by Donna Ball
Ida Mae had come with the house, and had been taking care of it, according to some accounts, almost since it was built. That gave her the right—in her own mind at least—to a great many opinions, and quite a few privileges. Lori, whose own grandparents were long gone, had been charmed by her immediately, although it was not entirely clear whether the sentiment was returned.
Lori hoisted herself lightly onto the soapstone countertop, which deepened Ida Mae’s scowl of disapproval. Lori didn’t notice. “Ida Mae, could I ask you something?” Taking silence as assent, she continued, “What’s the deal with that kid Noah, anyway? Doesn’t he have a family or anything?”
“Nope.” Wringing her sponge out in the vinegar and baking soda solution, Ida Mae turned her attention to scrubbing the oven door. “His folks are dead.”
“I know that. But I thought maybe aunts or cousins or something . . .” Lori eased open the lid of the cookie jar and slipped another cookie. “It’s not like I haven’t tried to be friends with him, but he’s just weird. How did he end up here, anyway?”
“Same way you did,” replied Ida Mae without looking up from her work. “He just showed up one day.”
Lori bit into the cookie. “But I’m family. I mean, my mom owns the place. Partially, anyway.”
“Then why don’t you go bother her with your stupid questions?”
Lori sighed, examined the cookie for a moment, and took another bite. “I don’t want her to think I disapprove.”
Ida Mae looked up from her cleaning long enough to determine that the young woman was absolutely serious, and then, with a small shake of her head, stooped to wring out her sponge in the bucket again. She said gruffly, “You’re a big-city girl. What you don’t know about people would fill a book.”
“Well, I don’t mean to seem inhospitable or anything, but don’t you think Mom and the others are a little old to be taking in foster children? And this isn’t exactly a homeless shelter.”
Ida Mae gave a grunt from inside the oven. “You just keep talking, Missy, about what your mama is too old for, and see what kind of shelter you end up in.” She wiped down the oven door. “As for this place, it’s been a lot worse than a homeless shelter, I can tell you that much. Back during the forties, it was a boarding house for war brides, and before that, in the Civil War, they turned it into a hospital—”
Lori interrupted curiously. “Civil War? I thought the house wasn’t built until 1902.”
“Rebuilt,” corrected Ida Mae, glancing over her shoulder. “The first place burnt down. What I’m trying to say is—”
“No kidding? Was it burned by the Yankees? That’s cool!”
Ida Mae scowled at her. “How should I know who burned it? It just burned. The point is—”
“Hospitality, I know,” said Lori, hopping down from the counter as she finished off the cookie. “Thanks, Ida Mae, that was really interesting. Mom said I should find something useful to do. Do you want me to help you clean the oven?”
Ida Mae straightened up, bracing a gloved hand against her back, and her scowl only deepened. “The day I can’t keep my own oven clean is the day they put me in the ground, young lady. Now get on out of here and pester somebody else. And put some clothes on.”
Lori grinned at her as she scampered out of the kitchen. “The cookies are great!” she called.
Ida Mae muttered after her, just loudly enough to be heard, “You get fat off them cookies and you won’t look so cute running around half naked.”
Dodging the snapping, lunging attentions of Rebel, the sheepdog who spent most of his days lying under the porch and dreaming up ways to make the lives of the human inhabitants of the house miserable, Lori crossed the scrubby patch of winter lawn toward the back garden. A warm breeze tossed playful shadows across the ground and dappled her skin with a lacework of sunlight. The air smelled like baby grass and daffodils and the flock of sheep, grazing contentedly in the meadow that stretched beyond the house, looked like a painting. Bambi, the pet deer who had followed Lindsay home from a walk one day, grazed along the fence line with his rope harness trailing the ground, plucking up the juiciest blades of new spring grass.
Lori grinned happily and raised her arm in greeting as she approached the back garden spot where Bridget, wearing an oversize, long-sleeve chambray shirt and a big floppy hat, had stuck four sticks into the muddy ground about forty feet apart, and was carefully winding twine around them to form a large square.
