Vintage Ladybug Farm (2 page)

“If I can find the box with the silver and gold rope beads in it
,
I can put them in champagne glasses and really sparkle up the mantle,” Lindsay said.
“We can spray-paint some cedar bough
s
gold and make a fabulous centerpiece for the coffee table.”

“The white candles are in the cellar,” Cici said, “in a box marked ‘white candles.
’
”

An excited spark came into Lindsay’s eyes.
“Do we have any silver spray paint left?
If we paint the tapers silver and use the hall mirror as a runner on the dining room table with gold and silver Christmas balls
,
it will look fabulous!”

“We just packed up all the gold and silver Christmas balls,” Cici reminded her.

“It’ll only take me a minute to find them.”
Lindsay rushed toward the stairs and then turned back.
“What do you suppose Paul and Derrick want to come all the way back out here for on New Year’s Eve?”

Bridget looked at Cici; Cici looked at Lindsay.
As one, the three women shrugged.

“Oh well,” Bridget said happily
.
“
W
ho cares?
It’s New Year’s Eve, right?
Let’s party!”

~*~

And so, with only four hours’ notice, they pulled together an intimate but elegant New Year’s Eve celebration for five: evergreen boughs and white candles on the mantle, champagne glasses filled with miniature gold and silver balls and draped with rope beading on the coffee table; greenery in the windowsills; and fires dancing in all five of the house’s wood-burning fireplaces. On the menu were Ida Mae’s homemade cheese straws served with Bridget’s smoked salmon and roasted pepper spread, an artichoke-parmesan soup made with the canned artichoke someone had sent them in a gourmet gift basket for Christmas, seafood crepes in a sherry sauce baked with a gouda topping, and—because it was a holiday—Ida Mae’s black chocolate cake served with a warm chocolate ganache and whipped cream.

Parties, even of the impromptu kind, were one thing the ladies did very, very well.

Lindsay had pulled back her auburn hair and donned a satin shirt and black velvet slacks, but her shoes, which had begun to hurt her feet approximately five minutes after she put them on, were discarded in favor of bedroom slippers.
Cici, a tall, freckle-faced honey
-
blonde, honored the occasion with a deep blue velour track suit trimmed in gold piping that made Paul, who wrote a syndicated
s
tyle column for the
Washington
Post
,
roll his eyes in dismay.
“Darling,” he said as he kissed her, “let me know when visiting hours start at the assisted living home.”
To which Cici responded by bopping him on the head with her rolled-up copy of the
Post,
just before accepting the platter of lobster puffs he brought for the party.
Bridget, a petite platinum
-
blond
e
who loved dressing up more than her two younger friends combined, had pulled together a silver
lame´
turtleneck and a long peacock
-
blue skirt with slouch boots and a chunky beach glass necklace that was to die for and which caused Paul, when he saw it, to kiss his fingers to the air and declare, “I am unworthy!”

Paul and Derrick were their oldest friends from the days of Huntington Lane, when they all had been neighbors in the suburbs of Baltimore. Though the couple had initially been as skeptical as everyone else when the three women decided to pool their resources and buy a neglected old mansion on sixteen acres in the Shenandoah Valley—complete with overgrown gardens, crumbling outbuildings, and, as it turned out, livestock—they’d quickly come to love Ladybug Farm almost as much as Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay did. Paul was always on hand with the perfect drapery swatch
or an online source for vintage
reproduction wallpaper patterns. Derrick owned an upscale Georgetown art gallery and had effortlessly taken Noah, who was himself a budding artist, under his wing, even shepherding him through an internship in the gallery over the past summer. When they had all lived within walking distance of each other on Huntington Lane, they spent every holiday together, celebrated birthdays together, took the train to New York for dinner and a show together. Now that they lived almost three hours apart, it sometimes seemed they saw Paul and Derrick even more often than when they lived next door. Though neither of them claimed to be the bucolic type, Paul was wild about Ida Mae’s cooking, and Derrick never tired of admiring the details of the old house’s architecture. Ladybug Farm had become like a second home for Paul and Derrick, but it did not explain why their good friends would have made it a point to drive down from the city twice in the space of two weeks for a holiday visit.

They gathered in the parlor before the fireplace with a little over half an hour to spare before midnight. White candles glowed on the mantelpiece; silver candles sparkled among the beads and champagne glasses on the coffee table. Rain drummed on the roof and logs crackled in the fireplace. Paul made the circuit, topping off everyone’s glasses, and Derrick, settling down into the sofa with his arm stretched along the back, said, “So, Noah is doing the church thing—which I must say I’d find very odd if there weren’t a girl involved—but where’s our princess? Not back at school already?”

Cici held up her glass to be topped off. “Lori and Mark had dinner reservations at some fancy restaurant in Charlottesville. She said they’d try to drop in tonight, but …” she glanced worriedly toward the window, “I’m not crazy about the idea of them driving in this rain.”

As Paul filled Lindsay’s glass with bubbles, an eyebrow lifted. “We like Mark?”

“We adore Mark,” Bridget assured him, holding out her glass. “Even though he did break Lori’s leg.”

“Oh,
that
Mark,” said Derrick, rolling his eyes.

“It was an accident,” Lindsay said, “and he was so sweet afterward that of course she fell in love with him.”

“His mother’s a surgeon,” added Cici, “and his father was in the House of Representatives.”

“State or national?” asked Derrick.

“State.”

“Republican or
D
emocrat?”

“Republican.”

Paul thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, at least they’re rich.”

“They have a house in Maui,” Cici said.

“Some of the greatest romances in history started with a broken leg,” Derrick agreed benignly.

Paul shot him a look. “Name one.”

Derrick drew a breath and Cici supplied firmly, “Mark and Lori.”

