A Wedding on Ladybug Farm (15 page)

The follies of the grand European estates of the time were often open-sided pavilions shaped like pyramids or the Grecian Coliseum or even cathedrals. They served absolutely no purpose except as an architectural indulgence, but were usually elaborately designed and constructed.  The folly that the Blackwells had built to accent their garden had been a bit more practical, with a door and windows, marble floors, a wraparound porch and a fireplace with carved cherubs.  It looked like a little fairy house with its pointed tin ceiling, octagonal shape, and excessive gingerbread trim.  Garden parties once had been held there, along with ladies’ afternoon teas and even a wedding or two.  It had fallen into disrepair over the years, and the woods had grown up to hide it so completely that the ladies might never have known it was there had not Lindsay happened to stumble on it during an afternoon walk.  It had quickly become Lindsay’s favorite place on the entire property, and earlier that year Dominic and Noah had restored it back to its former glory, replacing the broken windows, shoring up the sagging porch, painting it the same deep green it once had been, with white trim and a bright yellow door.  Lindsay used it as her art studio now, and sometimes she and Dominic would have lunch here, or a picnic supper with wine and candles.  It had become their place. 

Dominic slipped his arm around her waist as they walked down the path toward the folly.  He said, “In the first place, we already are a family—you, me, Noah, and Bridget and Cici and Lori, too. 
A piece of paper and some vows won’t make that any more true, and you of all people should know that.”

She ducked her head a little, embarrassed.  “I do know that.
Of course I do.”

“And in the second place,” said Dominic, holding aside a low-hanging branch that had encroached partway across the path, “I’m really not sure how much more magic you think this wedding of ours needs, because it seems to me like we’ve already gotten more than our share.  At least I know I have.”

She smiled.  “That’s sweet of you to say.”

“I’m serious.”  His fingers caressed her back in silence for a few steps, and when he spoke again his tone was somber.  “When Carol died, it was a dark time for me.  We’d been married almost thirty years, and with the kids gone
… it wasn’t easy to get used to, not any of it. Eventually, of course, I left South Carolina, moved back here, settled in, started over, because that’s what you do.  You go on.  I’d had a good life, better than most men, better than I deserved.  I’d loved a good woman, raised great kids, done interesting work.  But it was over, or at least that’s the way it seemed, and all that was left for me now was just to go through the motions and wait for time to spin out.  And then that young Lori came bouncing into my office one day talking about opening up a winery, and then I met you ladies, and  next thing I know I’m back home again, working the same vines I grew up with, watching a dream come true that I’d given up on forty years earlier.  And if that wasn’t enough, there was you, and you snatched my heart right out of my chest the first time I laid eyes on you.  It would have been more than I could ask for just to be here, and get to look at you every day, just to feel the way you made me feel.  But you loved me back.  You actually wanted to marry me.  I thought my life was over … and then it started up again, better than ever.  Honey …” He stopped as they reached the folly, and turned her in his arms, looked down at her quietly.  “If that’s not magic, I don’t know what it is.” 

Lindsay circled her arms around his neck and tilted her head back to look up at him.  What she saw filled her eyes with gentle wonder, as it so often did. “You,” she said softly, “are the most incredible man.  I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I’m so glad I did it.”

“Then, my darling girl …” he stroked her cheek with his knuckles, his eyes quiet with gentle question as he studied hers. “What are you so afraid of?”

She searched his eyes.  “Dominic
… what if your children don’t like me?”

He looked puzzled by the question.  “Of course they’ll like you, cherie.  Everyone likes you.”

“But,” she insisted, “what if they don’t?  Or … or what if I don’t like them?  It’s different with you,” she rushed on.  “You’ve already met everyone I love, and they love you back.  But … these are your children, and they will always be your children, and … what if they don’t like me?”

He nodded thoughtfully, understanding.  “Well then,” he decided after a moment, “I’ll simply have to disown them, won’t I?  Take them out of the will, turn their pictures against the wall, strike their names from the family Bible.”

