4 Christmas on Ladybug Farm

by Donna Ball

  “Then,” Noah said, “I guess you won’t have to wonder what you missed out on, will you?”

  They listened to the silence for another short time. Then she said, “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  She pushed herself to her feet. He could hear the groan that was suppressed under her breath. And she said, “You’re pretty damn smart, you know that?”

  He gave a half grin that he knew she couldn’t see, and he stood as well. “Yeah. People tell me that. You ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  He switched on the flashlight, and nothing happened.

  The battery was dead.

  One by one, Ida Mae lit each of the candles in the windows and covered them with glass hurricane shades. She came out onto the porch, holding her kerosene lantern high. “Y’all gonna change for supper, or come to the table looking like heathens?”

  Paul glanced down at his bare legs and sandal-clad feet. “I wouldn’t exactly say I look like a heathen,” he offered defensively. “These sandals are by Salvatore Ferragamo.”

  Bridget came out behind Ida Mae. “You won’t believe this. The power company says half the grid is down. It seems that with the heat wave everybody had their air conditioning going, and then plugging in their Christmas lights on top of it…”

  “Wow,” Lori said, a little in awe. “I knew about the curse of Ladybug Farm, but to blow out half the power grid…”

  Cici scowled at her. “We did not blow out the power grid. It was a coincidence, that’s all.”

  “Right,” murmured Derrick, and quickly hid his expression in his wine glass.

  “They’re sending someone out,” Bridget added, “but it might take awhile.”

  “Meantime, my gravy’s getting cold and my turkey’s going dry,” Ida Mae said.

  Bridget touched her arm lightly. “Maybe we could put the gravy back on the stove to keep it warm,” she suggested, “and wrap up the turkey? It may be awhile before we eat.”

  Ida Mae ignored her. “What for? So you can sit out here feeling sorry for yourselves?” Her gaze was on Lindsay, who was leaning against the porch column with a glass of wine in her hand, gazing out at the empty night. “Seems to me like a dang fool thing to do on Christmas Eve.”

  Lindsay drew in a breath, and exhaled it a little unsteadily. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” she said. “I’m feeling guilty. I’ve messed up everything. I was an idiot to think I could be a mother. I mean, he was half-grown when I adopted him, I guess I figured how hard could it be? All I really had to do was one thing: keep him safe. And I couldn’t even do that.”

  Cici got up and embraced Lindsay with one arm. Bridget crossed the porch and slipped her own arm through Lindsay’s, pressing her cheek briefly against her shoulder. Ida Mae said gruffly, “Seems to me that job is in hands a lot more powerful than yours, Missy, and if there was ever a night for having faith, this is it.”

  Lindsay turned slowly to look at her. Cici and Bridget gave her reassuring smiles. Paul and Derrick lifted their glasses to the three of them.

  “She’s right,” Lori said. “It’s just like Whiskers.”

  Ida Mae looked at her in exasperation. “Who the blazes is Whiskers?”

  Lori smiled and settled into the rocking chair her mother had abandoned. “Well,” she said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ghosts of Christmas Past:Lori

  When I was seven, I had this cat named Whiskers, a gray long-haired domestic with a white splotch on his nose. That cat was my best friend, he went everywhere with me. I’d dress him up in doll clothes and take him for a ride in my baby-doll buggy, and put him in the basket of my tricycle and cruise around the cul-de-sac, and have tea parties with him in the back yard, and read him stories from my picture books at night. And he was such a great cat, he actually let me do all those things and hardly ever complained. Well, he wasn’t that crazy about wearing a bonnet, but other than that he was just as good as could be.

  We were living in the house on Huntington Lane then— which is where Mom moved here from— and Aunt Bridget lived across the street with her kids, Kevin and Katie, and Aunt Lindsay lived next door to her. This was before Uncle Paul and Uncle Derrick moved to our neighborhood, but they had been friends with my mom and dad in Washington, and they would come visit for holidays and birthdays, and it was always a party when they came. Just like now. I mean, for my fifth birthday they rented an entire kiddie park with a bouncy house, pony rides and Cinderella’s castle. And they always came for Christmas.

