At Home on Ladybug Farm

by Donna Ball

  “We promised Noah he wouldn’t have to go to public school,” Bridget said.

  “The public school doesn’t have an art program,” Lindsay objected.

  Cici said, “Carrie, this is the longest he’s ever stayed anywhere without running away. We’re starting to make some real progress. It would be a shame to give up now. Can’t you see what you can do about keeping things stable for him a little while longer?”

  Carrie smiled and squeezed her hand. “Of course I will. I’m on your side, remember?”

  She opened the door and looked back over her shoulder. “It certainly would have helped if he had at least talked to us, though,” she said.

  Lindsay leaned against the door and closed her eyes. “I am going to strangle that kid.”

  “Not until after breakfast,” Bridget said, and linked her arm through hers. “Come on. We have company, remember?”

  “You ain’t gonna invite them sour biddies to breakfast, are you?” Ida Mae demanded as she took the breakfast casserole out of the oven.

  “Oh, yes, please, tell us you didn’t invite the sour biddies,” Paul said. He and Derrick, as at home in the Ladybug kitchen as they were in their own, were pouring orange juice into stemmed glasses and arranging them on the kitchen table, which was already set with bright yellow Fiesta ware and tangerine napkins. The hickory wood table, which was arranged in a nook beside the raised kitchen fireplace, was the coziest place in the house.

  Lindsay made a face at him in reply to his remark, and he added, “I hope the kitchen table is okay for breakfast. We thought it would be cheerier than the dining room.”

  Ida Mae grumbled, “I didn’t think no such thing. Decent folk use the dining room when they’ve got company.”

  Derrick gave her a playful one-armed hug as he passed. “We’re not company, Ida Mae. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

  She pretended annoyance as she shrugged way from his embrace and set the casserole down with a clunk on the center island beside a colorful bowl of fruit salad and a basket of muffins. “Ya’ll’re gonna have to serve yourselves from the counter,” she told them.

  “You’re right, Paul,” Bridget declared, picking up her plate. “The kitchen table is cheerier. And if there’s one thing this house needs right now it’s a little cheer.”

  “It’s funny,” Cici said, “but as much trouble as he is, and impossible as he can be sometimes, I’d really miss that kid if he were gone. I don’t want them to place him somewhere else.”

  “I guess you never know how much someone really means to you until you’re faced with losing him,” Lindsay agreed somberly.

  Lori took up her own plate. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t understand what you’re all so upset about. I thought Noah was only supposed to stay here temporarily, anyway. Isn’t that what temporary guardianship means? Maybe he’d be better off with the preacher and his wife.”

  Cici gave her a look. “Don’t you take this the wrong way,” she told her daughter, “but go out to the barn and tell Noah to come to breakfast.”

  “My eggs will get cold!”

  “They will if you don’t hurry.”

  With a huffing breath, Lori put down her plate, snatched up a muffin, and left the room.

  “Put your coat on!” Cici called after her.

  Lindsay absently scooped breakfast casserole onto her bright yellow plate. “Maybe Lori’s right. Maybe he would be better off in a traditional home.”

  “He wouldn’t last a day,” Bridget said.

  “There’s nothing traditional about him,” Cici said, taking the serving fork from Lindsay’s hand and sliding one of the three servings of casserole Lindsay had taken onto her own plate.

  “I think the worst part is being disapproved of.” Lindsay placed a muffin on her plate and topped it, rather forcefully, with a dollop of butter. “It’s not that I care what other people think about me. I just don’t want them thinking I’m not good enough.”

  “It’s your own fault,” Ida Mae pointed out gruffly. “Anybody that stays in the bed until ten o’clock in the morning and leaves dirty dishes and empty bottles scattered all over the front room deserves what they get. I never been so scandalized in my life. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, every single one of you.”

  “I, for one, take full responsibility for my actions and am properly chagrined.” Derrick’s tone was reassuring as he took her elbow and guided her toward the table, a full plate in his other hand. “Here you are, dear lady, I fixed this just for you. Sit by me.”