She gave a nervous, self-deprecating laugh, and started to turn away. He clasped her hands and brought her back to him, his expression serious.  “Lindsay, love, I’m proud of my children and I’ll always love them.  But do you remember that life I told you about, the one before you?  That’s where I raised them to be strong and independent, and now they’re off living their own lives, being exactly what I taught them to be, and they’ve been doing that for a good many years now.  They have no part in the life you and I are building together, and they know that.  Although,” he added, coaxing a smile, “they’re always welcome to visit, I hope.”

“Of course!”
she said swiftly, and she looked both embarrassed and relieved.  Her shoulders even sagged a little, as though having suddenly released an invisible burden. “I know that.  I know everything you said is true, but …”  She pressed her face against his shoulder, hiding it.  “Do you remember the first time you brought me here?”

“I do.”

“You told me you loved me, and I … wouldn’t say it back.”

“I noticed.”

“I wanted to,” she assured him with another quick, apologetic glance.  “But I couldn’t. Because you said something else that day, do you remember?”

“No.”  He cupped his hand against the back of her head, twining his fingers lightly through her hair.  “But if it made you hold your tongue
, I’m sure it was very foolish.”

“Actually, it was pretty smart.  You said we’d both seen too many summers to make mistakes.”  She stepped back a little so that she could look up at him, trailing her hands down his arms until she entwined her fingers with his.  “Everything is so perfect, Dominic.  You are so perfect, and I waited so long to find you, and I only get one chance to do this right. I don’t want to make a mistake.  Not with the wedding, not with the reception, not with you, not with anything or anyone that’s important to you.  But it seems that the harder I try to make everything perfect, the more mistakes I make. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

His eyes crinkled with a smile.  “Well, let me ease your mind on that score.  You will disappoint me someday, just like I’ll disappoint you.  That’s the half the fun of growing old together, learning about the parts that fit together and the parts that don’t and deciding that both those things are okay.  As for the wedding—I hope it’s not perfect.  I hope it rains, or the dog runs away with the ham, or someone drops the ring in the mud, because that’s what memories are made of, now aren’t they?”

Her eyes went wide and dark with anxiety.  “The dog!  I didn’t even think about the dog!”

He threw back his head and laughed.  “You see, cherie, why I love you so?”  He dropped a kiss on her nose, and then on her lips, tenderly.  “Thank you for not being perfect.”

He stepped away and tugged at her hand.  “But I didn’t bring you here to fritter away the day with kisses, as sweet as they are.  I have a wedding gift for you.”

“A wedding gift?  Oh Dominic, I didn’t think we were going to …”

He covered her eyes with his hand and encircled her waist with his other arm, guiding her around the small building.  “Step lightly, now,” he cautioned.  “Lean on me.”

“Dominic, what …”

He stopped and turned her forty-five degrees, and then removed his hand from her eyes.  Lindsay blinked and looked around, unsure at first about what she was seeing.

On the east side of the folly, just where the creek bank curved into a small noisy waterfall, an area of about twenty square feet had been mowed flat and staked off with contractor’s tape.  The path down which they had just walked from the barn widened and circled around almost like a driveway.  Lindsay looked up at him, puzzled. 

“I have a contract on my house,” he told her.  “We close in thirty days.”

She squealed out loud with delight and hugged him hard.  “Dominic, that’s wonderful!  I’m so excited for you! Oh my goodness.” She stepped back on a breath, her hands clasped together against her lips, her eyes shining with wonder and no small amount of trepidation.  “This is really happening.  We’re really getting married.”

“I certainly hope so,” he confessed, eyes twinkling, “otherwise I’m going to be homeless.” 

She laughed and threw her arms around his neck again.  “I’ll start helping you pack tomorrow.  The girls can help too.  Oh my.”  She sank back again, arms still looped around his neck, only this time she looked uneasy.  “There’s an awful lot to do.”

