A Wedding on Ladybug Farm

by Donna Ball

  Bridget looked at her with an understanding, sympathetic smile, but Lindsay protested, “Things may be different, but they’re better. Change doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.”

  “I know.” Cici blinked, surprised to feel the salty blur of tears. “But even good change is hard sometimes. We have Dominic and the winery and you’re getting married and Paul and Derrick are living practically next door again and all of that is fabulous. But …” she cast an apologetic glance around the group, “as amazing as all that is, and it is amazing, I miss the way things used to be. My kid is having the time of her life in Italy, but I never hear from her and that makes me sad. And look at this place.” A brief gesture encompassed the mountains, the lawns, the vines, the outbuildings. “It’s more than we could have imagined when we started out. Remember how we almost froze to death that first winter? It’s not that I ever want to go back there, or do the work that we did again to get here, but …” A brief, nostalgic smile touched her lips as she looked down into her glass, a little embarrassed. “I kind of miss the women we were then. And Maggie was a part of that.”

  Lindsay admitted uncomfortably, “I guess it was a little selfish of me to worry about not being able to use roses for the wedding. Without Maggie, there wouldn’t even be a wedding.”

  The four of them were silent for a moment, contemplating the enormity of that truth. Then Dominic lifted his glass to the distant mountains, the sunset, the shadows sighing across the lawn. “To Maggie,” he said. “You brought me my love …” he glanced at Lindsay, “my dear ladies …” the other two smiled as his gaze turned to them, “and you brought us all home. You will be remembered.”

  Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget lifted their glasses to his. “To Maggie,” Bridget said, and added simply, “Thank you.”

  And when they drank, it was as much to themselves as to the one they had lost.

  ~*~

  Chapter Two

  There’s Nothing Like a Good Plan

  Late-summer mornings on Ladybug Farm began with the butter-yellow square of sunlight that crept across the age-worn brick floor of the kitchen from the east-facing window that opened onto the dining porch. A breeze might ruffle the blue tablecloth that draped the table there; a jewel of dew might glint from the lacy fabric of a spider web that spanned the petals of a fading hydrangea blossom in the garden below. The flutter of wings announced an early bird at the feeder while inside the kitchen a cupboard would open and close and utensils would rattle in the drawer as Ida Mae officially announced the beginning of a new day. In a moment the aroma of coffee would begin to waft its way throughout the house, perhaps to be joined in a few moments by the smell of cherry muffins baking or—if Ida Mae was feeling particularly contrary, because she knew the ladies were always watching their weight—bacon frying in the pan.

  The rooster would crow lazily and the chickens would begin to cackle, the nanny goat would bleat a greeting, and Rebel the border collie would bark back. Before long the ladies would descend the grand staircase in their nightshirts and light summer robes, slippers scuffing and clattering on the polished mahogany treads. Coffee in hand, they would settle into the wicker chairs that were drawn up around porch table and gaze out over the damp morning lawn with its colorful gardens and winding stone paths, listen to the birds chirping and rustling in the trees, and plan their day.

  On most mornings.

  On this morning, the first drops of coffee had barely begun to sizzle on the bottom of the automatic coffeemaker’s carafe when Lindsay burst into Cici’s room after the briefest of knocks and tugged the covers off her shoulders. “Family meeting,” she said urgently, “Downstairs in ten minutes.”

  Cici bolted upright. “What happened? Is it Noah? Did Lori call?”

  “No,” Lindsay replied, “this is about me.”

  When Cici groaned and pulled the pillow over her head, Lindsay jerked it away and pummeled her lightly with it. “Hurry!” she called as she rushed from the room.

  She crossed the wide, plantation-style hall and burst into Bridget’s room in a similar fashion, her unbelted robe flowing behind her and bare feet slapping on the floor as she strode across the room. She swept open the heavy celadon damask drapes, then, for good measure, the embroidered ivory sheers. Bridget had done her room in an elegant Victorian style, which suited her personality, with floor-to-ceiling draperies, chandelier lamps, needlepoint footstools, and fringed throws. She was all but lost in the tall four-poster bed, squinting quizzically at Lindsay through the veil of her tousled bob as she pushed herself to a sitting position.

