Vintage Ladybug Farm (29 page)

She folded the paper, smiling sadly, and tucked it back into her pocket. They stood together for a long time, not touching, just standing and watching the vines.

Then she said, “I don’t hate you.”

He looked down at her. “I’m glad.”

She turned to him. “I think I love you.”

He said, softly, “I’m glad.”

She went into his arms, and they held each other quietly until the evening leached all the color from the sky.

~*~

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

The Home Front

T
hey planted their garden; they tended the vines; they picked berries. They fed the chickens and cleaned the coop and weeded the flower beds. They painted the steps and washed windows and polished floors. They focused on the things that didn’t change, because they didn’t want to look too closely at how much everything was about to change. And how soon.

L
adybug Farm entered a state of barely controlled chaos. Lori moved in for the summer while Mark attended orientation sessions for his new job and searched for apartments in San Francisco. Bridal magazines and color swatches were scattered all over the house. Noah was constantly in and out, slamming screen doors and thundering up and down the stairs as he tried to balance a dozen good-byes to people all over the county with the last minute details of packing up four years of his life and preparing to move on to his new one. Lindsay pretended to be on board, or at least supportive, but she spent far too much time on the USMC website, viciously clicking the mouse and muttering things like, “Savages!” and “Brutes!” Sometimes when she was in the midst of one of these self-tormenting tirades, Dominic would come looking for her on the pretense of needing help tying up vines or running hoses or aerating soil. He would put a shovel in her hand and dirt would fly, and before long, she was calm again and almost rational.

Bridget was in the midst of a jam-making frenzy, because if one thing was certain it was that time and fresh berries wait for no one. Ida Mae grumbled about the mess the two young people were making all over the house and spent more than the usual amount of time making cookies, which disappeared as fast as she served them. And Cici’s battle with the roofers veered into the red zone.

“What I’m trying to tell you, Ms. Burke,” explained Leroy L. Squire, head roofer, with an exaggerated show of patience, “is that they don’t make these kind of tiles anymore and even if they did, you’re not going to be able to get an exact color match for a roof that’s over a hundred years old.”

“And what I’m trying to tell you,” said Cici through gritted teeth, “is that there is absolutely no excuse for a simple patch job to take five—count them,
five
—months to complete. We’ve lived through the banging and the sawing and the mess long enough. I’m not going to have tarps and piles of shingles all over the yard on the day of my daughter’s wedding!”

He inquired politely, “When is she getting married?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that I want a roof on my house. And I want it now!”

He nodded sagely. “Well, now, as to that, the fact is, we’ve just about got her done. It wouldn’t have taken near as long if we hadn’t had to search all over the country for them matching tiles. Now, if you’d just let me go ahead and put tin on the porch all the way around, you’d have plenty of tiles left over to fix the main roof and it’d look real nice, too. You see that all the time on these old houses, nice tin roofs like that.”

“You are not an architect!” she practically screamed at him. “You don’t get to make design decisions. This is a historic house. This is a Jackson …” She struggled to remember the name Mark’s father had rolled off so readily. “Jason, I mean, Jason Anderson original structure, a part of Virginia history, and you’re not going to just throw a tin roof on it because it’s convenient, is that clear?”

He said, gazing over her head at the problem in question. “Yes’m, I guess so. But I sure don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

Cici drew a long, calming breath. “I’ll tell you what you can do,” she said. “You can pack up your tools and you can leave.”

He looked surprised. “But don’t you want us to—”

“No,” she said. “I don’t.” She turned and marched up the steps. When she reached the porch, she looked back to where he still stood, agape, and repeated sternly, “Tools. Leave.”

She stormed into the parlor and started scrambling through the highboy where Bridget kept odd notes, receipts, and business cards that hadn’t yet been filed away in the office. Ida Mae was running a feather duster over the grand piano and looked up when Cici started unloading papers.

“What’re you tearing up those drawers for?” she asked. “You lose a nail file?”

“I’m looking for that card Paul gave us. I know Bridget put it in here.”

“Well, you’re making a mess that I sure hope you plan on cleaning up.”

“Wait a minute, here it is.” She sank back in triumph, the business card in her hand. “Lincoln Crebbs, General Contractor. “

Ida Mae gave a snort of derision. “I hope you ain’t planning on calling that crook.”

“He’s not a crook. He’s Paul and Derrick’s general contractor. And if he can’t take the time out from building their Taj Mahal to come over and look at our roof, I’ll bet he knows somebody who can.”

Ida Mae grunted. “Yeah, well, good luck finding him. They already tried to put him in jail twice. Now I hear the police are hunting him down again for taking some poor woman’s money and leaving her with a house falling down.” She peered at Cici scornfully. “Don’t y’all ever listen to the radio?”

Cici looked at the card in her hand, an awful feeling creeping over her. She repeated carefully, “Lincoln Crebbs.”

“I heard you the first time.”

Cici demanded, “Ida Mae, are you sure?”

“’Course I’m sure. Why would I make something like that up?”

“Umm,” Cici murmured as she hurried out of the room, “I think I’d better call Paul.”

~*~

Paul and Derrick had settled into the routine of the B&B with surprising ease, despite the fact—or perhaps because of the fact—that their hostess was rarely in evidence, and when she was around, she talked far too much and far too long about her precious grand-triplets. She made an excellent breakfast, however, which they often enjoyed on the garden patio, safely away from the flight path of the hummingbirds, and she always put out a platter of warm cookies in the afternoon, with wine and cheese in the baroque-velvet parlor, promptly at five every evening. In between times, she graciously offered them the use of her kitchen, and they were amazed by how much better a luncheon salad tasted when the lettuce was plucked from the garden twenty steps away, or how exquisite a simple supper of broiled fish and potatoes could be when the ingredients had been purchased fresh from a local market only hours previously. Paul speculated that he might take up gourmet cooking in his retirement. Derrick observed that gardening might not be nearly as pedestrian a hobby as he once imagined.

