A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [124]
The other two, still gasping for breath, stared at her in shock. Bridget covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking and her voice choked. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m—so sorry!”
They both moved to her with words of comfort, and she lifted her chapped, tear-streaked face to them, fending off their reassurance. “Not just about tonight. I was stupid and you could have frozen to death coming out there looking for me. You didn’t have to do that but you did, but it’s not just that—it’s everything.” She started sobbing again, and the words were difficult to understand. “You wouldn’t even be here, either of you, if it weren’t for me. I know you agreed to buy this house because of me . . .” She scrubbed at her eyes with a gloved hand, but that only seemed to make the tears flow faster. “You had good jobs, you had lives, and now you’re stuck out here freezing to death on Christmas Eve in a blizzard with a bunch of sheep and a st-st-stupid dog and you’ve lost all your money and Cici has a broken arm and . . .”
“Bridget.” The astonishment in Cici’s voice was absolute. “Bridget, are you kidding me? Is that what you really think?”
“Nothing worked out the way we planned, nothing,” Bridget gulped. “We were supposed to make our dreams come true and we didn’t even come close. We didn’t even get started. All we did was mortgage our future and waste a year of our lives!”
Lindsay gazed at her in disbelief. “I don’t know about you, but the last thing I feel is that I’ve wasted anything this past year. In fact . . . it was probably the best year of my whole life. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Bridget choked a little on her sobs, looking at Lindsay through wet, swollen eyes. “But—what about Shep, and your new job?”
For a moment Lindsay looked confused, and then she shook her head. “I called Shep to turn it down the day after Cici came home from the hospital.” She hesitated and added honestly, “It’s not that I didn’t think about it. He painted a pretty picture. But . . . somehow I just couldn’t see myself in it.”
“Don’t you see, Bridge?” Cici said earnestly, gripping Bridget’s gloved hand in her own. “Maybe our dreams didn’t come true, but we got better ones. How can you say this year was wasted? Do you know what I was thinking the whole time I was in the hospital? I was thinking what might have happened to me if you hadn’t been there. I could have fallen off a roof anywhere, any time, and what I was thinking was how lucky I was that it happened here, and now, with you two to take care of me. You guys . . .” She squeezed Bridget’s hand, and then Lindsay’s. “You’re my family. And if we hadn’t bought this house together, I don’t think I ever would have realized that.”
“Ditto,” said Lindsay softly, and touched Cici’s cold cheek with her gloved hand. She looked at Bridget. “Honey, don’t you see? This is not about the house. It’s about who we’ve become because of the house. And I can’t go back to the person I was before, even if I wanted to.”
“We’re a family,” Cici repeated firmly, “and in a family none of us does without the necessities of life—like health insurance—when the others can help her out.” Bridget looked surprised, and then embarrassed, and Cici went on quickly, “Look, I know we said we weren’t going to talk about this until the first of the year, but . . .” She drew a quick, short breath and looked from one to the other of them. “I for one have seen my life flash before my eyes twice in the past month and I think I’m entitled to break the rule. Especially when I made it up.”
She unzipped her coat, reached into an inside pocket, and drew out an envelope. “I was going to wrap this up for Christmas,” she said, “and put it on the tree. But I think I’d rather have you look at it now. It’s for both of you.”
She handed the envelope to Bridget first. Bridget took off her glove, used it to blot her tears, and opened the envelope. Lindsay moved close, holding the flashlight and peering over her shoulder as Bridget pulled out the piece of paper inside. “Oh my God,” she said