  Mom and Dad were divorced, of course, and my dad had already moved to California. Mom had just opened her real estate office and she worked pretty long hours. Katie used to babysit me sometimes, and Aunt Lindsay was a teacher at my school. I was never in her class, although when Mom got stuck showing a house and couldn’t pick me up after school I’d go sit in Aunt Lindsay’s classroom and color while she graded papers, then I’d ride home with her. Usually we’d stop for ice cream, then go over to Aunt Bridget’s for supper. Or sometimes we’d get pizzas and everyone would come over to my house to eat so that Mom wouldn’t have to cook when she got home. Either way, Whiskers was always with me. Aunt Bridget wouldn’t let him sit at the table—well, neither would Mom, to tell the truth—but other than that, he never left my side.

  I hated taking the Christmas card photo—that much hasn’t changed—but Mom told me that if Santa didn’t get a Christmas card with a picture of everyone in the family he wouldn’t know which house to bring the presents to. Naturally, I had to make sure Whiskers was in the photo. Mom and I had matching red velvet skirts and white lace blouses, and I had a big red velvet bow in my hair. I tied a matching red velvet bow with jingle bells on it around Whiskers’ neck, but that wasn’t good enough. I was determined to wrestle him into a Santa hat, too. We got all set up in front of the Christmas tree, but every time the photographer would fire the flash Whiskers would try to jump out of my lap, which knocked off his hat, which ruined the shot, and I’d spend another five minutes trying to get his hat on, and my mom was losing patience by the minute. So was the photographer, who charged by the hour and should have been happy, but was really just an old grouch. He told Mom there was an extra charge for working with animals, and she told him that if he didn’t get his shot in the next two minutes he’d be lucky to get paid at all. So he started packing up his gear in a snit—which was great with me— and that was when my mom had her Big Idea. She decided to have two Christmas photos that year, one with Whiskers and one without. I wasn’t about to agree, but she promised me a piece of the butterscotch-maple fudge she had made to give to my Sunday School teacher for Christmas, so I thought it might be okay if Whiskers wasn’t in every picture, as long as he was in the main one. I sold out my own cat for a piece of butterscotch maple fudge.

  Well, the photographer got his picture, a beautiful one of me and mom in our velvet skirts and lace blouses, sitting in front of the Christmas tree and smiling at each other. Whiskers, without his Santa hat, just wandered around sniffing the photographer’s equipment bag. But the minute that flash went off Whiskers jumped about a foot straight up in the air and knocked over one of the lights. The photographer tried to catch it and stepped on Whisker’s tail. There was a lot of yowling and spitting, and when the photographer went outside to get another light, Whiskers flew right out the door.

  I looked for him the rest of the day, door to door. He wasn’t at Aunt Bridget’s, or Aunt Lindsay’s, or at the community pool or at any of the neighbor’s houses. The next day Mom helped me make up posters with his picture on them, and we put them everywhere—on every tree and utility pole we could find, in every mail box, on the community bulletin board at the bank and the grocery store. I could tell Mom felt really bad about losing Whiskers, but the worst part was that he wasn’t in the Christmas card photo. How would Santa know which house to bring our presents to?

  What my mom couldn’t bear to tell me was that the real worst part was that one of the neig
hbors had called and said he had seen a cat fitting our description on his way to work that morning—in a ditch on the side of the road, having been run over by a car. It was less than a week before Christmas. How could she tell me Whiskers was dead? I was already inconsolable. So she let me go on handing out flyers and walking up the street calling “Here, kitty, kitty” and running to the door each time the doorbell rang, expecting to see someone bringing Whiskers home. First thing every morning and the last thing at night, I’d rush to the back door and expect to see Whiskers there. I didn’t want to play with my friends, I didn’t want to go see Santa, I didn’t want to help bake cookies. All I wanted was Whiskers. Mom decided there was only one solution: Whiskers had to come home.

