Love Letters from Ladybug Farm (23 page)

There was a light tap on Lori’s door and she closed the computer screen, quickly swiping away a tear with the heel of her hand as she called, “Come in.”

It was early for visitors, and she expected her mom or dad—even though neither one of them ever knocked. At first she didn’t recognize the curly-haired young man who hesitantly poked his head inside the door. “Hi,” he said. “Is it okay?” He looked around uneasily. “I mean, you never know what you’re going to walk in on in a hospital.”

“Come in,” she repeated. “No dead bodies, and I’ve got all my clothes on.”

He smiled as he took note of her pink Hello Kitty sleepshirt and her leg, naked except for the cast, supported by a pillow atop the bedcovers. “Well, most of them, anyway.”

Lori frowned a little as she tugged a corner of the blanket over her partly exposed thigh. “It’s Mark—right?”

“Right. The guy who, uh ...”

“Right,” she said.

He came inside, and she noticed he was holding a manila envelope in the hand that was not in a sling. He said, “I won’t stay. I know I’m probably the last person you want to see right now.”

She shrugged dispiritedly.

“I just wanted to bring you this.” He took two quick steps toward the bed, thrusting the envelope at her. “I spoke to Kryker,” he began.

She sat up straighter, taking the envelope from him curiously. “You talked to my professor?”

“Our professor,” he corrected. “Anyway, I told him what happened, and he said if you can e-mail your exam to him before his office closes at four, he’ll grade it with the rest of the finals. They’re essay questions,” he explained, “and all the tests were different so there’s no way you could cheat. Not that you would,” he added quickly.

Lori opened the envelope and pulled out the papers, her eyes widening with wonder. “You did this for me?” She looked up at him. “But why? I told you, I don’t blame you for the accident. It was my fault.”

He shrugged. “I just know how I’d feel if I’d worked all year and then lost out right before the end of the semester.”

“Oh, I ...” For a moment she couldn’t finish. “Thank you.”

He smiled. That was when she noticed that he was, as her mother had observed previously, kind of cute.

“Well,” he said. “I won’t stay. You’d better get to work.”

He turned for the door, and Lori said quickly, “Are you finished? With your exams, I mean?”

“Just about,” he said. “I have one more, but it’s just a matter of showing up.”

“Well, maybe, if you want to, I mean, and if you don’t have to study,” Lori ventured, “you could come back sometime and we could talk?”

He seemed to consider that. “Are you allowed to eat pizza?”

She grinned. “Pepperoni and mushroom?”

He gave her a thumbs-up. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

Lori was still grinning as she opened her laptop, closed the e-mail program, and started her exam.

Cici closed the phone and returned it to Richard. “Lori says under no circumstances are we to get there before noon. Apparently her professor agreed to let her take her final from the hospital, so that’s what she’s doing.”

“Is she well enough to do that?”

“Apparently so.”

The quick worry lines that had appeared between Richard’s brows smoothed, and he smiled as he tucked a strand of Cici’s hair behind her ear. “Well, well,” he murmured. “Whatever shall we do with the extra time?”

They were having breakfast at a sidewalk café on the downtown mall, a tree-lined, brick walkway flanked by shops, galleries, and eateries of every description. The morning sun cast dappled shadows over the iron lacework of the table and the brilliant blooming flowers that tumbled over the sides of planter boxes on either side of the street. Cici returned a smile that was hopelessly coy and picked up her to-go coffee cup. “Let’s walk,” she said.

He was surprisingly agreeable. He took his own coffee and twined his fingers through hers as they started down the street. “This is charming,” he said. “Reminds me of Marseilles, in a way.”

Cici sipped her coffee. “I’ve never been. But it’s a little like Paris, with the shops and the flower boxes.”

“We should have gone to Paris together.”

She shrugged. “You were too busy going to law school. And I was too busy changing diapers.”

“I’ve missed you.”

She tried not to choke on a mixture of coffee and laughter. “Come on, Richard. All we ever did was fight.”

“Not all,” he reminded her. “And I miss fighting with you. No one else in my life has the balls to stand up to me like you do.”

“I don’t believe that. And even if I did, I’m not sure it’s a compliment.”

Now he laughed. “Since when did we have to worry about complimenting each other?”

She stopped to peer into the window of a not-yet-open fashion boutique. “Cute top,” she said, pointing. “I’ll bet Lori would like it.”

“We’ll come back and buy it for her when the shop opens.”

When they started walking again, he draped his arm around her shoulders. It made walking a little awkward; she wasn’t accustomed to matching her pace with his. But she didn’t protest.

He looked around contentedly. “This is nice. A great place to retire.”

She chuckled, sipping her coffee. “I can’t picture you retired.”

He said, “I couldn’t picture you retired either. But you seem pretty happy on that horse farm of yours.”

“No horses,” she reminded him. “Chickens, remember? Sheep.”

“I mean it, Cici. This game is for the young. You’re nothing in L.A. if you’re not twenty-eight years old. And what do I have to prove, anyway? I’ve been there, done that. And done it a hell of a lot better than any of those punks ever will.”

She smiled and saluted him with her cup. “You bet you have.”

