantly, “the satellite dish installer did say that if we cut down some trees we would have a pretty clear view of the southern sky. And a website would be helpful registering people for wedding weekends.”

“Welcome to the double zeroes, Mom.”

“Not to mention,” added Lindsay, and an odd note of shyness came into her voice as she glanced down at her glass, “drumming up interest in art shows.”

They all turned to her curiously, and she tried to minimize her words with a shrug. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I sent Derrick a photograph of that portrait I did . . .” Her eyes met Cici’s and Bridget’s meaningfully. “You know the one. I just wanted an opinion, you know. He’d already told me that the painting I did for Bridget of Rebel looked like it belonged on an L.L. Bean catalog cover, so I knew I could at least count on him to be honest.”

“I love the L.L. Bean catalog covers!”

Lindsay ignored Bridget’s outburst. “So anyway,” she said with a breath, “he called to say that he liked it . . . Well, actually, what he said was that this was what he expected from me . . .” No one could be sure whether the rosy glow on her cheeks was from the sunset, or repressed pleasure. “Gallery quality, I believe were his words, and if I could do a dozen more in that vein he’d like to do a show.”

There were squeals of delight and exclamations of excitement, and Lori got up and hugged her impulsively, and Lindsay, laughing, held up a hand in protest. “Well, it’s not like I’ve actually finished anything yet,” she said. “But I do have some ideas, and the best part is you know what Derrick charges people for the art in his gallery. With any luck, we might have that barn paid for sooner than we thought!”

The screen door banged again and Noah came out. He sat himself down in the space Lori had just vacated and regarded them all earnestly. “Who do I talk to about getting a learner’s permit?” he demanded.

Cici paused with her glass halfway to her lips. “Um, the Department of Motor Vehicles?”

“I mean in this family. That social worker, Miss Lincoln, she said you all are my legal guardians now until I’m eighteen and you make all the decisions about my welfare. So what I want to know is which one of you makes the decisions about driving?”

Lori rolled her eyes. “Just give me some notice and I’ll get off the road.”

“Noah, you don’t have a car,” Lindsay pointed out.

“I’ve got a motorcycle.”

“It doesn’t have insurance. Or gas.”

“I’ve got a job.”

Lindsay looked at Bridget. Bridget looked at Cici. Cici looked at the sunset.

Lindsay said, “You know, Noah, we usually keep the evenings to ourselves. As quiet time, you know. Maybe we can talk about this in the morning.”

Noah insisted, “But I’ve got to have transportation to get back and forth to work. And think how much time I could save you, running errands and hauling stuff and—”

Lindsay held up a quieting hand. “Later, Noah,” she said firmly. And then she added, “In the meantime, though, there might be some good news. I know you wanted to move to the folly.” As he drew a breath, she quelled it with, “That’s not going to happen. However, we’re all sensitive to the fact that you’re outnumbered five to one in this house full of women.” She glanced to the others for confirmation, which she received with sober nods. “So I’ve been thinking about a compromise. The studio has heat, and plumbing, and if you were willing to do the work yourself we wouldn’t object to your turning the loft into a kind of apartment.”

He considered that for a moment. “Thanks, but I guess I’ll keep my room for now. Especially since that girl will be going off to college this fall. It don’t seem right to leave you all in the house by yourselves.”

And before they could even recover from that, the screen door opened one more time, and the most astonishing thing of all happened. Ida Mae came out onto the porch, and she had a glass of sherry in her hand.

“Young man,” she commanded, “run inside and fetch me that rocking chair from the front hall. I’ve got a mind to set awhile.”

Immediately, Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay scurried to their feet, offering Ida Mae their chairs, but she waited calmly until Noah returned with Bridget’s mother’s antique sewing rocker, which usually sat in a place of honor by the walnut drop leaf table in the foyer. They all stared as Ida Mae sank into it, took a sip of her sherry, and smacked her lips.

“Sit yourselves down,” she commanded. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

Slowly, the women sank into their chairs, the alarm on their faces clear. Even Lori took her post on the steps with her back against the railing, and everyone looked at Ida Mae.

Noah started to go back inside, but the older woman said sharply, “You too, young fella. This concerns you.”

“Me?”

She gave him a decisive nod, and, looking uneasy, he took a place on the opposite side of the steps.

“Ida Mae, is everything all right?”