Love Letters from Ladybug Farm (36 page)

“Well, that depends.” Paul spoke in measured tones, a glue gun in one hand and a cluster of silk flowers in the other. “How are you with a glue gun?”

“Passable.”

Derrick came up the steps, the two embraced, and just then the lights inside the house flickered on.

The bride, wearing a strapless gown and aportrait hat, walked the rose-strewn path to the silken sounds of a chamber quartet playing the wedding march, escorted by her father—looking stiff and hungover but otherwise pleased—and preceded by six bridesmaids in apricot silk. The groom and his attendants were handsome and composed in gray cutaways. When the groom kissed the bride, Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay all reached for tissues—partly because of the tenderness of the moment, but mostly because it was over.

The storm had cooled and cleaned the air to a pleasant seventy degrees, and left behind a perfect summer blue sky decorated with fluffy, lavender-bottomed cumulus clouds that played out a slow-moving shadow show across the mountains and the lawn. The guests talked a lot about the storm that had swept through the night before, but if they noticed any of the alterations it had made to their surroundings, they said nothing. Many of them admired the ingenuity of the rose garden, and declared how clever it was to strip off the original blossoms and replace them with roses in the bride’s own color scheme.

Once the lawn was covered with laughing, drinking guests in party wear, the damage to flower beds, trees, and wedding decorations was difficult to spot. If there weren’t enough tables for everyone to sit down, that only encouraged people to mingle, and no one cared that the buffet was not under a tent once they tasted Bridget’s food.

Lori’s date, Mark, was entertaining and attentive, helping her with her crutches, bringing her food and drink, and being extremely polite to her parents. When Bridget asked Lori to sit behind one of the buffet stations for a few moments, Mark took off his jacket and worked as her assistant. For the first couple of hours all of them worked—carrying food out from the kitchen, making certain there were plenty of napkins and silverware and that the serving dishes were never empty. Derrick rolled up his sleeves and helped Richard open bottles and fill glasses, while Paul, clipboard in hand, kept everything neat, tidy, and on schedule. Noah, who had already made a small fortune parking cars, barely complained at all about bussing the tables and loading the dishwasher and carrying boxes of clean glasses out of the kitchen and dirty glasses in. Farley, who looked surprisingly handsome in his blue suit, struck up a conversation with the mother of the groom, who declared him to be one of the most fascinating and amusing people she had ever met, and kept everyone happy by keeping her happy. Dominic mingled effortlessly with the crowd, but always kept an eye on Lindsay, and whenever there was a table to be unfolded or a chair to be moved or a heavy tray to be lifted he was there, taking care of it.

When the bride and groom had their first dance and the DJ cranked up the music, Dominic caught Lindsay’s hand and pulled her, laughingly protesting, onto the dance floor. Cici grabbed a glass of wine and sank down at a table in the shade across from Paul and Derrick. She had just taken her first sip when Richard dropped his hands on her shoulders.

“Come on,” he said, drawing her to her feet. “They’re playing our song.”

She groaned. “I’m tired. Besides, we don’t have a song.”

He said, “We do now.”

She listened, and smiled, and let him lead her to the dance floor to the music of “Through the Years.”

“Lori said you built the dance floor,” he said as they fell into an easy, natural rhythm.

“It wasn’t hard.”

“She’s been showing me all the things you’ve done to this place.”

Cici tilted her head up to look at him. “You didn’t know I could use power tools?”

“All in all,” he admitted, “I think that’s something I was better off not knowing. There’s a lot I don’t know about you, I guess.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “We’ve been apart a long time.”

They danced in silence for a while. His fingers absently stroked her hair. He said, “You were right, you know.”

“I usually am.”

He smiled. “It’s been great being back on the East Coast, seeing trees that are taller than a palm, spending time with Lori, and you ... but this isn’t the life for me. I don’t belong here.”

She almost missed her step, and when she looked up at him she was surprised by the stab of disappointment she felt. “But—what about the dream? What about retirement? You made so many plans!”

He chuckled. “Hell, sweetie, if this is what you call retirement, I’m going back to L.A. where I can get some rest. You people work too hard for me.”

She said, “It’s not like we have tornados and weddings every day.”

The look he gave her was both amused and regretful. “If it wasn’t a tornado, it would be something else. But it’s not that. It’s just ... there’s no room for me here. You don’t need me anymore. If you ever did.”

She rested her head against his shoulder again, and was quiet for a time. Then she asked, “What was this fascination you had with a horse farm, anyway? You don’t even like horses.”

For a moment he seemed surprised, and then he chuckled. “You don’t remember, do you? When we were first married, that’s all we talked about. Moving to the country, buying a horse farm. That was the big dream.”

Cici looked at him for a long time, sadly. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t remember.”

