A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [25]
With an effort, Cici roused herself. “No corkscrew.”
Cici placed the bottle of wine on the step between her feet, tore off the foil cover, and inserted the drill bit into the cork. Lindsay watched without comment as she drilled halfway through the cork, braced the bottle between her feet, pulled upward with both hands on the drill, and popped the cork free.
“You’re a regular little MacGyver, aren’t you?”
Cici looked at the bottle for a moment. “No glasses,” she said.
Lindsay held out her hand. Cici passed the wine bottle to her. Lindsay brought the bottle to her lips, drank, and passed it back to Cici. Cici did the same.
“I don’t understand,” Lindsay said after a time, “how the moving company can lose an entire thirty-five foot van complete with the personal possessions of three separate households.”
Cici seemed to ruminate on that for a while. “It’s not exactly lost,” she said. “It’s just not here.”
Lindsay retrieved the bottle. “I finally got hold of the power company on my cell,” she said. “They have no record of our work order. They said it would be a couple of weeks.”
Cici drank again, and returned the bottle.
“Also called the phone company. Guess what we don’t have?”
“Phone service?”
“Broadband Internet. Apparently it’s not available in this area. Neither is cable television.”
“Jesus. Where are we? The Yukon?”
“Nah. In The Yukon you can get satellite Internet.”
They drank in silence for a while. The birds fluttered, chirped, and scolded raucously from the branches of a poplar tree that hung over the porch, and they could hear Bridget still bustling around inside through the open door. But otherwise the quietness was so intense it was almost a texture—as light as silk, as soft as velvet. After a while they felt it seep into them—the smell of grass, the rolling valley, the absolute stillness.
“If silence was a color,” Lindsay said softly, “it would be green.”
Cici leaned in and bumped her friend affectionately with one shoulder. “Stop talking like a dumb artist.”
Lindsay blew out a slow, tired breath. “Did we make a mistake?”
Cici didn’t answer for a time. She looked at the afternoon sun glinting on the dogwoods on a hillside, at the brilliant blanket of green that covered the distant mountains. And she looked at the tangle of overgrown vines in the orchard, the rotting tree limbs that littered the yard, the tumbled-down barn. She said, “I don’t think we can fix this place up in a year.”
“I don’t think we can even clean it in a year.”
“On the other hand . . .” Cici retrieved the bottle, and drank. “With no cable and no Internet, what else have we got to do?”
Lindsay sat up a little straighter, looking around. “Do you smell that?”
Cici tested the air, her brow wrinkling. “It smells like—”
“Dinner,” called Bridget cheerfully. She pushed through the screen door carrying a big footed tray. “Canned tomato soup with fresh herbs, wild dandelion salad with strawberry vinaigrette, pan bread, and strawberry cobbler!”
The other two hurried to help her with the tray. “What in the world?”
“But how—”
“The stove is gas,” she replied, beaming. “The herb garden is thriving, and that sunny hill behind the house is just covered in strawberries. I picked the ones that were ripe, and there was a enough for the salad and a cobbler!”
“Where did you get this?” Lindsay cupped the half-unfurled rosebud that was displayed in a small silver vase in the center of the tray, leaning close to inhale. “Oh, my God, smell that! It’s an Old English rose!”
“They’re blooming in the garden,” Bridget said matter-of-factly, “but you’d better get out there and give them some attention pretty soon or all you’ll have left is a weed garden.”
The exhaustion that had weighted Cici’s arms and stiffened Lindsay’s legs only a moment ago evaporated into the spring air as they spread a quilt on the porch and set out the picnic. They sat cross-legged on the floor around