With her short platinum bob, round, girlish face, and too-big clothes, Bridget looked more like Lori’s sister than her aunt. In fact, she was not really Lori’s aunt, and neither was Lindsay. But the two women had been her mother’s best friends since before Lori was born. Bridget’s two children, Kevin and Kate, were adults now and Kate even had twin girls of her own, but Lori had grown up with them as though they were cousins or even siblings. Bridget and Lindsay had been part of all of Lori’s holidays and every vacation; they had picked her up from school when her mother was sick and had made her lunch when her mother had to meet with a client. They had held her hands at her grandmother’s funeral. They were better than aunts. They were, to Lori, second and third mothers.
When Cici, Bridget, and Lindsay had impulsively decided to give up their suburban Maryland lifestyle and buy a crumbling mansion in the Virginia countryside together, some people had been surprised. But not Lori. Some people had predicted that three women living together, especially in rural isolation, were doomed to ruin their friendship. Lori had not. From her twenty-year-old perspective, they had always been together, and quite simply always would.
“Hi, Aunt Bridget,” Lori called as she approached. “Wouldn’t you like to have—”
“Satellite television and high-speed Internet for the low introductory price of $99 a month?” replied Bridget, concentrating on the knot she was tying in the twine. “Can’t. We don’t have a clear view of the southern sky.”
Lori stared at her, then at the brochure in her hand. Her face fell as she read the small print regarding the necessity for a clear view of the southern sky. “How did you know?” she asked.
“I saw the same flyer in today’s paper. Besides, we checked out satellite Internet service when we first moved in. Come and hold this string for me, will you, sweetie, while I tie this?”
Lori stuffed the brochure in her back pocket and hurried to help. “What are you building? An addition to the house?”
“Our garden,” replied Bridget, securing the twine and regarding with satisfaction her perfectly cordoned-off square of crabgrass, dandelions, and vetch weed.
“It’s awfully big,” replied Lori skeptically.
“We have a lot of mouths to feed.”
“Um, supermarket?” suggested Lori.
“Excuse me? This from the girl who has been preaching to us all winter about carbon footprints and social consciousness? Don’t you know that growing your own food is the most ecologically responsible thing you can do?”
“Well, that’s true.” Lori’s expression brightened. “Good for you, Aunt Bridget.”
“It’s a lot of work, you know.”
“Nobody said saving the planet was easy.”
Bridget said, “As soon as you and Noah dig up the ground, I’ll mark off the rows. These first two will be for sweet peas, and back up against the fence there we’ll plant corn, beans, and cucumbers. Over there where we get strong afternoon sun, we’ll plant the melons, and—”
“Wait a minute.” Lori straightened up. “What do you mean, ‘dig up the ground’?”
Bridget looked up at her, squinting a little in the sun. “Well, first you’ll have to dig up all these weeds and grass. Then you’ll take a hoe and chop up the ground and work in the fertilizer—”
“Fertilizer?”
“Dried manure from the pasture,” explained Bridget—Lori made a face—“along with the compost we’ve been saving all year. You work it all together and let it sit so that the sun can warm it before we plant the seedlings. Other
wise, they’ll go into shock.”
“What I mean is—I thought that’s what the yard boy was for. That’s his job.”
Bridget smiled sweetly. “It’s everyone’s job to bring food to the table. Besides, don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy the soups and stews and pies and pasta sauces and salsa and casseroles we had all winter. Where do you think they came from?”
“Last year’s garden?”
Bridget hesitated. “Well, technically, they were from other people’s last year’s gardens, but this year we’re self-sufficient. And everyone contributes.”
“I understand that,” Lori said. “I just don’t understand why we have to dig up the garden by hand. What about Farley and his tractor?”
