A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [118]
20
The Lights of Home
The pall that had seeped into the house with the first frost of winter began to vanish over the next days, exorcised by the scent of cinnamon and cloves, the sound of excited, purposeful voices, and the nonstop buzz of activity. Farley was engaged to bring the stored furniture down from the loft, and Lindsay, Bridget, and Ida Mae set to work with lemon oil and polishing cloths. Cici started making phone calls, and to her utter amazement, almost everyone she invited from the old neighborhood accepted their invitation. As their friend Paul put it when she reached him at the office, “Well, darling, of course we’ve been holding the date. We simply assumed our invitation had been delayed in the mail.”
“They want to come,” Cici told the other two at lunch, still not quite able to keep the disbelief out of her voice. “Everyone wants to come! Already we have eight confirmed to stay the weekend, if you can believe that, and that’s not counting Katie and Kevin. Where are we going to put all these people?”
“Katie and the girls can share my room,” Bridget said, munching on a grilled cheese sandwich and barely glancing up from the recipes that were scattered across their newly rediscovered kitchen table. It was a gorgeous old chestnut piece, perfect to seat four, that had been rescued from the dairy loft. When Ida Mae positioned it in front of the big walk-in fireplace in the kitchen they knew it had always been there. “We’ll put the kids in sleeping bags on the floor. They’ll love it.”
Lindsay said, “I don’t suppose Lori . . .”
Cici shrugged her good shoulder, and an almost purposefully neutral expression assumed its place on her face. “I told her she could decide. I’m not going to beg.”
“She’s going to be missing a hell of a party, that’s for sure.”
“We’ve got that little room off the living room that no one ever uses,” Bridget pointed out. “We could put someone there.”
“And there’s always the sunroom,” added Lindsay. “Now that it doesn’t have a hole in the roof anymore. And as far as that goes, we could sleep five or six in the art studio if we had to.”
“This thing is going to be huge,” Cici said, sitting back heavily in her chair.
Bridget grinned. “I told you people would come!”
And while they reveled in the anticipation of reuniting with all the friends they had left behind, the local people all felt they had to counter the ladies’ invitation with one of their own: There was the Baptist church Christmas Pageant, the Methodist church Fellowship and Christmas Social, the Women’s Club Charity Ball, the Mayor’s Open House, the Downtown Association’s Annual Luminary and Caroling, and of course the Lighting of the Tree on the town square. It did not occur to them to refuse a single invitation or pass up one small-town event. Who knew if they would ever get another chance?
They held true to their promise not to discuss the future until after the first of the year. But each of them understood, in her own private fashion, that this was more than just a Christmas party. It was also a way of saying good-bye.
Ida Mae threw herself into preparation for the event, polishing windows and banisters and stair treads and chandeliers, liberally dispensing advice and opinions on everything from the placement of the furniture to the holiday menu, working with the energy of a woman half her age.
“This is nothing,” she boasted, “compared to the parties Mr. B used to give. He’d have one, two hundred people in here for Christmas. Why, I remember one Election Day we had cars parked all over the sheep meadow and down the highway a mile. Had to send the buckboard to fetch people to the house from their cars. Now there’s a party. Of course,” she allowed, “I was a lot younger then.”
“We have got to get her something really nice for Christmas,” Lindsay whispered to Bridget, feeling guilty.
“How about a trip to Aruba,” Bridget hissed back. “Permanently?”
Five dozen cookies were baked, wrapped, and stored. Bridget shipped off a fruitcake to Paul and Derrick with a card signed with