Suddenly he turned to her, grasped her waist, and swept her across the walkway to a concrete bench. Before she could so much as yelp a protest, he sat her down on the bench and sat close beside her. His eyes were urgent and sincere and the hand that gripped hers was strong.

“Cici, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “The two of us—here we are, with a grown-up daughter, all these years later, and we never really got to have the life we promised each other. But maybe it’s not too late. Think about it. All those things we were going to do, the places we were going to see. We could get on a boat, we could sail the Greek Islands.”

Cici said, “I’ve been to Greece, with Bridget and Lindsay. It was my fiftieth birthday present to myself.”

He looked only momentarily disconcerted. “We could go to Antarctica, Dubai, Istanbul. Or spend a month in Fiji.”

Cici laughed, albeit a bit uneasily. “Me, in Fiji.”

“Or,” he said, laying a hand aside her face, “we could just be quiet together. Dig in the dirt, watch the sunset, take walks on the beach. It doesn’t have to be too late.”

She caught his hand against her face, twining her fingers in his, and her expression softened with tenderness as she looked at him. “Richard,” she said softly. “Last night was great, but ...”

“No buts.” His fingers tightened on hers, and their joined hands drifted to her knee. “I know you think this is coming out of nowhere, but it’s not. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, about what you’ve done here, the life you have, and I’ve got to tell you, it sounds good to me. Better than good.”

It became more of an effort to keep up the smile. “You’d go out of your mind within a month.”

“And then when Lori ... when I thought I might lose Lori ...” He dropped his eyes briefly, and then looked at her again. There was nothing there except sincerity, and, she thought, more courage than she had ever known from him. “And then, seeing you again ... Suddenly I knew what was important, Cici. The only thing that’s ever been important.”

She dropped her eyes to their hands so that he could not see the discomfort in her gaze. For a moment, she actually expected to see his hand as she remembered it from their youth, strong and tanned and supple, the hand that tossed a football and caressed her body to the point of madness, sporting the college ring with the sapphire stone. And she expected to see her own hand, smooth and white and delicately freckled with the sleek French manicure she always used to wear. Instead she saw raised veins and blotchy skin below his perfectly buffed nails, chapped knuckles and freckles that had turned to liver spots on hers. That made her smile a little, sadly.

“Richard,” she began.

Richard said quietly, “I never stopped loving you.”

Cici stared at him for a long and silent moment. And at last all she could say was, “Oh.”

They were ready.

Four glasses of chilled peanut soup were lined up on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Maryland crab cakes and honey-glazed fried chicken were ready to be dropped into separate pans for frying, with the dill-caper butter softening near the stove. The mini quiches and caramelized onion tarts were baking, and the brie en croute was ready to be popped into the second oven. The Midori sauce just needed to be heated. A bowl of chopped fresh heritage tomatoes, perfectly seasoned with herbs that had been cut from the garden only that morning, was ready to be spread on crisp garlic-infused baguette slices and topped with goat cheese. And, even though it was not part of the menu, Bridget had made a double fudge cake to be served with her special caramel sauce and fresh lavender whipped cream.

The porch was decorated with four round tables covered in multicolored calico topped with Battenberg lace. All four tables displayed centerpieces of roses fresh from their garden in various containers—a silver teapot, a china bowl, a coffee urn—and set with an eclectic mix of Limoges and Haviland. White Irish linen napkins trimmed with hand tatting were rolled inside twig napkin rings, each one accented with a rose bud. Even though it was two o’clock in the afternoon, candles flickered in crystal water glasses, and the flames were reflected in the cut glass wineglasses at each place setting. Only one table had chairs around it, and on that table was a tray of four sparkling mimosas in champagne flutes.

Lindsay and Bridget looked cool and collected in light summer dresses, with their hair swept back and their makeup touched up at least twice in the past hour. Rebel was in the barn with a padlock on the door. The gate to the chicken yard, likewise, was latched and locked. The goat and the deer were in separate stalls inside the barn. And the smell of fertilizer was, for the most part, but a distant memory. They were ready.

Their guests arrived an hour and a half late in a big white Lincoln Town Car with a blue convertible roof. Catherine, in a crumpled linen pants suit that still managed to look safari stylish, was driving. Lindsay waved at her as she got out of the car, and she took off her sunglasses and lifted a hand to them regally. From the passenger seat emerged a plump, dark-haired woman in a black skirt and navy cotton blouse that they assumed was the mother of the groom, followed by Traci, scowling at her cell phone and looking disheveled and discontented. And then both back doors opened and out poured six other young women of various coloring and description, all of them stretching and groaning and all talking at once.

“Good God, Traci, could it be any closer to the end of the
earth?”

“There’s no signal on my cell phone!”

“No one is ever going to be able to find this place, you know that.”

“I don’t see any sheep. Do you see sheep?”

“Oh, wait, there they are. Pul-leeeze tell me we don’t have to hike all the way over there!”

“Well, at least it’s not as bad as Kayla’s wedding, remember that? We had to walk two blocks to the beach!”

“Carrying her train!”

“Will you people shut up?” This was from Traci. “I almost had a signal!”

Lindsay and Bridget stared at the bejeaned and ponytailed crowd that was spreading across their front lawn. “They brought the whole wedding party,” Lindsay said, disbelieving.