Love Letters from Ladybug Farm (25 page)

“Fortunately,” added Lindsay, with just a touch of bitterness, “I didn’t need the rest of the calico.”

But Lori was barely listening. She was staring, instead, at the boxes of tissue—apricot and green—and ribbon and candy and champagne glasses and small white wicker baskets, candles, CD cases, and other unidentifiable items that covered every inch of the living room and threatened to spill out into the foyer. So was Cici.

“What in the world?” Cici wondered.

“Wow,” said Lori, impressed. “It looks like the shipping room of a party store.”

“Oh, I meant to close the doors,” Bridget apologized, as she hurried to do so. “It’s the only room in the house big enough to set up for the gift baskets.”

“Why are they so small?” Lori asked. “How are you going to get the herbal bath salts and the jams and the recipe cards and the scones in there?”

Bridget looked confused for a moment, and then explained, “Oh, these are just the favors for the wedding guests. The components have been arriving all week, and we’re trying to get them stuffed as soon as things come in, which is why the room is such a mess. We’re just waiting for the monogrammed chocolates, now.”

Lindsay said, “Come on, Lori, let’s get you settled in your room. Sorry there’s no other place to sit down here.”

Cici was still staring at the doors Bridget had just closed. “How many of those things do we have to make, anyway?”

And Lori asked, “What about the big gift baskets? The ones you’re selling?”

“Oh, honey, I haven’t had time to worry about those this week! When this wedding is over, I’ll get back to business as usual, and believe me it will be a pleasure. I’ll never complain about having to put together five gift baskets in a week again, I can promise you that.”

Lori had started to follow Lindsay to the sunroom, carefully balancing herself on the unfamiliar crutches, but now she stopped and looked at Bridget. “Five?”

Bridget smiled and nodded. “Business really picked up after that magazine article. But right now the first priority is the wedding.” She looked at Cici a little uncomfortably. “We really need to talk to you about that.”

Cici eyed her suspiciously. “You mentioned on the phone that things had gotten complicated.”

“Just a tiny bit,” Lindsay admitted. “A few more guests than we’d counted on, and we’re also hosting the rehearsal and catering the rehearsal dinner, and there’s the tent ...”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Lori held up a hand for attention, almost lost a crutch and her balance, and the three women rushed to support her. She quickly regained her composure and spoke directly to Bridget. “How long since you looked at the website?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Bridget admitted. “A week or so, I guess. I’m just not used to that stuff, honey, and hardly anyone ever visits the site anyway ...”

Lori looked disbelieving. “Do you mean you haven’t checked orders in over a week?”

“Well, I suppose I could do that as soon as we get you settled, if it would make you feel better.”

“Maybe you’d better,” Lori said in an odd, constrained tone. “Because the last time I looked, you had a few orders for gift baskets.”

Bridget looked concerned. “Oh, dear. Well, I hope they don’t mind waiting. How many?”

“As of yesterday afternoon,” Lori said, “two hundred fifty-six.”

All three women stared at her. For a long moment no one spoke. Then Lindsay smiled weakly and touched Lori’s shoulder to help her to her room. “Welcome home,” she said.

They gathered in the sunroom-turned-temporary-bedroom because Lori refused to be excluded from the conversation and would have hobbled to the kitchen or the living room or the porch or the garden to give her opinion if they had tried to meet without her. The trip had already left her looking pale and tired, so they brought more peanut butter cookies from the kitchen, along with a pot of tea, and sat down to strategize.

“You have to fulfill the orders,” Lori explained from her position on the bed, her leg elevated on two pillows, her laptop open on her lap. “You’ve already taken the money. Otherwise that’s fraud.”

“I
hate
automatic banking,” Bridget said miserably, and picked up another cookie. “Why couldn’t they just send checks? That way, if I didn’t want their money, I could send it back.”

“No one uses checks anymore,” Lindsay said. “Even I know that.”