“What happened to that fellow in Italy?” Paul wanted to know.

Cici shrugged and sipped her champagne. “He’s in Italy.” She smiled and lifted her glass. “Lori is not.”

The other four raised their glasses in unison, grinning. “Hear, hear.”

“So seriously, you guys,” Cici said, when toasts were drunk and Paul settled down on the sofa beside Derrick, “it’s not that we’re not honored, but what made you decide New Year’s Eve wouldn’t be complete unless you drove three hours in the rain to spend it with us?”

“Ida Mae,” declared Paul, lifting his glass again. He looked around. “Where is she, anyway?”

“Asleep,” said Lindsay, licking bubbles off the side of her glass. “She’s a hundred twenty, for heaven’s sake.”

“But really,” Bridget said, sipping her champagne. “It’s not that we don’t love you, but you couldn’t get better dates for New Year’s Eve?”

Paul and Derrick exchanged a look and a half-grin, and Paul said, “Really? You don’t know?”

Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay looked at each other, each hesitant to admit that yes, in fact, they did not know what Paul and Derrick were referring to. This gave Derrick a chance to go to the hall tree and retrieve a gold-wrapped package from his coat pocket.

“Four years ago,” Paul announced, rising as Derrick returned to the room, “you signed the papers on Ladybug Farm. Happy anniversary, darlings.”

As he spoke, Derrick presented the package with a flourish. For a moment the women just stared at it, motionless. “It’s for all of you,” Derrick prompted, and Bridget snatched the present with a squeal of delight.

“You guys!” she cried, ripping off the paper. “I can’t believe you remembered!”

“I didn’t even remember,” admitted Cici, crowding in to see what Bridget uncovered.

“Four years?” said Lindsay. “Has it been four years?”

“Oh, my goodness,” Bridget breathed. From the gold foil wrapping, she withdrew a slim book with tattered edges and a title stamped in faded gold:
A History
of
Blackwell Farms
. Blackwell Farms had been the name of their property before they bought it.

“Are you kidding me?” Cici exclaimed, diving for the book.

“Really?” Lindsay echoed, scrambling for a look. “Our house? Really? Where did you find it?”

Paul and Derrick beamed at each other. “We wanted to give it to you for Christmas,” Paul admitted, “but it didn’t come in time. We had to order it from a book collector in England.”

“England?” Cici stared at him. “What was it doing there?”

“Who knows?” Both men watched, their smiles uncontained, as the women crowded together, turning the pages.

“Look, it’s our house!”

“Oh my goodness, that’s the original vineyard.”

“Is that Judge Blackwell? Hey, he was good looking.”

“How did you find this?” Bridget demanded, her face glowing as she clutched the book to her chest.

“Fortunately, someone in the Blackwell family thought they were important enough to rate a book,” Derrick said. “It was a limited printing—hardly surprising—and most of them went to family members. We tracked this one down on the Internet.”

Cici pried the book from Bridget’s hands. “Look at this.” Her tone was reverent. “Photographs from the twenties. Look at that staircase.”

Bridget pointed to the opposite page. “Lindsay, look—it’s the folly, when it was first built. It looks like a little fairy castle in the glen with all that gingerbread trim.”

Lindsay leaned in and turned a page. “Oh my God, did you guys see this? There’s a whole section on the Blackwell Farms Winery.” She pulled the book from Cici.

Paul and Derrick sipped their champagne, looking enormously pleased with themselves. “Glad you like it.”

The women flung themselves upon the men, hugging them, spilling champagne, declaring their thanks, and laughing with delight. When they all settled down again, Cici had the book and Lindsay said, “I can’t believe you came all the way down here just to give us this.”

Paul said, “Well, actually ….” But Derrick poked him hard in the ribs.

“Ten minutes ’til countdown,” he said, glancing at the big clock on the mantle. “What are our resolutions?”

Cici looked up suddenly from the book, her head cocked. “What is that?”

“Resolutions,” Paul explained patiently. “It’s a foolish undertaking performed by people worldwide on New Year’s Eve—”

“Seriously, don’t you hear it?” Cici’s brows drew together in a frown. “It sounds like something splattering.”

They all were silent for a moment, listening.

“It’s the fire,” suggested Derrick.

“Or the gutters need cleaning again,” said Bridget.

“I’ll get Noah on it tomorrow,” Lindsay said.

“Resolutions,” Derrick reminded them. “What is everyone going to accomplish this year?”

“Personally,” said Paul, topping off his glass, “I’m hoping to gain ten pounds and drink twice as much. Anyone else?”

The ladies were thoughtful. “Well,” Bridget offered after a moment, “we have two graduations coming up. Lori from college and Noah from high school. And we’ve got to get Noah on those college applications, and—”

Derrick waved his glass dismissingly. “That’s for them, not for you. What are
you
going to do this year?”

Lindsay said, “Wow, that’s funny. Every year since we moved in here we’ve had a list a mile long of New Year’s goals. Getting the gardens back in shape, restoring the ponds, turning the old dairy into an art studio …”

“Repairing the barn, getting all the old furniture out of the attic, restoring the tile in the sunroom, refinishing the floors …”

“Now Lindsay has her art studio,” Bridget said, “and it even has a real bathroom. The sheep and the goat and the chickens all have nice houses, and so do we.”

“And don’t forget I sold a painting last year,” Lindsay reminded her, blowing
a kiss to
Derrick,
whose gallery had managed the sale.

“My Ladybug Farm gift baskets are doing great,” Bridget went on. “My children and grandchildren are happy and well … I can’t think of a single thing I want.” She thought about it for a moment. “I know. Maybe I’ll learn to make goat’s milk soap this year.”