  “I got no time to sit down,” Ida Mae objected, her eyes narrowing suspiciously even as she sat and let Derrick unfold a napkin in her lap. “I got things to do.”

  Bridget and Cici shared a secret smile with Paul. “Can he come live with us?” whispered Bridget.

  “You’ve already got your hands full with one renegade male,” Paul reminded her.

  “Speaking of which . . .” Cici looked over her shoulder toward the window. “Where are those kids, anyway?”

  Noah was not in the barn, or the studio, or any other likely place, which suited Lori just fine. The morning air was bitter and she was hungry and she could smell hot muffins and sausage even from here. She was hurrying back toward the house to report that the boy could not be found when she actually caught sight of him, crossing the stubbly back field that led toward the woods. She cupped her hands around her mouth to shout for him, and then changed her mind.

  For one thing, he was leading Bambi on a rope beside him. For another, he was wearing his backpack and his red stocking cap, which Bridget was always badgering him to put on when he went outside in the winter, and which he never would. It was all very odd. Curiosity momentarily overcame her hunger, and Lori decided to follow him.

  She didn’t rush, not that she cared whether he knew she was behind him or not, so that by the time she reached the little structure in the woods he was already inside, prying aside some stones in the fireplace. He didn’t notice her at first, and she looked around appreciatively.

  It was a good-size round building with a tin roof and a stone floor, open on the sides like a gazebo or an open-air dance pavilion. The freestanding stone fireplace had a chimney that went right through the roof, and there were remnants of rusted-out and crumbling furniture—a table and a wooden chair, an old truck seat, an aluminum patio chair with frayed and missing webbing. It was a rather desolate-looking place on this cold morning in the middle of the winter-bare woods, but there was still enough of an air of romance about it to stir a young woman’s imagination.

  “Wow,” she said. “So this is the folly.”

  When she spoke, Noah whirled around guiltily, and several of the glass bottles he had been removing from their hiding place behind the fireplace spilled from his hands and clinked on the floor. Lori did not even notice his angry scowl as he began scooping them into his backpack. Bambi trotted over to her, hooves clattering on the stone floor, and she scratched the deer’s head absently as she looked around.

  “I wonder what they used it for,” she said, “way out here in the woods. Do you think anybody lived here? Or maybe it was just a party house. Like the movie stars have in California.”

  Suddenly she noticed the glass bottles he was stuffing into his backpack. “Say, did you find all those in the garden?” She dropped to her haunches beside him and picked up one of the bottles to examine it. “What are you going to do with them?”

  He snatched the bottle out of her hand. “Sell ’em.”

  “Oh.” She regarded him matter-of-factly. “You’re running away again, huh?”

  He glared at her. “What’s it to you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t care what you do. But my mother cares a lot, and so does Aunt Bridget, and I think it would break Aunt Lindsay’s heart.”

  His scowl deepened, and he jerked the iPod out of his jeans pocket. “You want to buy this?”

  “No thanks. I already have one. Besides, it’s rude to sell a gift. What’
s this?” She tugged at the corner of a rectangular glass plate that was sticking out of his backpack. When he tried to grab it back she turned away, holding the plate up to the light.

  “That ain’t yours,” he demanded. “Give it back.”

  “Look at that! It’s our house.” She looked at him. “Where did you get this?”

  He regarded her defiantly, and she turned back to the sepia plate. “It must be really old. Look at the dresses the women are wearing. Does Aunt Lindsay know you have this?”

  “She’s got plenty of them.”

  “Well, you’re only going to break it if you carry it around like that, or scratch it up so badly it won’t be worth anything. Don’t you have anything you can wrap it in?” She handed it back to him casually and began rummaging around in the backpack.

  “Hey, get out of there! Leave my stuff alone!”