The sunroom was a long, narrow space that had once been an actual conservatory. According to Ida Mae, it had been used to house miniature citrus trees and tropical plants in the heyday of the house. The floor was hand-cut Italian tile and had a drain in the center for water runoff. One entire wall was filled with windows—the old-fashioned, double-hung kind that were elaborately trimmed with painted molding. During their first winter there, a tree branch had crashed through the roof of the room and presented a perfect opportunity for remodeling. They hadn’t been able to afford completely replacing the roof with glass, as it had been originally, but they had put in four skylights, replastered, and painted the room a pale buttermilk yellow. They had furnished the room sparsely with leftover wicker, a couple of faded floral rugs they did not deem nice enough for the main house, and whatever houseplants they were currently nursing back to health.

Now, however, with Ida Mae’s bright calico curtains draped back from the windows, the sunshine spilling over the bed, the potted plants inside, and the rolling green meadows, mountains, and colorful plantings outside, the room was cheery and uplifting, ultimately conducive to good health.

Or at least it would have been, if the mood of its occupants had not been so dire.

“Well, the good news is,” said Lori, tapping the keyboard of her laptop, “you did put the ‘allow four to six weeks for delivery’ disclaimer on your order form. Or at least I did.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” Lindsay murmured, and when Lori glanced at her askance, she amended quickly, “I mean, thank you, Lori.”

“But you’ve got to acknowledge receipt of the order,” Lori went on, “and give them a shipping date. We can automate that if you like.”

“Yes,” Bridget said quickly, “automate it.”

“Hold on,” Cici said in alarm, “you can’t promise two hundred and fifty-six baskets—”

“Two hundred seventy-three,” corrected Lori, and Bridget groaned loudly.

“You don’t even
have
two hundred seventy-three baskets,” Cici pointed out, “much less the stuff to fill them with! How can you possibly fill all those orders
and
the wedding gift baskets?”

Bridget slumped down low in the wicker chair, closing her eyes. “I’m going to cry.”

“Don’t cry,” Lindsay soothed absently, pouring more tea. “We’ll figure this out.”

“Cici’s right,” Bridget said. “I only have about fifty jars of jam left, and I barely have enough dried herbs left to make sachets for the wedding and don’t know where I’m going to get the hand lotion and bath salts ...”

Lori shook her head sadly. “The only thing that causes small businesses to fail more often than apathy is success.”

All three women waited for her to explain, but she merely shrugged. “It’s an axiom.”

Cici drew a breath and turned to Bridget. “Okay,” she said. “Your first priority is to fill the wedding order. They’ve already tasted the pinot noir jam and smelled the hand lotion.”

“You can make more jam for the orders,” Lindsay suggested. “And dry the herbs in the microwave.”

“Microwave?” Bridget looked horrified. “How can I dry herbs in a microwave? And we don’t even start to harvest grapes until October! How can I—”

“Strawberry,” suggested Cici.

“You didn’t actually specify the kind of jam on the website,” Lori pointed out. “It just says ‘Ladybug Farm vintage wine jams.’”

“Maybe,” Bridget said thoughtfully reluctantly, “a strawberry champagne jam. I’ve never actually made it but ...”

“Perfect,” declared Lindsay.

“Do you know how many strawberries that will take?” Bridget said, starting to sound panicky again.

“We’ve got tons in the freezer.”

“I’m not sure you can even make jam out of frozen strawberries.”

Cici had been studying the extensive notes, drawings, and color swatches left behind by Catherine. Now she looked up, her expression sober. “We have bigger problems than frozen strawberries,” she announced. “You do realize that we have exactly eleven days to prepare a sit-down dinner for twenty, a wedding that includes a fifty-foot satin-lined processional with three arbors, a string quartet, a dance floor, and a buffet for one hundred people. Who’s ordering the wine, by the way?”

Lindsay looked at Bridget. Bridget looked at Lindsay. Lindsay said, “I guess we are.”