  She searched all over Baltimore for a gray long-haired cat with a white smudge on its nose. She called everyone she knew. Every cat she found was either too young or too old, not gray enough or too gray, or had the white spot on its paws instead of its nose, or no white spot at all. Time was running out. She knew that no matter how many toys or presents Santa left under the tree, if Whiskers wasn’t there, it was going to be a miserable Christmas.

  We had a big holiday planned, as usual. Dad was coming in from California, and Grandma and Grandpa Gregory and Grammy Burke, and Uncle Paul and Uncle Derrick were coming from Washington, and, of course, Aunt Bridget and Aunt Lindsay and their families were all coming for Christmas dinner. They were all bringing food and presents and it should have been the best Christmas ever. But believe me, as Christmas Eve arrived and there was still no sign of Whiskers, there was no joy in Whoville that year.

  But you know my mom. She is unstoppable. With half the state of Maryland and most of D.C. on the lookout for a gray cat with a white nose, she got lucky at the last minute. When I came downstairs on Christmas morning, there she was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, all backlit by the Christmas tree, with Whiskers in her arms.

  I was ecstatic. I ran down the stairs and snatched up Whiskers, hugging him and covering him with kisses… and he screamed and hissed and scratched me on the arm. I tried to forgive him for being in such a bad mood, but even I could tell there was something different about him. Just then there was a knock on the back door and Aunt Lindsay came in with a big cardboard box in her arms, calling, “Merry Christmas everyone! You won’t believe who I found waiting outside my door this morning!”

  My mom looked as though she was about to have a conniption, waving both arms and shushing Aunt Lindsay, and twisting her face this way and that, but it didn’t matter, because just as Aunt Lindsay set the box on the floor and a fuzzy gray cat with a spot on its nose jumped out, I realized that the spot on Whiskers’ nose—or at least what I thought was a spot—was flaking off. Mom had used white typewriter eraser liquid to paint a spot on the cat’s nose, and it hadn’t worked very well. Before I could even recover from the blow that Whiskers had not, in fact, come home for Christmas, Aunt Bridget was at the front door with yet another gray cat she pretended to have found hiding under her porch. At least this one had a real white nose, but it was not Whiskers. The fact that it was a girl cat should have been a dead giveaway.

  The Christmas tree was piled up with gifts from Santa Claus, but I couldn’t have cared less. I now had not one, but three cats, even though none of them was Whiskers, and I didn’t know whether to cry or celebrate. Before I could decide, Daddy was at the door, loaded down with presents all the way from California... including a box wrapped in gingerbread-man Christmas paper with holes punched in the side and a fuzzy gray kitten screaming to be let out. Grammy Burke came with a prissy gray Persian who hissed at everybody and peed on Mom’s rug, and Grandma and Grandpa Gregory claimed Santa had left a big gray cat under their tree with a note that they should deliver it to me. And by the time Uncle Paul and Uncle Derrick arrived, I didn’t even have to guess what was in the wicker basket they carried.

  We ended up with five cats and three kittens on Christmas morning and my mom was frantic. After all, she had a lot more to explain than just how a half dozen Whiskers imposters had ended up on our doorstep. She had told me Santa could only find our house if everyone was in the Christmas picture, remember? But Whiskers had not been in the picture and Santa clearly couldn’t have been more pleased with me. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

  I sat on the floor with cats crawling all over me while Mom and Dad and the two Grandmas tried very hard not to say ugly things to each other, and Uncle Derrick and Uncle Paul argued over whether to put the plaid sofa or the pink divan in the living room of the doll house Santa had brought me, and everyone tried to pretend it was a perfectly normal Christmas. Which, for our house, I suppose it was. I was sitting there in the middle of all that chaos, presents still unopened, cats yowling and adults hissing and spitting at each other when I swear I heard sleigh bells. Really. I ran through the house and threw open the back door and sitting on the stoop, skinny and bedraggled-looking, his red bow in tatters but the jingle bells still intact, was Whiskers. The real one.

  Apparently he had gotten locked in a neighbor’s storage shed the day he ran away, and had been living off of mice and bugs ever since. When the neighbor went out on Christmas Eve to get the bike he’d been hiding for his little boy for Christmas, Whiskers escaped and made his way home.