  He wrestled the pack away from her, but not before she had pulled out several more glass plates, an art box, a T-shirt with holes in it, and a small oil canvas of a fountain in a garden. Glass bottles rattled in the bottom of the pack as he started stuffing things back in, but Lori picked up the canvas before he could.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I know this place.” She looked at him as recognition dawned. “Is this the pool in the back garden?”

  He shrugged, his scowl thunderous, but he did not immediately try to retrieve it from her. “That fellow, that Derrick, he said it was good.”

  Lori said softly, “Wow. So this is what it’s supposed to look like.” She regarded him curiously. “How did you know . . . ?” And then her eyes fell on the glass plate he was clumsily wrapping in a T-shirt before returning it to the backpack. “Ah,” she said, “the photographic plates. They must tell the whole story of this house.”

  She returned the canvas to him, but he hesitated, looking at the painting, looking at the plates. “Story, huh?”

  Bambi wandered up and nudged Lori’s shoulder, hard, causing her to almost lose her balance. She caught herself with one hand, and used the other to stroke Bambi’s neck as she pushed to her feet. “What are you going to do with Bambi?”

  Noah finished repacking his backpack. “Take him with me.”

  Lori let out a hoot of laughter. “What, on the bus? Don’t you think that would be a little conspicuous?”

  Noah’s cheeks colored dully. “I never said nothing about a bus.”

  “Well, how far do you think you’re going to get on foot, leading a deer on a rope? Boy, talk about not thinking things through!”

  “I guess you expect me to just leave him here and let the law come get him,” Noah returned angrily. “Well, that just goes to show what a smart-ass city girl knows. You turn a pet deer like that loose in the woods and he wouldn’t last a week. He don’t know how to live on his own anymore.”

  “And you do?” Lori shot back.

  “I’m not letting the law come get me either!” He grabbed for Bambi’s rope, but the sudden movement startled the deer, who was, after all, still a wild animal. A single leap took him out of the building and bounding through the woods.

  “Bambi!” Lori cried, and Noah shouted, “Hey!”

  They both took off after him at once.

  The deer was spotted a few dozen yards into the woods, plucking berries off a spiky bush. Noah made to lunge for him but Lori flung up a staying hand. “You’re the one who scared him in the first place!” she whispered angrily.

  Lori crept forward, reaching slowly and cautiously for the rope that still dangled around the deer’s neck, but she needn’t have worried. Bambi lifted his head and regarded her with interest as she closed her hand around the rope, then plucked a few more berries off the bush. He made no objection as she led him back toward Noah.

  “Wow,” Lori said, pressing her hand over her still pounding heart. “Now I know what Aunt Lindsay meant when she said you don’t know how much somebody means to you until you think you’re going to lose them. That was scary.”

  Noah shot her a sharp look as he took the rope. “Stupid deer,” he muttered. “You don’t know when you’re well-off.”

  “Yeah, well he’s not the only one.”

  Tugging on the rope, Noah pushed his way through the brush back toward the folly.

  “Hey,” she shouted after him, and took a couple of running steps to catch up. “What I was going to say, before you started acting like a fool and scared him half to death, is that there might be a way for us to keep Bambi and stay out of trouble with the law. All we have to do is apply for a permit to keep wildlife.”

  His step may have slowed a bit, but he did not stop, or look around, or give any indication at all that he had heard her.

  Lori threw up her hands. “Okay,” she said. “Run away, don’t run away. My breakfast is ruined either way. But put Bambi back in the barn before you leave.”

  As they reached the folly, she veered off on the path that led back to the house. Noah said, “Hey,” and Lori looked back impatiently.

  “Did Lindsay really say that? About missing me?”

  Lori rolled her eyes. “What an idiot. People who don’t even know you are tripping all over themselves to help you, and you don’t even notice. You go out of your way to screw up. Well, let me tell you something, kid. A person only gets so many chances in life. Maybe you’d better start taking advantage of yours.” She started back down the path.

  “Oh by the way,” she called over her shoulder, “I’m going to tell Aunt Lindsay you stole her photographic plates, so if you’re going to sell them you’d better do it quick.”

