Love Letters from Ladybug Farm (26 page)

“Then why don’t you just e-mail him and tell him it’s over?”

“Because,” Lori said a little helplessly, “I’m just not sure it is.”

Cici considered and rejected a dozen things to say, some of them pointed, some of them not, none of them particularly helpful. Finally she simply smiled, patted her daughter’s hand, and advised, “Take a nap. I promise there will be plenty of opportunities for you to feel useful when you wake up.”

Cici found Lindsay and Bridget sitting on the floor in the big parlor they called the living room, surrounded by baskets, boxes, tissue paper, and cellophane. She sat across from them, forming the third point of a triangle, and folded her jeaned legs under her. “Lori is in love with an Italian,” she said.

“Good for her,” Lindsay said and passed her a basket. “Fill those champagne glasses with colored candy, wrap them with cellophane, tie each one with an apricot ribbon, and put one in each basket.”

Cici gave her a skeptical look. “You’re the one who said I should by no means let her go to Italy.”

“You’re only young once,” advised Bridget. She carefully cut and folded a sheet of pale green tissue paper into a triangle, and used it to line another basket.

“Also,” Cici said, pouring a measure of candy into a champagne glass, “I looked at the contract and we are screwed. They have to pay for materials, but there’s no limit on how much labor we signed up for—at no extra charge. How do these go in?” she asked, tying the ribbon around the cellophane.

Lindsay demonstrated how the champagne glasses fit against the side of the baskets, between the wedding-mix CDs and the tulle-wrapped scented candles. “Save room for the monogrammed chocolates in the middle,” she reminded them. “They’re supposed to be delivered today.”

“Catherine invited us all to the wedding,” Bridget said, trying to make that sound like a good thing. “Even Lori. Plus-ones, too.”

“What?”

“Dates. She meant dates.”

“I know what
plus-one
means. I just don’t know why she felt it necessary to invite us. I mean, we live here. We’re the hostesses.”

“Actually” confided Lindsay “I think she just wanted seat fillers, in case some of her fancy friends from DC can’t find their way out here. You know, like at the Academy Awards.”

“Of course,” added Bridget with a glance at Lindsay “we do have to wear those outfits. Apricot Delight or Hint of Spring green only. And Nearly Nude Shimmer & Silk stockings.”

Cici gave a snort of derision. “Maybe you do.”

“We were bulldozed,” Bridget admitted glumly, passing a tissue-lined basket to Lindsay. “We should have called you before we agreed to anything. It was stupid.”

Cici released a heavy breath, and a long silence fell. “That’s okay” she said unhappily. “I did something even stupider.”

Lindsay slipped a CD into the case, snapped it shut, and placed it in the basket. “You mean sleeping with Richard?”

Cici stared at her. “How did you know?”

“Oh, please.” Bridget cut another square of tissue. “You sleep with him every time you see him. The man is like cat-nip to you.”

Cici shifted her gaze away, poured more candy, tied more ribbon. Then, making a wry, resigned face, she said, “You’d think by now I’d know better.”

“Well,” replied Lindsay, “the good news is that neither one of you is in jail, so I guess it didn’t end in violence.”

“He’s talking about retiring,” Cici said.

“I can picture Richard in Palm Springs,” Bridget said thoughtfully. “Golf carts, swimming pools ..

“Bikinis,” added Lindsay.

“Not unless you count the ones on eighty-year-old women,” Bridget said, and the two women burst into giggles.

Cici did not laugh. “Here. He’s talking about retiring here.”

The giggles evaporated. A kind of slow dread filled Lindsay’s eyes. “You don’t mean ...
here.”

And Bridget echoed, “Here?”

Cici met their gazes grimly. “He called a real estate broker.”

Bridget stopped folding paper. Lindsay stopped placing CDs in cases. A warm breeze fluttered the lace curtain at the window, a grandfather clock ticked loudly across the room; otherwise all was still. Had there been crickets, they would have been chirping. The three women looked at each other somberly for a long time.

“That,” intoned Lindsay, “is not good news.”

Cici nodded heavily. “You’re telling me.”

Into the grim silence that had fallen over the room a sudden clatter of activity spilled: Rebel’s excited barking, the braying of a goat, the clang of a cowbell. Noah shouted, “Yo! Dog!” Bridget got up and went to the window. “Someone’s coming,” she said, surprised. And then surprise mixed with pleasure as she added, “It’s Paul!”

They reached the front porch in time to see Noah dragging a still-barking border collie away by the collar as Paul’s blue Prius slid to a stop in front of the steps. Paul got out of the car, pushing his sunglasses up into his hair, and they bounded down the steps to meet him.

“Paul! What a surprise!”

“What are you doing here?”

“Where’s Derrick?”

“Why didn’t you call? The house is a mess!”

“You look great!”

And again, “What are you doing here?”

“I have come,” declared Paul, kissing Cici’s cheek, “to solve”—he kissed Lindsay’s cheek—“all your problems.” He kissed Bridget.

“Well, it’s about time someone did,” responded Cici fervently, and he laughed.

“I heard you’d had a few setbacks,” he said. “Where is our little broken princess, anyway?”

“She’s sleeping,” replied Cici. She peered into the car, which was packed to the roof with boxes. “What is all this?”

“No, she’s not!” Lori called from the porch, leaning on her crutches. “Hi, Uncle Paul. What are you doing here?”

Paul called up to her, “I came to see you, of course!” And he added to Cici as he started up the steps to greet Lori, “Be careful with those boxes. Some of the stuff in them is breakable.”