“Not to mention putting together all of those mini guest baskets and the big baskets for the wedding party, and, excuse me, but where are we going to get a hundred place settings and glasses?”

“And who’s going to wash them afterward?” offered Lori.

Cici looked at the other two with a mixture of severity and dismay. “None of this is in the contract. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We figured you had enough to worry about,” Lindsay said unhappily.

“Besides, we gave our word,” Bridget admitted. “We’ve just got to figure out a way to make it work.”

Lori looked up from the computer. “How much did you say you were charging for the buffet?”

Bridget answered, “Forty-five dollars a head. That includes wine.”

“Plus thirty-five each for the gift baskets, and I’m guessing the rehearsal dinner is at least fifty, wine inclusive ...” She did some calculations. “You’re going to be raking in some serious cash.”

Bridget sighed. “When you deduct the cost of food and wine, not so much.”

Cici regarded her warily. “But you did make certain you figured the profit margin before you quoted the price, right?”

“Of course I did. But they just kept adding things and assuming things, and,” she finished unhappily, “I have a feeling our profit margin is a lot smaller than it started out to be.”

Cici said, “I have to go look at the contract.”

And Lindsay added, standing, “We should let Lori get some rest.”

“We should try to pick the rest of the strawberries, if there are any left,” Bridget said. “We’re going to need every last berry if I’m going to turn them into two hundred fifty-six jars of wine jam.”

“We need to get Noah away from that goat house and into the cherry trees with a bucket,” suggested Lindsay. “What kind of wine jam can you make from cherries?”

Lori said, without looking up from her laptop, “Leave the cookies.”

Cici lingered as the other two women left the room. “You should take a nap,” she said, coming over to the bed and reaching for the laptop. “There’ll be plenty of time for this later.”

But Lori held up a staying hand. “No, it’s okay, Mom. I’m not tired, and it’s nice to feel useful.”

Cici smiled as she sat down on the edge of Lori’s bed. “Well, there’s never a lack of anything useful to do around here. And I guess you want me to leave you alone so you can e-mail your boyfriend in Italy.”

Lori shrugged and tapped another key on the computer, changing screens. “He’s not my boyfriend. Never was, really. And now ...” She shrugged again.

“But you were able to take your exam,” Cici pointed out. “You could still ...”

Lori was shaking her head before she finished. “I withdrew my application,” she said. And although she did not meet her mother’s eyes, the heaviness in her voice betrayed her disappointment. “You heard what the doctor said. I won’t be back to normal with this leg for months yet, and this was a hands-on job in a working vineyard and winery. It wouldn’t be right to cheat them out of the help they were expecting, or to take the opportunity away from someone who could actually do the work.”

Cici nodded thoughtfully, and then slipped her arm around Lori’s shoulders and kissed her hair. “Have I told you lately how proud I am of you?”

Again Lori shrugged, but this time she returned a lopsided smile. “I’ll get to Italy,” she told her mother. “Eventually.”

“You bet you will, sweetie. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if your friend—your non-boyfriend—is waiting for you when you get there. You are worth waiting for, if I do say so myself. After all, I waited—”

“Nine months and eighteen days for me to be born,” Lori supplied. “I know.”

“Eighteen excruciating days,” Cici reminded her.

“Well, Italian college boys aren’t exactly known for their patience, and I’m sure he will have forgotten me long before I get there.”

Cici waited. Lori clicked another key.

“He keeps writing me,” she admitted, “but I don’t answer.”

“Over him, huh?” Cici said sympathetically.

“No,” Lori interjected quickly, and with surprising fervor. “I mean ... I don’t know.” She sighed again. “It just seems kind of ... pointless. I miss him, and we were really having a lot of fun, texting back and forth. I mean it was almost like we were, you know, dating ... Perfectly innocent, of course,” she assured her mother. And then she sighed. “I guess I’ll never know what it might have been. It’s probably better that way.”