  “What? What’s wrong? Is it the kids? Have you heard from Noah? Is he okay?”

  “No, they’re fine,” Lindsay assured her quickly, “but this is still important. Family meeting,” she declared just before she sailed from the room, “ten minutes, in the kitchen.”

  “What is it?” demanded Bridget, flinging back the covers. “Is somebody in trouble?”

  “Yes,” Lindsay replied over her shoulder. “Me!”

  Their faces barely washed and their hair barely brushed, Bridget and Cici met Lindsay in the big country kitchen slightly over ten minutes later. Ida Mae greeted them with a sour look. “Y’all’re up with the chickens this morning,” she said. “You gonna want eggs?”

  “No, thank you, Ida Mae.” Bridget opened the refrigerator door. “Just cereal and fruit for me.”

  “Good.” Ida Mae started cracking eggs and separating the whites from the yolks into two bowls. “I’m gonna need them all for my angel food cake.”

  Cici smothered a yawn as she poured a cup of coffee. “You’re making a cake? We still have half a pie left.”

  “Not for you. For poor old Mr. Farley. He’s got nobody to cook for him now. You all can take it over to him after lunch.”

  Lindsay pushed the refrigerator door closed. “We’ll eat later,” she told Bridget. “This is an emergency.”

  “You know, Linds,” Cici pointed out, “when you have one child serving in a war zone and another living halfway across the world with a complete stranger doing who-knows-what, ‘emergency’ is probably not a word you should bandy about at five forty-five in the morning.”

  Lindsay looked briefly chagrined. “I know. I’m sorry. But I was up half the night. I might not be thinking clearly.”

  Cici added to Ida Mae, “I’m sure Farley will appreciate the cake, but as far as I know, he never had anybody to cook for him but you and Bridget.”

  “Cici, focus, please?” Lindsay glanced frantically at the big Westminster kitchen clock on the wall. “Dominic will be here at seven and you know he always comes in for coffee. Ida Mae, this involves you, too. Everybody, sit down.”

  Lindsay took her place at the hickory table that was set in front of a now-empty fireplace, moving aside the vase of wildflowers to make room for the papers she had assembled during the long sleepless early morning hours. Bridget stirred sugar into her coffee, Cici raised a questioning eyebrow, and Ida Mae announced, “I’m not about to let my egg whites go flat listening to your folderol. I can hear you just fine from here.”

  Cici sat down, turning one of the papers toward her curiously. “What’s this all about? What are you doing with our purchase agreement for the house?”

  A sudden alarm shadowed Bridget’s eyes as she came over to the table. “Lindsay, you’re not going to sell your share, are you? You promised you wouldn’t!”

  Cici shot Bridget a quick warning look. “Not that we wouldn’t understand if you did,” she said. “That’s why we have a contract. We just hope you won’t.”

  Lindsay was shaking her head before Cici finished speaking. “No, that’s not it. I told you, I’m not leaving Ladybug Farm. The thing is …” She drew in a deep breath, folded her hands in her lap, and announced, “I’m getting married.”

  Bridget eased into her chair, sighing in relief. Cici sipped her coffee.

  “Seriously,” Lindsay said. She looked expectantly from one to the other of them. “October twenty-fift
h.”

  Ida Mae grunted skeptically and cracked another egg sharply against the side of the bowl.

  Bridget said, “Ida Mae, save a couple of eggs and I’ll make pancakes.” She smiled. “That’ll be a nice surprise for Dominic when he comes in.”

  Cici said, “I’ll bet we have some strawberries in the freezer. I’ll get them.”

  She started to get up, but Lindsay startled them both by slapping a manila folder down hard upon the center of the table. Cici sank back down into her chair. Bridget stared at her. Lindsay’s expression was completely without mirth.