  “Bitch!” he shouted after her.

  She returned an expressive hand gesture without looking back, and left him there.

  Ida Mae was clearing away the remnants of the lovely breakfast casserole when Lori came into the kitchen. Everyone else was lingering over coffee.

  “Sit down,” Ida Mae commanded. “I kept your breakfast warm.”

  “Ida Mae, I love you!” Lori beamed, and tried to kiss her cheek, but Ida Mae shrugged her away.

  “Where’s Noah?” Cici asked.

  “He wasn’t in the barn,” Lori hedged, taking her seat at the crowded table. “Or the studio.”

  “Well, where is he?” Bridget wanted to know. “What took you so long?”

  Ida Mae came to the table with two breakfast plates held in hot pads. She sat one before Lori, and another in the empty place reserved for Noah. Lori said, “Thank you, Ida Mae, you’re the best. Pass the butter, Mom?”

  But she looked at Bridget’s curious face, and noted the anxiety creeping into Lindsay’s eyes, and the expectation in her mother’s expression as she passed the butter to Paul, who then passed it to Lori. Lori put down her fork. She took a breath.

  “Sorry,” Noah said gruffly, unzipping his jacket as he came into the kitchen. “Damn deer got lost. Had to go chasin’ him.” He took his place at the table and tucked into his breakfast.

  “Noah, please don’t swear at the table,” Cici said.

  And Noah, surprisingly, replied, “Yes’m.”

  Lori buttered her muffin, and didn’t say anything at all.

  Everyone lingered over hugs by the car when it was time for Paul and Derrick to go. Even Noah, hanging back a little from the women, came to see them off.

  “It’s going to be like the day after Christmas when you leave,” Lindsay said, hugging Paul hard. “Oh, I wish you could stay!”

  “I wish you could live here!” Lori exclaimed, embracing Derrick.

  Derrick laughed. “Shall I tell you the truth? After only a couple of days, I almost wish I could, too.”

  “We always talked about buying a B&B,” Paul reminded him.

  Lori tossed a triumphant look to her mother and said, yet again, “I told you it was a good idea.”

  Amidst the laughter, Paul cupped Lori’s chin with his fingers and told her, “You hang in there, precious girl. If you need any more inspirational speeches, you know my number.”

  “It’s on speed dial,�
�� Lori assured him, and returned a fierce hug.

  Derrick walked over to Noah. “Young man,” he said, “we’ll talk again.”

  Noah said, “You coming back?”

  “I am. And when I do, I’ll expect a completed masterpiece from you. Until then . . .” He offered his hand, and this time Noah shook it.

  They promised recipes and photographs and telephone calls and letters, and then the blue Prius was gliding down their drive, leaving the women nothing to do but wave until it was out of sight.

  “I got stuff to do,” Noah said, and slumped off toward the studio.

  Lori sighed as she turned to go inside. “Well, I guess it’s back to the real world.”

  Bridget, Lindsay, and Cici stood in the drive for a moment longer, rubbing their arms to keep warm, looking wistful. “It really is like the day after Christmas,” Bridget said.

  “Funny how one little change in the routine can make everything seem different,” Cici agreed.

  “It’s not that I miss our old life,” Lindsay said. “It’s just kind of . . . fun to be reminded of it now and then.”

  “Like drinking a half-caf vanilla mocha latte on the way to work in the morning,” Cici said, with a touch of longing.

  “Or remembering how the shoe department smells at Macy’s,” Bridget said wistfully.

  “Or getting a pedicure at Francine’s.”

  Then Cici admitted, “There are a few things I miss, but nothing I can’t live without.”

  “Me, either,” Lindsay agreed. “But I don’t think I realized how much I missed those two characters until now.”

  Bridget said, “It was sweet of them to invite us to go with them on that cruise to Alaska this fall.”

  Cici smothered a chuckle. “Like that’s ever going to happen.”