Their nearest neighbor, Farley, was also their plumber, electrician, and all-around handyman. During their time at Ladybug Farm, he had been called upon to help with everything from replacing shingles to pulling their lawn mower out of the ditch.
Bridget feigned shock. “What? And pollute the atmosphere with all those diesel fumes?”
Lori made a wry face. “Okay, I get it. Practice what you preach, right?”
“Right. Besides, Farley wouldn’t be able to get the tractor back here without wrecking the flower beds.”
“I think I’d rather help cook.”
“That,” Bridget told her firmly, “is precisely why you have to dig up the garden.”
When Lori had first arrived at Ladybug Farm after Christmas, she had begged Ida Mae and Bridget to teach her how to cook. Despite Cici’s warnings, they had agreed—with results so disastrous that Ida Mae had threatened to leave if Lori ever so much as came near the stove again.
Lori’s expression fell. “Aunt Bridget,” she said seriously, “we need to have a family meeting. I really think my talents are being underutilized here.”
Bridget sighed and sank back on her heels. “My darling,” she agreed, “I often think the same thing about myself.”
The tires crunched on the gravel as Lindsay swung her SUV around the circular drive and stopped, with an especially forceful application of the brakes, in front of the deep, columned front porch. She sat there for a moment, saying nothing, staring straight ahead.
She was dressed in a light gray wool suit with a pink blouse. Her rich auburn hair, usually pulled back into a playful pony-tail, was carefully wound into a French twist and secured with a pearl-studded clasp. Her makeup—with the exception of the lipstick that had been chewed away on the drive home—could have passed muster with a department store model, and she even wore a strand of her mother’s pearls around her neck. All of this on a Tuesday morning, and there wasn’t even a meal involved.
“I don’t see what you’re so pissed about,” Noah said. He had pulled off his clip-on tie and stuffed it into his pocket the moment they left the courthouse, and now he jerked open the top button of his blue Oxford cloth Sunday shirt. “We beat the rap, didn’t we?”
With the greatest of effort, and a campaign that had taken three women two weeks to mount, Noah had been persuaded to cut his hair above his shoulders. The result was a perfect square that ended at the ears that he had styled himself with sewing scissors, with long dark chunks that still fell lankly over his face. He had been persuaded to wear a new pair of crisp dark jeans for the occasion, but nothing could get him out of the dirty sneakers. Lindsay turned upon him a glare that had frozen the hearts of much older—and wiser—men. “We did not,” she told him, enunciating each word with great deliberation, “ ‘beat the rap.’ There was no rap to beat. This was a juvenile court hearing to determine, among other things, whether or not this temporary guardianship arrangement was a mistake. Not to mention the fact that I just paid out $175 for your fine!”
He scowled. “I’ll pay you back.”
“You’d better know you will.”
“I don’t know what you’re so uptight about. It was just traffic court.”
“We have a social worker coming here to inspect our home!”
He reached for the door handle. “I ain’t afraid of no social worker.”
Lindsay held out her hand, palm up. “Keys.”
He gave her a look that tried hard to be innocent. “What keys?”
“To the motorcycle. And a five-page report on the French Revolution by tomorrow morning.”
“You ain’t my mama.”
A beat. There had been a time not so long ago, when Lindsay would not have known how to respond to a remark like that. He was an orphan. She had taken on a huge responsibility by assuming guardianship. And she saw his challenge for exactly what it was. She kept her tone pleasant. “Very true. If I were your mother you would have learned not to use that disrespectful tone with me as soon as you learned to talk. However, I am your teacher, so make that ten pages.”
His brows shot together angrily. “That’s not fair!”
“And the keys.”
“We had a deal,” he persisted. “You said I could keep it and ride it around here as long as I paid for the gas myself.”
“We said you could ride the motorcycle as long as you didn’t leave the property, and you broke that deal when you took it on a county road.”
“I had to get gas, didn’t I?”
“You almost sideswiped a police car!”
