by Donna Ball
He replied, “A winemaker never forgets his first vintage, and she worked hard for this one. I wanted it to be special for her.”
“And if it hadn’t turned out so well, would you still have let her take credit?”
“Of course not.”
She looked up at him, her eyes filled with gentle adoration. “You are the most extraordinary man,” she said. “I really should marry you.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he looked down at her. “Don’t tease me, love. I just might say yes.”
Lindsay was suddenly breathless. She said, slowly, just coming to the realization herself, “I don’t think I’m teasing.”
The humor left his eyes in stages and was replaced by a question, quick, hesitant, intensely searching. Her heart beat hard and fast. She watched his face. She didn’t breathe.
He said softly, “Is that a proposal?”
She nodded, her throat so dry that she couldn’t form the words.
The expression on his face was soft with amazement and cautious disbelief, still hesitant. “Are you sure?”
Again, she could only nod, although now her heartbeat began to slow with a quiet, gentle certainty, and a wonderful warmth spread throughout her veins. Better than wine. Sweeter than sunshine. She’d never been more sure of anything in her life.
There was wonder in his eyes and deep, quiet joy. “This is a little sudden.”
“I know. Please say yes.”
“Not something we should probably leap into.”
“I know. Say yes anyway.”
He lifted his hand and brushed her hair. He smiled. “Okay, then,” he said huskily. “Yes.”
~*~
“Look at them.” Cici smiled indulgently at the couple in the corner near the door, standing close together but not too close, holding hands, heads bent urgently toward each other, gazing at each other as though they were the only two people in the room. “She’s saying she’ll love him forever.”
“And he’s begging her to wait for him,” Bridget added, smiling.
“And she’s saying until the end of the earth,” said Derrick.
“And he’s saying he’ll never forget her, not ever,” said Paul.
Cici sighed as Noah and Amy, arms around each other’s waists, left the building. “In three months time, they won’t even be writing to each other.”
“By the time he gets back, she’ll be engaged to someone else,” said Bridget.
“And he will have forgotten her name,” said Paul.
“Ah, young love.” Derrick gave the departing couple a wistful salute with his wine glass. “As sweet as summer wine and just as mercurial.”
“Thank heaven that’s all behind us, huh?” said Cici, and they all smiled an agreement that was tinged with only the slightest bit of reminiscent regret.
“Nothing is certain but that everything changes,” murmured Paul.
“Who said that?”
“Someone important, I’m sure.”
Bridget said, “Speaking of which, big changes for you guys, huh? Do you know anything at all about running a B&B?”
“Of course not, darling,” Derrick replied happily. “That’s the adventure in it.”
“Haven’t you had enough adventure for one year?” Cici looked amused.
“Haven’t you?” Paul returned, and she laughed.
“Just don’t try to rebuild anything,” she cautioned.
“And be sure to have the building inspector out before you close the deal,” added Bridget.
“Not an issue,” Derrick assured her with an airy wave of his hand. “We’ve learned our lesson.”
“The real dilemma,” said Paul, “is what color draperies to hang in the front room.”
“I say no draperies at all,” added Derrick, “but plantation shutters.”
“That has possibilities,” agreed Paul. “We’re doing a complete repaint, inside and out,” he added.
“Well, maybe not out,” put in Derrick. “I’ve grown rather fond of the kitschy doors.”
Paul grinned. “They are a showstopper, aren’t they?”
“And we’re renaming the place, of course. The sign just came in this morning.”
“Oh?” Bridget said. “What are you—”
But just then the music stopped and someone tapped a spoon loudly on a glass. They all turned toward the sound.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the booming voice of Reverend Holland filled the room. “I’ve just been informed that our guest of honor will be departing to meet his destiny in less than fifteen minutes. Let’s all go out and see him off, shall we?”
In fact, Noah had more than an hour before he had to leave, but Lindsay had known that it would take at least forty-five minutes for the party to wind down, and she was right. Amy was the last to leave, and Noah spent a long time standing morosely in the drive looking after her before he went to collect his things.
Noah had refused to allow the ladies to accompany him to Charlottesville, and though they were hurt by this at first, it didn’t take much thought to understand why he preferred to say good-bye in private. So when Dominic brought his truck around, the women all gathered in the front yard, even Ida Mae, to say good-bye. Noah looked embarrassed when he came down the steps with his duffel bag and saw them all, and he quickly ducked down to pet Rebel, who charged out from under the porch to bark and snarl and nip at his ankles.
“You good old dog,” he said, scratching the border collie behind the ears. “You good old dog.”
Rebel tolerated the affection for only a minute, then dashed off in search of something to chase. Noah let him go and stood up, dusting off his hands on his jeans. “Well,” he said. “I guess this is it.”
Cici smiled at him. “I guess it is.”
His eyes flickered from one to the other of them: Cici, Bridget, Lori, Ida Mae, and finally Lindsay, but he couldn’t look long at her because he could see how wet her eyes were, even though she was smiling.
He said, “I put the car up on blocks in the barn and covered it with a tarp. I don’t think it’ll be in your way.”
“I’m sure it won’t.” It was Cici who said that.