  It was a Christmas miracle. And one I’ll never, ever get tired of telling people about.

  Chapter Twelve

  In Which a Star Appears in the East

  “Of course,” said Cici, sipping her wine, “The real miracle was that we were able to find good homes for eight cats.”

  Even Lindsay was smiling by this time. “And that you didn’t kill any of us before dinner.”

  “But the important thing is that Mom learned her lesson,” Lori said. “She was trying to protect me from the truth about Whiskers, and look at all the trouble it caused. And all the time what she thought she was protecting me from wasn’t even the truth at all.”

  Ida Mae gave a curt shake of her head. “Craziest thing I ever did hear of. All them cats in the house.”

  Bridget said thoughtfully, “This place could use a cat.”

  Cici gave her a hard look. “Don’t start.”

  Lori said sagely, “You know what the moral of the story is, don’t you?”

  “That you,” declared Paul, lifting his glass to her, “were the most adored child who ever lived. Do you know how many people were out breaking their necks on Christmas Eve to avoid breaking your heart? ”

  Lori beamed with satisfaction. “That’s true. And all that love and devotion is exactly why I grew to be as spectacular as I am. But that’s not the moral of the story.” She leaned forward in the rocker, her expression earnest. “The moral of the story is that you can’t make a miracle. Sometimes you just have to wait for it.”

  Cici came over to her daughter, leaned down, and kissed her hair. “You’re still the most adored child who ever lived,” she said. “Now, get out of my chair.”

  Lindsay smiled at them both with wry and tender affection. “You know something?” she said. “I think I’ll get cleaned up and change my clothes while I’m waiting for my miracle. Ida Mae is right. It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m not going to the dinner table smelling like a wet horse.”

  “And this is why we have gas appliances,” Bridget said cheerfully, “Ida Mae, put the bread pudding in the oven and start warming up the gravy. It’s time for dinner.”

  “Who cares if the lights are out?” Derrick added. “Candlelight is more glamorous anyway.”

  “Maybe I’ll put on a dress,” Cici said.

  “Oh-oh,” Paul said. “You know that means I have to wear a tie.”

  “And who knows?” Lori said, rising to go in the house. “By the time we’re ready, Noah could be here.”

  “Right,” said Cici, but as she met Bridget’s eyes they both were struggling to hold their smiles. “Who knows?”

  Kathy said, “You don’t have the first idea where we are, do you?�
��

  Noah wanted to insist that of course he did, that they couldn’t be more than a mile or two from home, and he knew he probably should have lied because it was better than telling the truth. But he just wasn’t up to it. “It’s pretty dark,” he said. There were farmhouses and trailer parks all over this part of the countryside. They should have started seeing lights by now.

  Kathy shook her head in slow dismay. “Could this Christmas get any better?” she muttered. “This is what I get for following a seventeen year old kid across the woods just because he says he knows where he’s going.” She stumbled and almost fell. “Are we even on the road anymore?”

  Noah scowled and hunched his shoulders. “You want to turn back, feel free.”

  “Hey.” She caught his arm and he jerked it away. She closed her fingers on his elbow, harder this time, and he stopped and turned to her. It was too dark to see her face, but he didn’t have to. She was breathing hard.

  “Listen,” she said. “This is crazy. The further we walk, the more lost we’re getting. We need to just stop, right now, and wait for morning.”

  The thing was, she was probably right. It was too dark to see his hand in front of his face, and who knew how far off course they’d traveled…. If they’d even been on course in the first place. There was no sign of civilization, and no sign of getting closer to it. He could tell she was tired; so was he, and he hadn’t just spent the last eight months in a hospital. He stood looking at her for a long moment, thinking about it. Knowing what he should do, and knowing, all the time, what he was going to do.

  He swung his saddlebags off his shoulder, unbuckled a pocket, and felt around inside until he came up with the two candy bars. He put them in her hand. “Here,” he said. “They’re a little squashed, but they ought to hold you until morning. I’ll send somebody for you as soon as I find a phone.”