  “October twenty-fifth,” she repeated sternly. “That’s barely six weeks away. This …” she took one paper out of the folder and shoved it toward Bridget, “is the guest list. You’re in charge of the invitations. This …” another paper went to Cici, “is the diagram of the wedding ceremony and the reception. You’re in charge of set up. This …” she presented another paper to Bridget, “is a sketch of my cake. White chocolate with raspberry filling and …” she tossed a triumphant look to both of them, “white chocolate roses with raspberry centers. Paul said you can order them online. Speaking of which—I mean whom—he’ll be over for lunch to iron out the details. He’s also bringing some shoes for me to try on with the gown.”

  “What about us?” Bridget put in hopefully. “Is he bringing bridesmaids gowns too?”

  Paul Slater had been a syndicated style columnist and a widely acclaimed fashion guru before retiring with his partner Derrick only months ago to open the Hummingbird House B&B a few miles down the road from Ladybug Farm. He could still have his choice of designer gowns, shoes, and accessories delivered into his hands with nothing more than a phone call and the mention of a favor, which was how Lindsay came to be wearing Vera Wang at her wedding and her friends had hopes of doing the same.

  “Don’t be silly,” Lindsay answered. “We can’t order the gowns until we decide on the color scheme. Now.”

  She reached for another manila folder and began to sort through more papers. “These are the legal documents we have to talk about. I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with Delores, and she says we really need to modify our house-sharing contract if Dominic is going to move in here, even though my part of the deed will stay in my name—which I’m not changing, by the way. My name, I mean. After all, we’ll be four now, and that changes everything.”

  Ida Mae said sharply, “What do you mean, you’re not changing your name? You’re getting married!”

  “Women don’t do that anymore, Ida Mae,” said Cici, pulling one of the papers from the folder and glancing at it.

  “Besides, at my age it’s too much of a hassle,” Lindsay explained. “Can you imagine all the places I’d have to notify after all these years? Social Security, driver’s license, pension fund, insurance, bank account … the paperwork alone would take the rest of my life.”

  “It’s a crazy custom anyway,” said Cici, who had resumed her maiden name after her divorce. “You’d think we would have done away with it by now. Why can’t men change their names when they get married? Let them deal with the hassle.”

  Lindsay grinned. “I like it. Brand him like a cow so everyone will know who he belongs to.”

  “Why not? They’ve been doing it to us for centuries.”

  “That’s not why it got started,” Bridget said absently, turning a page on the guest list. “Having the women and children all take the man’s surname was just a way of keeping up with family units.”

  “Even more ridiculous then,” Cici said. “Anybody can claim to be a child’s father, but there’s never any doubt who the mother is. So children should take their mothers’ last names. And so should husbands.”

  Ida Mae gave a disgusted sniff. “You women are an abomination unto the Lord. A woman takes her husband’s name and that’s that. You take your filthy mouths to somebody else’s table.”

  “We didn’t say anything dirty,” Lindsay objected.

  “Um, Lindsay.” Bridget looked up from the guest list. “There are a hundred forty-eight people here. We don’t even know that many people.”

  “I know,” Lindsay admitted, looking worried, “but Dominic knows everyone in town, plus the people he worked with at Clemson, plus his family, who’ll be coming in from all over the country—that reminds me, I’ve got to make reservations at the Hummingbird House—and I don’t know where to start trimming it down. I’ve been working on it for weeks.”

  “Simple,” said Cici, taking the list from Bridget and glancing at it over her coffee mug. “Family only. Twenty people, tops. Otherwise, if you start marking off people, somebody’s bound to get their feelings hurt.”

  Lindsay’s expression fell, but after a moment she gave a resigned sigh. “I really hate to do that. I mean, I’d hoped for something a little more … you know, festive, for Dominic. But I don’t know how I can afford to feed a hundred fifty people, not to mention the wine.”

  “We’d have to take out a mortgage on the house.” Cici returned the list to Bridget.

  “Speaking of house,” Lindsay said, her mind quickly jumping from one subject to another, “we’re going to have to come up with a new way to divide the expenses once Dominic moves in. It’s only fair.”