“Thank y’all for the party.” He cleared his throat. “What I mean is … well, thank you.”
Cici stepped forward quickly and hugged him hard. “Noah,” she said in a tight, strained voice “your fingerprints are on every inch of this place. It won’t be the same without you. You know you’ll always belong here, don’t you?”
He managed to nod, but he couldn’t say anything just then.
Bridget was next, hugging him tight and whispering, “You come back to us, you hear?”
He said, somehow, “Yes, ma’am.”
He was surprised when Lori stepped forward and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “They have video chat for military families now,” she told him. “You can call us.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and that made him grin. “I can.”
Ida Mae just looked at him with those fierce eyes of hers, and then she grabbed his shoulders and gave him a hearty slap on the back. “Your grandma would be real proud of you,” she said simply and let him go.
And then there was nothing to do but to walk up to Lindsay. She just looked at him for a moment, smiling through those wet eyes. “We’re coming to South Carolina for your graduation,” she told him. “All of us.”
“Good,” he said. “That’ll be good.”
“You be sure to send us your graduation packet, because they said on the website that sometimes recruits forget.”
“I won’t forget,” he promised her.
“And write,” she said, “or e-mail. Because we’ll be checking every day.”
“I will,” he said, “whenever I can get to a computer.”
He glanced around, not knowing what else to say and feeling a little uncomfortable. “I never did get to that grass.”
Her eyes were brimming now. “Don’t worry about it.”
He stepped forward and hugged her, and what
he wanted to do was thank her for everything she’d done, but somehow that didn’t seem like enough. It didn’t seem like anything he could say would be enough, so in the end all he could whisper was, “I love you, Mom.”
It turned out that was enough, after all.
Dominic took his duffle and stowed it in the back of the cab. Noah didn’t trust himself to look back at the ladies, so he said instead to Dominic, in a quiet voice, “You’re going to be around, right? To kind of keep an eye on things?”
Dominic replied, “That’s my plan.”
“That’s good. Because all these women … they need a man around, you know?”
Dominic nodded soberly. “I couldn’t agree more.”
He took a breath and paused for a minute to survey his surroundings, to take it in one more time, to memorize it. The house had a new metal roof on the porch now. The barn had a fresh coat of paint. The goat was standing on top of its house, bleating. The sheep looked like puffs of cloud in the meadow, with that black-and-white dog crouched down in the grass watching them. He’d have to remember that and paint the picture someday.
Dominic said beside him, “Regrets, son?”
Noah looked at him, and straightened his shoulders. “No, sir,” he said. “I want to be a Marine.” And in a moment he added, because he had seen them do it on TV, “Sir.”
Dominic smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Okay, soldier, let’s hit the road.”
Noah got into the truck with everybody calling good-bye to him, and even when the truck was halfway down the driveway, he looked in the mirror and they were still there, waving.
~*~
Bridget, seeing the dejected look on Lindsay’s face as she watched her two men drive away, suggested they clean up the party mess tomorrow, but Ida Mae was having none of it. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” she declared predictably and handed everyone a trash bag.
“She’s right, you know,” said Lori, plucking sticky paper plates and frosting-coated plastic utensils off the tables and dropping them into her trash bag. “Physical activity increases endorphins, and when endorphin levels get high enough, it’s impossible for the mind to focus on being sad. That’s how the whole thing about women getting together to clean house after somebody dies got started.”
“Ain’t got nothing to do with it,” Ida Mae declared with a grunt, placing plastic wrap over a tray of leftovers. “You clean house after a death to get rid of the bad spirits; everybody knows that.”
Bridget suggested tactfully, “Perhaps the less said about people dying at the moment?”
Lori looked guiltily at Lindsay, who was determinedly placing glasses in the plastic dish tub and pretending to pay no attention to the conversation. “Really, Aunt Lindsay, I wouldn’t worry if I were you. The president is pulling another 50,000 troops out of Afghanistan this year alone and hey,” she added, on a sudden thought, “who knows? Noah might not even graduate basic! I hear it’s really hard.”
“Thank you, Miss Sunshine,” her mother murmured and swatted her behind with a roll of bunting as she passed.
Lori looked offended, but Lindsay smiled at her. The smile was probably meant to be reassuring, but it looked a little wan. Just a little. “That’s okay, honey. I’m not really sad. It’s just that everywhere I look, I see him.” Now she was gazing at the mural and at his signature in the bottom right corner beside hers. “The place won’t be the same without him.”
“Well, it looks like I just missed the party,” said a male voice from the doorway, and everyone turned.
“Mark!” exclaimed Cici in surprise. “We didn’t expect you until the weekend!”
“I got away early,” he answered with a grin. His eyes were on Lori but broke away for an instant to sweep across the remains of the feast. “But not early enough, from the looks of it.”
Lori recovered from her shock and cried, “Mark!”
She dropped the trash bag and launched herself into his arms. He caught her and whirled her around, laughing.
“Mark! Oh, Mark!” He set her on her feet and she caught his face between her hands and kissed him hard. “I love you so much!”