He slumped back in the seat, arms folded belligerently.
Lindsay took a breath. “Noah, are you happy here? Because if you’re not, now would be a good time to tell me.”
He refused to meet her gaze. “I like the animals,” he admitted, somewhat sullenly. “And the drawing lessons.” He hesitated, and with even more reluctance, added, “And I guess going to school here ain’t as bad as going to regular school with all those little kids.”
When Noah came to live with them after the death of his alcoholic father, Lindsay would have been grateful to get half as many words out of him. She understood how far he had come. She also understood how far he had yet to go, particularly when he burst out, “But I don’t like living with a bunch of girls! I want my own place.”
“Yeah, well good luck with that, Mr. Rockefeller.”
“I was doing fine living in that little place of yours out in the woods last year. How come you had to bring me in and try to civilize me?”
The sentiment was so reminiscent of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, to which Lindsay had introduced Noah over the winter, that she had to struggle to suppress a grin—and was not entirely successful in suppressing a surge of pride. A year ago, he had never read an entire book. Now he was practically quoting Tom Sawyer. That was okay. That was a reason to keep trying.
So she explained patiently, “Noah, you can’t live in the woods. There’s a social worker coming to determine whether our house is a suitable environment for you.”
He slanted a glance toward her. “And what if she says it ain’t?”
“Well . . . there’s always Reverend Holland and his wife.”
He scowled. “All she feeds me is grits. And they pray all the time.”
Lindsay shrugged.
“It’s just not right,” he grumbled. “A guy in a house full of women. Who cares what that stupid social worker says, anyway? She don’t have to live here.”
Lindsay bit back sharp words. “Noah, you just spent the morning in juvenile court. You’re not exactly in a position to be making demands.”
“I don’t see why—”
“Look,” she said, losing her battle with patience, “you can’t move to a gazebo in the woods, and that’s final. There’s no heat, no shower, no toilet, and not much of a roof. It’s not going to happen. Get over it. And give me the key to the damn motorcycle. Now.”
He glared at her for a moment, then dug into his pocket and slapped a key in her hand. “It’s not fair,” he declared again as he jerked open the car door and stormed out.
“Make that fifteen pages on the French Revolution!” she shouted after him as he slammed the car door. Then she sank back against the seat and closed her eyes wearily. “I’m too o
ld for this,” she muttered. “Really.”
But she smiled, faintly and secretly, when she said it.
2
Family Meeting
For the first time in four months they had lunch on the porch—and they discovered in the process that the white wicker furniture needed to be repainted, and that a mouse had chewed a hole in the siding. But the blue gingham tablecloth and the vase of bright yellow daffodils Lori had gathered added a festive aura to the picnic of leftover chicken and Bridget’s tricolored pasta salad. Ida Mae made the first sweet tea of the season—the kind in which sugar is melted in the hot tea before ice is added—and seasoned it with early mint from the back door herb garden. Everyone lingered over the platter of chocolate-chip cookies Ida Mae brought out, and even Noah seemed to relax once the topic of his court appearance had been discussed and abandoned.
“Gosh, it’s good to be outside again,” said Bridget, smiling beneficently as she gazed out over the yard. The tree limbs were still bare, and the lawn was littered with broken limbs and dead leaves, but in the distance the sheep meadow was turning emerald, and a jaunty row of daffodils lined the fence. “I don’t mind telling you, there have been a few days when I started to lose faith that spring would ever get here.”
“Can you believe we have temperatures in the seventies this early?” Lindsay commented. “Although I have to admit if I had to face one more freezing night I’m afraid you guys would have had to lock up the kitchen knives.”
“Thank heaven for global warming,” sighed Cici, sinking back in her chair contentedly.
“Mom!” Lori’s tone was indignant. “Global warming is not a joke.”
“I know, I know. The poor panda bears.”
“Polar bears!”
“Right.” Cici hid a smile behind her glass. “Polar.”