Cici looked after him in astonishment, and Lindsay opened the back door of the car as Noah, having released Rebel in the sheep meadow, came jogging around the corner. Bridget surveyed the packed car. “Is all this for us?”

“I guess so.” Cici pried a box from the top of the stack and handed it to Noah. “Help us unpack this, will you, Noah?”

Noah took the box and cast an appraising eye over the remainder. “Whoa, dude,” he said as he started up the steps with the box. “What’re you doing, moving in?”

Paul turned with an odd, rather rueful smile on his face. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

The boxes were sorted by content between the pantry, the ofhce, and the living room/workroom. Two enormous suitcases were hauled to the guest room. Ida Mae brought tall glasses of iced tea laced with sprigs of mint to the porch, along with the last of the peanut butter cookies, grumbling all the while about how some folks didn’t have the decency to give a person time to change the sheets before he showed up on her doorstep. Paul called after her, grinning, “I’ll change my own sheets, I promise! I’ve been looking forward to it all the way from Maryland!”

They brought extra chairs onto the porch for Lori and Paul, along with a footstool for Lori to rest her leg. Noah relaxed on the steps with his shoulders resting against a column. All of them waited for Paul to speak.

Paul took a sip of his tea, gave the glass an appraising look, and murmured, “Interesting.” He gazed around the porch.

“I’m sure you have your own ideas,” he said, “but I would keep the porch decor simple for the wedding. Satin bows and rose bouquets, natural greenery, swags over the door and windows.”

Noah stretched for a handful of cookies. “If ya’ll are going to talk about that wedding I’m outta here. I’ve got things to do.”

Lori said, “Not me. It took me too long to get here. Besides,” she added meaningfully to Noah, “the good stuff always starts as soon as we leave.”

Lindsay looked uneasy. “Noah, maybe you’d better get back to the goat house. We want to talk to Paul.”

Noah started to rise, but Paul lifted a staying hand. His tone, like his expression, was weary. “No, let him stay. I’m tired of keeping secrets.”

Paul’s face suddenly looked older than it had when he arrived; his eyes were puffy and his skin sagged. He looked again at his glass, but did not drink. And then he looked at each of them in turn—Noah, Lori, Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay—for a moment before he spoke. “Derrick didn’t want you to know, didn’t want anyone to know. Some stupid, ridiculous Superman fantasy of his.” He took a breath. “Last winter ... he had a heart attack.”

The chorus of gasps and soft “Oh, my God!”s was punctuated by a single flat “Crap” from Noah. Derrick had been a long-distance mentor to Noah, had encouraged his art career, had written a letter of recommendation to John Adams Academy. Even as feminine hands flew to their throats, their eyes went to Noah.

“He’s okay,” Paul said quickly. “At least physically. As okay as he can be, at any rate. It was a mild heart attack. They sent him home after three days on a regimen of diet, exercise, and statins—and no stress, of course.”

Lindsay Cici, and Bridget released a breath, and Lori said, “God, Uncle Paul, you scared us to death.” Noah relaxed marginally, but his eyes stayed fixed on Paul. His life experience so far had taught him to be skeptical of happy endings.

“Yeah, I was pretty scared, too,” Paul said. He took another sip of his tea, and grimaced. “But Derrick wanted to pretend that nothing had happened. He was back at the gallery the next day. I’m talking the very next day after he got home from the hospital. I couldn’t believe it. Here I had made arrangements to take the whole week off, and he’s acting as though he’s just taken some time away for a brow lift or something. What is that? At first I thought it was vanity, but now I’m thinking Messiah complex.”

“Death denial,” Lori said sagely, and when everyone looked at her she explained, “We studied it in social psychology. It’s a thing with Western culture, especially Americans, where you think you’re going to live forever—as long as you use the right mouthwash, go to the right gym, eat the latest fad diet, stop smoking, color your hair ... Seriously” she insisted. “It’s a whole thing.”

Paul tasted his tea again, held the glass out, and stared at it. “Okay” he said. “Does anyone but me think this tea tastes funny?”

Bridget reached for his glass. “Let me taste it.” Bridget sipped the tea, frowned, and then looked into the glass. She plucked out the decorative green sprig and declared, “Oregano.”

Paul lifted an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

“We’ve been having some problems with Ida Mae,” Lindsay confided in a half whisper as Bridget got up and tossed the contents of Paul’s glass over the railing.

Bridget refilled Paul’s glass from the pitcher on the table. “We understand what you’ve been going through,” she told him sympathetically as she handed him the glass.

Paul gave a small shake of his head, even as he smiled his thanks to Bridget. “Bottom line, things haven’t been exactly loaded with spalike serenity at home. He won’t take time off, he won’t take care of himself, he won’t take his medicine half the time, and he won’t listen to me. I’ve done everything I know to do, but I just couldn’t stand by and watch him destroy himself any longer. So .. He smiled bleakly and lifted his glass to them. ”Here I am.”

“Oh, Paul,” Cici said sincerely. “I’m so sorry.”

Lindsay’s expression was one of abject sorrow. “You’ve been together longer than most married people I know. I don’t know how to think of you apart.”

“You should have stayed,” Noah said shortly, abruptly. “You don’t just run out on people when they’re in trouble.”

Bridget said gently, “Noah, it’s more complicated than that.”

But Paul lifted a finger to Bridget and met Noah’s eyes. “You’re right. But sometimes people need some time apart to figure things out.”

Noah pushed to his feet, scowling. “I’ve got stuff to do.”