They had, of course, been devastated by Noah’s announcement and had spent hours going back and forth about the matter—with Lindsay, with Cici, Bridget, and with each other. Finally, they agreed that, as tragic as the whole thing was, there was nothing they could do except to be there for Lindsay. And surprisingly, perhaps, their outrage seemed to have a steadying effect on Lindsay, as every time she talked to them she seemed to grow a little closer to acceptance. It was as though as long as she knew someone still was upset about it, she didn’t have to be.

But with all that was going on at Ladybug Farm, they tried not to insert themselves into the confusion any more than necessary. They took Lori to lunch in Staunton but were dismayed when she spotted a white muslin beach shift in a store window that she claimed was exactly the kind of wedding dress she had in mind. They found a local organic wine and brought it to dinner at Ladybug Farm, and everyone seemed happy that it wasn’t very good. Paul and Derrick were happy that the ladies always kept a bottle of drinkable wine in reserve for emergencies.

They wandered the countryside during the day, visiting the antique shops, photographing the scenery, taking in the local color. In the afternoons, they enjoyed socializing with the other guests, sharing a fine local cheese they found or introducing a neophyte to a sophisticated new wine. Sometimes they would dabble around in the kitchen, experimenting with flavors, and come up with a platter of hors d’oeuvres to serve in the garden at cocktail hour. They met all kinds of interesting people, which, being the social sort themselves, was essential to their well-being. Because Miss Amelia was always going out of her way to accommodate them and often worked far into the night trying to keep up with the needs of her guests and the needs of her daughter’s new babies, they didn’t mind helping her out now and again by filling the bird feeders or taking reservations when she was away from her office. In fact, they rather enjoyed it.

As a gift to their hostess, Derrick bought proper art lights and arranged the little gallery in the foyer in a much more well-merchandized way. He even picked up a couple of primitive paintings that he liked from a local artist, added a zero to the price he paid for them, and hung them for sale beside Noah’s and Lindsay’s work. A young couple from Atlanta bought one of the primitives three days after he hung it, and that very weekend a woman who was redecorating her country house bought Lindsay’s painting of the fox. Amelia was beside herself with excitement and wanted to share the profit with Derrick; Derrick just smiled and waved her away. “My dear,” he assured her, “this is what I
do
.” And he discreetly added another zero to the price of Lindsay’s flower basket painting.

They thought they would be bored after a couple of days at the B&B but were amazed at how many ways they found to fill the days. They were a little anxious at first about the slow progress on the house, but the contractor assured them that once the marble arrived from Italy, things would go much faster. And he promised them they would be in their new house by the end of summer, so in truth, they really weren’t much behind schedule at all.

And then Cici called.

~*~

They didn’t panic until they tried to reach Lincoln Crebbs for two days and received nothing but a “voice mail is full” message. It was Cici’s idea to have a certified building inspector come out and look at the place and, using all her charm, was able to persuade a local man to meet them there early Sunday morning. Cici agreed to come along for moral support.

Viewed from the car, the building site looked as it always did—a big rambling skeleton covered in blue house wrap, sitting in the middle of a giant mud hole. Parts of the roof were covered with strips of plywood and parts were not. They supposed that was why there were puddles of standing water on the concrete floor of what was to be their wine cellar.

This time they’d worn boots, and they got out of the car slowly, noting the official-looking man with the hardhat and the clipboard who was walking around the structure with a studious look on his face. “Guys,” said Cici in a puzzled voice as she exited the backseat. “Wasn’t this supposed to be a two-story house?”

“With a wine cellar,” Paul agreed. “Why?”

She gestured helplessly. “No floors.”

Derrick frowned. “Don’t they go in last?”

The look on Cici’s face—a mixture of alarm and pity—told them they were in real trouble. The three of them scrambled down the muddy hill to meet the inspector.

“The upshot of it is,” said Matthew Shaw, building inspector, when all the introductions were made, “you’ve got yourself some pretty shoddy construction here. It’s framed twenty-six inches on center—whoever heard of that?—and the roof decking is quarter-inch interior plywood; that’s all going to have to be ripped off. And see here, where they started roughing in your plumbing? Both lines are plain PVC, which means the first time you turn on the hot water, it’s all going to blow apart.”

Paul said in a sick voice, “We paid for copper.”

Cici squeezed his arm sympathetically. “I don’t see any supports for the floor joists,” she said, glancing around.

“That’s because there aren’t any,” said Matthew Shaw, looking grim. “All in all, I’d say you all were lucky to catch this when you did … except for one thing.” He walked over and scuffed his boot meaningfully through a three-inch pool of standing water that covered a good half of the concrete floor.

“Poor drainage?” suggested Derrick, weakly.

Cici said, “Where’s it coming from? We haven’t had that much rain, and even without a roof, that much water shouldn’t still be standing.”

Wordlessly, the inspector led the way to the northeast corner of the block foundation. They followed in helpless dread, their footsteps echoing wetly on the floor. There they stood, staring in disbelief at the steady stream of water that was gurgling down the already-cracked wall.

“Looks to me,” said the inspector simply, “like they built your house where your swimming pool was supposed to be.”