Vintage Ladybug Farm (31 page)

Cici said, “I know, honey, but summer will be gone before you know it and there are decisions that have to be made. Maybe,” she suggested hopefully, “while Mark is here next week, we can all sit down together and make some of them.”

“Sure.” Lori returned a brief, absent smile. “Sounds great.”

“In fact,” pursued Cici, “you don’t look particularly busy right now, so why don’t I go get the list and we can get a head start? But first …” She looked down at the book in her hand as she stood, and the expression on her face was deeply regretful, almost apologetic. “I have to talk to a man about a roof.”

~*~

Amelia Wriggly’s plump chin quivered and her eyes grew bright with tears when Paul and Derrick told her what they had done.

“You …” Her voice was high and thin. “Did that … for
me
?”

She was a short, round woman with Miss Clairol champagne-blond hair, always perfectly curled and heavily sprayed, and a penchant for sweatshirts with pictures of cats on them. Today, she wore one with three sleeping kittens in a basket and the slogan
Puuur
…
fect
,
along with a flowered cotton skirt and pearl earrings. She was sweet, and a good cook, but a fashion plate she would never be. Her usually immaculately powdered and rouged face was showing the wear of the day, and she stared at them in awed disbelief.

“Well, we couldn’t turn all those people away,” Paul explained. “There would’ve been a riot.”

“And it really wasn’t that difficult,” Derrick added. “In fact …” he shared a look of modest triumph with his partner, “it was rather exhilarating, facing down a crisis and rising to the occasion like that. I made bellinis …”

“While I whipped together a frittata.”

“There were all those breakfast steaks in the freezer …”

“Which I served with a champagne sauce I learned to make from the food editor at the
Post
,
”
Paul said. “One-two-three, never fails.”

“Then we mixed canned cherries with brandy to make cherries jubilee and served it over store-bought vanilla ice cream from the freezer,” Derrick said. “Our friend Bridget taught us that. We served family style and everyone seemed to love it.”

“Of course,” Paul felt compelled to point out, “they had a quite a few bellinis by that time.”

“I worked the front of the house and Paul worked the back,” said Derrick with a self-satisfied nod. “We were a well-oiled machine.”

“We were magnificent,” agreed Paul, grinning at him.

Amelia Wriggly burst into tears.

Paul rushed to her while Derrick hurried to snatch a box of tissues from the storage closet. “Dear lady, we are cads, utter cads,” exclaimed Paul. He put a solicitous arm around her shoulders and led her to the velvet sofa in the sitting room. “You must be exhausted, and here we are going on and on …”

“We did all the washing up,” Derrick assured her, pressing a tissue into her hand as she sank down on the sofa. “The kitchen is spotless and all the receipts are safely locked away, so you don’t have to worry about a thing. You just relax and rest. I can’t imagine how stressful this has all been for you.”

“It’s not that,” she sobbed into the tissue. “I mean it is, of course, the stress … It’s just that you’re so sweet …”

They sat, one on either side of her, and patted her hands. “It was our pleasure. You’ve made us feel so at home here, anything we can do for you only brings us joy.”

She sobbed harder. Paul and Derrick looked at each other over her bowed head, puzzled and at a loss.

“And now …” She sniffed, blotted her eyes, and tried to compose herself. “You’re just the sweetest things, and now that just makes what I have to tell you that much harder.”

She straightened up, blew her nose, and seemed to strengthen her resolve. They waited in a mixture of dread and expectation.

“Boys,” she said, “I’m so sorry, but I’m closing the B&B. My daughter and her husband have been begging me to move in with them for years,” she went on hurriedly, as though speaking quickly would take away some of the sting of her announcement. “They even have an in-law suite all ready for me. I only opened this place to keep myself busy after my darling Andy passed, but now, with the triplets … Well, it’s clear she can’t manage by herself, and all this running back and forth is killing me. And forgetting about the brunch on Sunday—I declare, it never once crossed my mind!—well, that only goes to prove I can’t keep up with both jobs. So.” She took a deep breath. “I have to let it go. I’m putting the place on the market and closing down after this week’s reservations check out.”

Derrick sank back against the sofa cushions, heavy with disbelief. “We really
are
homeless.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said helplessly.

“It’s all right.” Paul sounded stunned. “As our young friend Noah would say, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

Derrick smiled wanly. “We’ve really grown fond of this place. I’ll miss it.”

Amelia gave an impatient wave of her hand. “I’ve been a terrible hostess. I’m surprised you stayed this long. You’ve done most of the work yourselves, cooking your own meals, doing your own laundry, even taking reservations when I wasn’t here.”

“That was half the fun,” Paul assured her.

“We enjoyed helping out,”
Derrick agreed. “Who knew running a B&B could be so satisfying?”

“We definitely made a good team yesterday,” Paul said, and then he looked at Derrick, the slow kernel of an idea forming in his eyes. “Didn’t we?”

Derrick’s expression grew cautious. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Why not? It’s not like we have anywhere else to go.”

“And we can definitely use the extra income.” The excitement in Derrick’s eyes was growing.

“And I really
was
starting to like the country.” Paul grinned.

“I would expand the gallery,” Derrick said.

“And I’d knock out that back wall and put in a spa—”

“With a massage room!”

Amelia looked from one to the other of them in growing confusion. Over her head, Paul and Derrick beamed at each other.

“How much do you want for it?” they said as one.

~*~

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Summer Wine

N
oah came down the stairs with his duffel over his shoulder and paused on the landing, just for a minute, to look around the old place one last time. He didn’t like the way that made him feel, so he quickly moved on.