“Not as much as you think.  The couple is buying it furnished.  All I need to pack are my clothes and tools.  But that’s not why I brought you here.”

He turned her again to face the taped-off square of ground and explained, “I thought we could use the profit from the sale to build our own place.  Here.”

She blinked and stared at him.

“The structure is sound,” he went on, “and there’s plenty of room for a small kitchen.  We’ll enclose the west side of the porch for your studio.  You said the light is best there, anyway.  And this …” he strode around the taped area gesturing, “is the master suite, with a small screen porch overlooking the creek and big windows on either side.  The spring is plenty deep enough for a gravity fed water system, and it’s only a hundred feet or so to run utilities from the main power pole at the street.  This is good flat bottom land, fine for gardening, and if we thin out a few of those saplings to let the sun in, your roses with thrive here.  Look …”  He extended his hand to her.  “I’ve already started your garden.”

Wordlessly, she followed him around the side of the building, to where a
trellis had been built adjacent to the eastern column of the little porch. In the center of a freshly mulched circle of earth was a new rose cutting.

“A rose,” she said, kneeling to look at it.

“Not just any rose,” he corrected, smiling as he watched her.  “Your rose.  The Lindsay rose.”

For their first Valentine’s Day together
, Dominic had given her a rose bush that he had cultivated specifically and named for her because, he said, the color of its bloom reminded him of the color of her hair.  If she were perfectly honest with herself, Lindsay would have to admit that it was at that moment that she had known somewhere deep inside that he was the man she wanted to marry.  They had planted the original bush in the formal rose garden beside the house, but he must have kept a cutting and rooted it for an occasion just such as this.

“I ran an irrigation hose from the stream,” he explained, “to keep it watered for the next couple of weeks.  But it gets plenty of sun here, and by
the time we’re settled in here next spring, it should be blooming like crazy.  And every time it does, it will remind you of our union, and the life we’re making together.”

Lindsay
stood and walked to him, took his face between her hands, and kissed him hard on the mouth, and then, melting into his embrace, more tenderly.  “You,” she said softly, “sure know how to brighten my day.  In fact, you brighten my whole life.  Thank you for the rose.”

He smiled into her eyes.  “You’re more than welcome, my love.  We’ll put up a picket fence to keep the deer out, and paint it white.  This place will be a little paradise in the glen.”

“But Dominic …”  She hardly knew where to start, or what to say.  She looked around, and all she saw was love.  She looked at him, and she knew she was exactly where she wanted to be.  So all she said was, “I’ve never transplanted a rose this late in the season before.  Not in this zone, anyway.  Shouldn’t we have waited until spring?”

“Not at all.  Roses do best when exposed to a little stress.  It makes them stronger. “He smiled and tweaked her nose.  “Just like people.”

She turned and leaned back against him, looking at the folly and the beginning of the little garden he had started, relaxing in the circle of his arms.  “Wouldn’t it be something to bring the old gardens back the way they used to be?  We could plant the whole place with Lindsay roses.”

“We could do that,” he agreed thoughtfully.  “But it would be more practical to clear the land for vines.”

She cast an amused glanced toward him. “Well, that’s a relief.  I was afraid you might be getting too sentimental.”

His eyes twinkled.  “You see?  I told you I would disappoint you one day.  And now it’s out of the way.  But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll make a point of saving room for your rose garden.”

“I appreciate that.”

Lindsay couldn’t help smiling as she turned back to look at the folly with its gingerbread trim and fairy-tale columns,  the imaginary white picket fence upon which roses would climb and nod their heads in the breeze.  The bright gurgling stream, the cottage kitchen with herbs in the window boxes, the screen porch where they would sit in the swing and have morning coffee.  The winter evenings when they would sit beside the cherub-etched fireplace and watch snow fall silently in the woods.  The life that would unfold in quiet contentment before them here, in this enchanted place.