A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [131]
And Lori replied easily, “Love you, too.”
“And I also hate that you’re so young and cute you can go two days without sleeping and so damn skinny you can eat five thousand calories at one sitting without even belching. And,” she added sternly, “I haven’t even started telling you what I think about you driving a rental car across three states in a blizzard, or getting on a motorcycle with a strange boy. However,” she added when Lori started to protest, “since it’s Christmas, I thought I might skip the lecture and”—she reached under the Christmas tree and brought out Ida Mae’s bottle of wine—“invite you to share a glass of Christmas wine with Lindsay and Bridget and me. This is the secret fruitcake ingredient,” she told her. “Ida Mae gave us the last bottle for Christmas.”
Lori took the bottle, regarding it with the respect it deserved. “It’s older than I am,” she observed in awe, reading the label. And she added with a sly upward glance, “Which, if you do the math . . .”
“Means you’re still not twenty-one,” Cici said, with an airy wave. “I know. But someone told me you’re grown-up when your mother says you are. And this is, after all, a very special occasion.”
The smile in Lori’s eyes indicated she understood the significance of her mother’s invitation, and appreciated it. “Thanks, Mom,” she said softly.
“Cici!” Bridget was waving to her across the room, making her way toward her through the crowd. “Derrick and Paul are on the phone. I’ve got them on speaker in my room. They want to wish us all a Merry Christmas.”
“We’ll be back in a minute,” Cici told Lori. “You can open the wine.”
Lori offered her arm for balance as Cici struggled to her feet, and then, grimacing, brushed something out of her hair. “What is that?” she asked her mother.
Cici laughed as she saw the ladybug take flight. “Ladybugs,” she told her. “The heat brings them out. You’ll get used to them.” And she winked. “You’ll get used to a lot of things.”
Paul was regaling Lindsay and Bridget with horror stories about the Christmas blizzard blackout as Cici came into the room. “It’s like something out of Dante, truly,” he told them. “I expect people to start eating each other any minute now.”
Cici laughed. “Peace on earth, goodwill to men. Merry Christmas, Paul.”
“Merry Christmas yourself,” he returned. “There you are in the boonies having the time of your lives while we’re freezing to death in the heart of civilization wearing every piece of Armani we own.”
“You missed the best party ever,” Lindsay assured him.
“Go ahead, break my heart.”
“Bridget, you little minx, what we really called to talk about was the fruitcake.” Derrick’s voice now. “It was without a doubt the best thing—”
“Confection!” chimed in Paul.
“I’ve ever put in my mouth!”
“Ambrosia!” echoed Paul.
Bridget exchanged a lift of the eyebrows with the other ladies. “It has a reputation around here for being pretty good.”
“And don’t think for one moment we don’t know why. Didn’t you say it was marinated in a Blackwell Farms Shiraz?”
“That’s right.”
“My dears, Blackwell Farms was one of the chichi-est boutique wineries of the 1960s,” said Derrick, who was a self-confessed—and occasionally quite annoying—wine snob. “In fact some people said their Shiraz rivaled that of some of the oldest wineries in France. Did you know a bottle of 1967 Blackwell Farms Shiraz sold at auction last year for over eight thousand dollars?”
The breath went out of Lindsay’s lungs in a whoop. Bridget’s hand flew to her throat. Cici stared at the phone as though it were a living thing that might, at any moment, spring at her.
“Did you say,” Cici managed at last, “nineteen sixty-seven ?”
And Lindsay choked, “Eight thousand dollars?”
“That’s right. We looked it up on the Internet last night before we lost power. Thought you’d get a kick out of it.”
Bridget whispered, “Oh my God!”
And Lindsay gasped, “Eight thousand dollars! A bottle!”
Cici stumbled out of the room, raced across the landing, and caught herself