The house was quiet, but it often was this time of day, and no one seemed to be around but Cici, who was absently leafing through a magazine on the front porch. He set down his duffel just inside the door and went out.

“Well,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I guess I’m ready. My room’s all cleaned out. I boxed up my stuff in the attic, in case you need the room for something.”

She glanced up with a brief smile, turning a page. “That’s nice, Noah. Thank you.”

“I thought, you know, maybe the guys might be moving in here. You know, now that I’m going.”

“Umm. I think they made other plans.”

She seemed to be very absorbed in an article about composting toilets. Funnily enough, he couldn’t remember ever seeing her just sitting around reading a magazine in the middle of the day before.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat a little. “I don’t have to be in Charlottesville until four. I guess I’ll give the grass one last mowing.”

“That’d be nice.” She didn’t look up.

“It’s growing pretty fast now. You all are going to have to find somebody to take over for me pretty quick.”

“I’m sure we won’t have any trouble.”

He waited for her to say something else, but she just kept reading. So he shrugged unhappily and started down the steps. “I’ll get to it, then.”

“Oh, Noah, I almost forgot.” She closed the magazine then and stood up. “Lindsay wanted you to bring down some boxes from the loft in the dairy before you leave. Some old frames and things that she wants to get rid of. Do you mind doing that before you start the lawn? I’ll show you which ones.”

“Sure.” He tried not to sound as low as he felt. “Might as well.”

She walked with him across the yard to the dairy barn, now known as The Tasting Table, and he couldn’t help but notice all the cars parked around it. “What are all those people doing here?”

“Oh, I think Dominic is doing something with the wine today,” Cici replied vaguely. “I’m not sure what.”

“He didn’t forget he’s supposed to drive me to Charlottesville, did he? I can’t miss that bus.”

“I’m sure he’ll be finished in time.”

He stopped just outside the door and turned to looked around: the freshly-painted barn that he had helped build himself, the new gravel road that encircled it, the rows of green vines stretching out beyond it—how many holes had he dug for those?—the chicken yard filled with clucking, fluffed-up, different-colored chickens, and the goat house he’d spent a good part of last spring building by hand. The vegetable garden he’d helped dig, now green with tomato vines and corn and beans climbing between the stalks. The dairy barn, where he used to sit and have his lessons, and afterwards, Lindsay would pull out the canvases and they would paint together. He had always loved the smell of it—oil paint and chalk dust. Now it was a restaurant, and the barn was a winery, and people were just driving up here and parking any time of the day. He gave a small shake of his head.

“Man, things sure have changed around here in four years,” he said.

Cici smiled and touched his arm lightly. “Yes,” she agreed, “they have.”

Then she opened the door and stepped back to let him enter first. He crossed the threshold and an entire roomful of people burst into applause. He just stood there in astonishment.

There was a big red, white, and blue banner across the width of the room that read “Good Luck, Noah” and there were American flags all down the length of the long table, and red, white, and blue bunting on every vertical surface. Everyone was cheering and clapping and from a set of hidden speakers somewhere, The Marine Corps Hymn started playing. Amy was there, and Reverend and Mrs. Holland, and Farley, and lots of people from the church, and Jonesie and his wife from the hardware store where Noah worked for the past four years, and Paul and Derrick, and Dominic, of course, and Lori was bouncing up and down in the crowd, pumping her fist and giving him the Marine Corps
BooYah
!
As he stood there in speechless amazement, Lindsay pushed forward from the back of the crowd, her eyes bright and her face stretched into a smile, and hugged him hard. “You didn’t really think we’d let you get out of here without a going-away party, did you?”

Then Cici pushed her aside to hug his neck, laughing, and then Bridget, and then there was Amy, and he could hardly catch his breath for the people pounding him on the back and shaking his hand and making him feel like somebody special. It wasn’t until he had a minute to look up from all the hugging and handshaking and people wishing him well that he saw Cici and Bridget and Lindsay, standing with their arms linked and smiling at him and looking so proud and excited and sad that he realized it was true: he was somebody special. And it wasn’t hard to figure out why.

Lindsay said, pushing at her damp eyes with her fingertips, “I wish someone would turn off that damn music. It always makes me cry.”

“I love the Marine Corps Hymn,” Bridget objected, although her voice sounded a little wet. “Especially the last part, about getting to heaven and finding the streets are guarded by … United States … Marines.” Her voice broke on the last and she turned away, blowing her nose hard.

Cici bravely dashed away tears with the back of her hand. “Kids grow up,” she said. “If they don’t, we haven’t done our jobs.” She gave a fierce, determined nod of her head, sniffing. “We did our job.”

Dominic came up behind them and dropped one hand on Cici’s shoulder, the other on Bridget’s, leaving Lindsay in the center of the embrace. “Now then, my ladies,” he said softly, “chins up. There’s nothing a soldier hates worse than to see his mother cry. Happy thoughts, eh?”

At that moment, the stirring anthem came to an end and was replaced by an up-tempo and completely inappropriate selection from Kat
y
Perry, and all three women managed to laugh. Lori was playing DJ.

There were speeches—mostly from the preacher—and sentimental well-wishes and funny stories from people who had known Noah since he was a ragged kid darting in and out of trouble all over the county. There was food and lots of it: Bridget’s tomato tarts and Ida Mae’s meatballs, ribs soaked in red sauce, fluffy rolls stuffed with ham salad, deviled eggs and coleslaw, and a huge sheet cake decorated with a pretty fair replica of the eagle, globe, and anchor emblem of the United States Marine Corps.