  Ida Mae gave a loud “Harrumph!” and clattered around in the cupboard for the hand whisk. “In my day, a woman got married, cleaved unto her husband, and moved into his house. That was it.”

  Lindsay craned her neck to look at her. “Ida Mae, don’t you want Dominic to live here? That’s why I wanted you at the meeting, so you could have a say.”

  “I am having my say, ain’t I? It won’t be no different than when he was a sprout, racing around here getting underfoot, always in one kind of trouble or another.” She tucked the big glass bowl under her arm and began to whip the egg whites into a froth. “But it don’t take a bunch of papers to make a home, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Oh, Ida Mae, why don’t you use the electric mixer?” Bridget started to get up and find it for her. “You’re going to wear yourself out, hand-beating those egg whites.”

  “You just sit there and meet,” Ida Mae told her sternly. “I been beating my own egg whites going onto sixty years now and I don’t reckon I’ll be changing now.”

  Lindsay passed out papers to her friends, and put one at the empty place reserved for Ida Mae. “Here’s the to-do list. Countdown, T-minus forty-five, which is how many days we have before the wedding.”

  “Wow, you made a spreadsheet,” Bridget said, admiring it.

  “There’s a template on the Internet,” Lindsay admitted.

  “Shouldn’t it be W-minus forty-five?” Cici suggested. “You know, W for wedding?”

  “Where did they get T from anyway?” Bridget wondered. “What does it even mean?”

  “I don’t know. Who cares? T, W, whatever. The point is, we’ve only got forty-five days to get all of this done. Now, if you’ll look in the first column …”

  “You know,” Cici felt compelled to point out, “it seems to me that whenever we got into trouble with planning a wedding, it was always because there was a short deadline.”

  “But we pulled it off,” Bridget reminded her. “The first one was only a three-week notice. Forty-five days is practically forever.”

  “The point is,” Lindsay said, “everything is all mapped out. Send out invitations, lock down menu, get license, get rings, order wine, order flowers, meet with officiator …”

  “What about bridesmaids’ dresses?” Bridget said, searching the spreadsheet. “Where do we come in?”

  “It’s on there, it’s on there,” Lindsay assured her impatiently. “Now, if you’ll look on page two …”

  Cici reached to the center of the table and thumbed through the papers there. “When did you have time to do all this? What got into you all of a sudden?”

  “Dominic’s children are coming,” Lindsay said, and the way she widened her eyes at them made it seem as though the emergency should be pe
rfectly self-explanatory. “And according to Dominic, his daughter Cassie is the most organized, detail-oriented person in the western hemisphere, not to mention his favorite child—well, if parents are allowed to have favorites, which I’m not sure they are—and I’m not going to have her thinking her dad is marrying some kind of flake. Or worse, that I don’t want to marry him at all! She’s bound to be pestering him for updates, and I want him to be able to tell her everything is under control and right on schedule. And when she gets here I am going to be cool as a cucumber and she’s going to find everything is shipshape, right on track, bright as a new penny, running like a Swiss clock!”

  She paused for breath and Bridget added loyally, “She’s also going to find that her dad has wonderful taste in fiancées.”

  Lindsay gave a decisive nod of her head. “Damn right.”

  Cici took a deep, thoughtful breath. “Well then. We’d better get busy painting the shutters.”

  “And the trim in the dining room,” Bridget reminded her. “And we’ve got to do something about that hole in the carpet Rebel chewed when we brought him in during the ice storm last winter.”

  “You need to take down the drapes in the front room, too,” Ida Mae said, whisking away, “and shake out all the dust mites.”

  “The chandelier needs to be taken apart and washed in vinegar water,” Lindsay added, scribbling on her spreadsheet.

  “I’ll tell you what you need,” Ida Mae declared, whisking harder. “You need to ask that man of yours whether he even wants to move into a houseful of women. He might have a thing or two of his own to say about the whole thing, did you ever think of that?”

  Cici and Bridget turned incredulous stares on Lindsay. “You mean you haven’t even asked him what he wants to do?” Cici said.