The music faded into a hip-hop number, and they left the dance floor. Richard’s arm was around her waist, and she leaned into him. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, but I’m not sorry you came. I think it’s been good for us.”

His fingers squeezed her waist. “Maybe we can try relating to each other on a more adult level a little more often now.”

She pretended to consider that as they reached the table where Paul and Derrick sat, looking completely relaxed and as comfortable as though they had never been apart. They were sipping wine and pointing out to each other the idiosyncrasies of various members of the wedding party. “That would be different,” she agreed. “We could give it a try.”

“Now,” he said, holding her chair for her, “all I have to do is figure out what to do with eighty-seven acres of prime Virginia horse country, fenced and cross-fenced.”

Paul stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. Derrick looked at Paul. Paul looked at Derrick. They both looked at Richard.

Derrick said, “I don’t suppose you would entertain an offer?”

Paul, Derrick, Richard, and Dominic moved through the crowd, filling glasses with champagne. The bride and groom were finishing up their last dance before the toast and the cake-cutting, and they couldn’t take their eyes off each other. The groom’s mother was dancing with Farley. He kept glancing worriedly at Bridget, but she waved him on gaily. Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay stood together behind the serving station near the cake, saucers and cutlery at the ready, cautiously relaxing as the day began to draw to a close.

“Well.” Bridget released a cautious sigh of relief. “I can’t believe it, but it looks as though we pulled it off.”

“Thanks to you.” Cici slipped her arm around Bridget’s waist in a brief hug. “The buffet was spectacular.”

Bridget glanced anxiously at the cake, which was beautifully decorated with cascades of sugared fruit and Apricot Delight roses. “They haven’t cut the cake yet.”

“The cake is fine,” Lindsay assured her.

“Dominic seemed to have fun,” Cici commented, teasing her a little. “You two looked cute together.”

“He is fun,” Lindsay agreed. It was impossible to tell whether the slight flush on her cheeks was from sun, champagne, or pleasure. “Funny how I never noticed before.” She looked at Bridget. “And how about Farley? He really cleaned up nice, didn’t he?”

Bridget smiled, her eyes seeking, and finding Farley. She waved again. “What a surprise. I suppose there are all sorts of things we don’t notice about people if we never look for them.”

Cici’s smile was a little sad as she watched Richard, laughing and charming the bride’s grandparents as he filled their glasses. “Yeah.”

There was a disturbance in the crowd, squeals and laughter, toward the edge of the yard. The DJ lowered the music and said, “Ladies and Gentleman, fill your glasses for the toast to the bride and groom. Fill your glasses!”

The laughter seemed to take on more of the tone of shouts, and the squeals sounded more like screams. Heads turned. Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget stood on tiptoe. “What in the world ...”

They all saw it at once, an outrageous tumbling, streaking, galloping whirl of a creature wrapped in white gauze tearing through the crowd like a mad ghost on steroids.

“Is that-?”

“Rebel!” cried Bridget, her hand flying to her throat. “And he found the veil that was drying on the line!”

“How did he get—”

“Sorry!” Noah called from across the lawn. “I opened the barn to give him some water and he saw something and broke out! Don’t worry—I’ll catch him!”

Rebel rolled head over heels, tangled in the lacy veil, bumped into a plump woman in satin shoes who squeaked, jumped back, and doused him with champagne. He stumbled to his feet, charged a few riotous paces, tripped over the veil, and rolled again. Noah dived for him and caught part of the veil, but the dog squirted through his fingers like toothpaste out of a tube.

The DJ, oblivious, announced, “Ladies and Gentleman, the father of the bride!”

Lindsay scrambled around the serving table. “I’ll head him off!”

Bridget ran after her. “I’ll go this way!”

And Cici said, “Oh, my God.” Because she had seen what Rebel was chasing. And it was heading straight for the cake.

The microphone squeaked feedback. The father of the bride cleared his throat. The nanny goat, bleating in panic, broke through the crowd at a trot. Cici cried, “No!” and charged around the serving table to place herself between the goat and the cake.

The goat charged her. She leapt forward, flinging her arms around the goat’s neck. The goat screamed and shook her head violently, connecting with Cici’s cheekbone with a resounding
crack
. She fell backward on the ground, seeing stars. The goat ran off.

But the cake was saved.

Three and a half hours later the bride, the groom, and the guests had departed. The goat was in the barnyard. Rebel, dragging a scrap of tangled veil from his hind foot, had collapsed beneath the shade tree, panting. The dishes had been packed away, the leftover food was in the freezer, and Ida Mae was taking a nap. Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay sat on the debris-littered porch and tried to process the day.

“You know,” Bridget observed after a time, “all things considered, it really was a lot of fun.”

Cici tried to lift her head to look at her, winced in pain, and settled back again. “You did not just say that to me.”