Then, still holding his face like a precious work of art, she leaned back and gazed up at him, her face filled with adoration and regret and longing. “I love you so much,” she repeated, her voice quavering a bit. “And … I can’t marry you.”
She burst into tears and pushed away from him, running toward the house.
Mark stood there for one stunned moment, staring after her. Then called, “Lori!” and followed, stumbling a little, in her wake.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Ida Mae slammed down the dish she was wrapping, placed her hands firmly on her hips, and looked from one to the other of them. “Now you tell me,” she demanded, with only the slightest note of grim satisfaction in her tone, “who didn’t see that coming?”
~*~
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Angel of Ladybug Farm
Dear Mom,
I’m so sorry I disappointed you, and everyone, and especially Mark. Please don’t think I don’t know how badly I’ve screwed up. I thought I could do it. I really did. I thought it was what I wanted. But in the end, you were right—you can’t live someone else’s dream. If I had gone through with the wedding, I would’ve spent the rest of my life wondering what I’d missed out on. And I guess, in the end, I’m just not the marrying kind of girl.
I’m sorry I left so abruptly, but I just couldn’t talk about it. I still can’t. I’ll call you when I’m able, but right now, I just need to be alone for a while to think about things. Please don’t worry about me. You know I’ll always come home to Ladybug Farm.
Love,
Lori
Cici let the screen door squeak closed behind her as she came out onto the porch. The two women looked up at her from their rocking chairs, a mixture of anxiety and reassurance on their faces. Silently, Cici passed the printed e-mail to Bridget, who read it and passed it to Lindsay. Lindsay read it and looked across at Cici. “Are you okay?”
Cici nodded and sank into her chair. “It just hurts to see your child in pain.”
It had all happened so fast and mostly in silence. Mark left without speaking to, or even looking at, any of them. A few minutes later, Lori came downstairs with her rolling suitcase in hand, her eyes swollen from crying, and no ring on her finger. When Cici tried to talk to her, she just shook her head, choked out a few mostly incoherent words of reassurance—“I’m okay. It’s fine. Don’t worry”— and got into her car. She hadn’t answered her phone for the past four hours, so getting the e-mail had been an enormous relief.
Bridget said, “I read a story one time about how, when the gods finished creating woman, they stood back and looked at what they’d done. They had given her a body strong enough to run a marathon, a mind fast enough to do six things at once, a heart big enough to love even while it was breaking, hands that could paint a masterpiece or feed a family or write a symphony. And they were afraid, because they saw that what they had made was stronger than they were. They knew they had to create a secret weapon, one thing they could use to destroy her. So they gave her children.”
The silence that embraced them was sweet and melancholy, and no one spoke for a time. Then Cici glanced at Lindsay. “How are you holding up?” she inquired gently.
Lindsay said, “I’m okay. To tell the truth, all the drama with Lori kind of took my mind off missing Noah. Who knew the poor kid was going through all that?”
“I knew she was a little ambivalent about the wedding,” Bridget confessed, “but I never expected her to call it off completely.”
Cici sighed. “Well, the good news is that she found out what she wanted before it was too late. The bad news is …” She glanced at the other two ruefully. “Jonathon and Diane are not going to be my in-laws.”
The other two nodded regretfully, appreciating this.
Late afternoon had come and gone and the shadows on the lawn lay d
ark and still. A pale sky outlined the silvery mountains, and starlings looked like silhouette cutouts as they darted between the house and the barn. The chickens had gone in to roost. The sheep were huddled in the far pasture, awaiting the night, and Rebel, with his job done for the day, had gone in search of evening recreation. It seemed odd not to see a deer picking his way across the lawn, helping himself to the hydrangeas that nodded in the evening breeze, but no one said so.
Bridget absently flipped through the History of Blackwell Farms book, pausing now and then to read a paragraph or look at a picture, but mostly sipping wine and gazing out over the quiet scene. Lindsay munched on cookies left over from the party and rocked.
“It’s so quiet,” Cici said as she wearily stretched out her legs and leaned back her head. “I’d forgotten how quiet it can be here.”
“The house feels empty,” agreed Lindsay. “Almost haunted.”
Bridget said after a moment, “It’s funny isn’t it? Here we are again, just the three of us. Just like we were when we started out.”
“Well, not entirely,” Lindsay said, and the ghost of a smile touched her lips as she glanced at the empty chair next to hers.
They sat and rocked in silence for a while, too physically exhausted and emotionally drained to even talk. Bridget absently turned a page of the book, barely glancing at it.
“Remember when all I was planning to do this year was read that book?” Cici murmured. “I never even got past the first chapter.”
“Well, the year isn’t over yet,” Bridget said encouragingly, and Cici smothered a weary chuckle.
Lindsay helped herself to another cookie, and Cici raised an eyebrow. “The all-cookie diet?”
Lindsay shook her head and bit into the cookie defiantly. “I’m done with dieting. I’ll never be a size six again, and who wants to be, anyway? I’d rather be happy. And …” She took another bite of cookie. “Since I stopped dieting, I’ve lost four pounds.”
Cici kept her expression perfectly innocent. “That’s probably just because you’re getting more exercise.”
