A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [91]
They sat at the kitchen counter while Bridget brought water to boil and poured it into four mugs with tea bags.
“We heard you were in a nursing home,” Lindsay said, placing the sugar bowl on the counter.
“Didn’t care for it,” replied Ida Mae, easing herself up onto a kitchen stool. “Ain’t ya’ll ever going to get any furniture? You poor or something?”
“Or something,” said Cici, placing a mug of tea before the older woman, and handing Lindsay a second. “So you just walked out of the nursing home? With no place to stay?”
“I’ve got a place to stay,” she replied, squaring up her shoulders again. “Been staying here just about all my life.”
Bridget paused in the act of taking her own seat at the counter. “Do you mean to say . . . you haven’t been living in our attic this whole time have you?”
“Stayed with my sister some,” replied Ida Mae. “She’s dead now. Children sold her place. Sometimes I stayed in my old room downstairs. But with you all tramping in and out, hauling firewood and such, weren’t much privacy. So I made myself a pallet upstairs. Warmer there, too.” She looked at them curiously. “Don’t ya’ll know about the gas heaters?”
Cici said sharply, “Gas heaters?”
She nodded. “Mr. B had ’em put in every room about fifteen, twenty years ago, even the pantry. You know how old people start to get cold,” she confided, as though it were a secret. She added, “They’re set in the wall, so as not to disturb the historical. But all you have to do is lift up the grate to light ’em.”
Lindsay said, “Grate?”
And Cici sank back in her chair. “So that’s what all those vents are for!”
Ida Mae fished the tea bag out of her cup, wrung it out with her fingers, and set it on the counter. “Never did learn to like tea made from a bag.” She grimaced as she tasted it.
“So it was you who left Emily Blackwell’s recipe book out for me,” Bridget said with a note of wonder in her voice, “And the labels—”
“And the landscape map?” interjected Lindsay.
“I know where lots of things are,” replied Ida Mae smugly. “And ya’ll need all the help you can get. I turned the power on for you, too, that day you was too foolish to find it for yourself. I don’t hear no thanks for that.”
Cici said, “And you just walked into our house one night and put a record on the gramophone?”
The old woman shrugged uncomfortably. “How did I know you was t’ home? Sitting around in the dark like that on the front porch. Besides, I missed my music. I wanted to hear the old place singing again, like it used to when Mr. B was alive.”
They just looked at each other, hardly knowing what to say.
Then Bridget said, “Wait—did you take the pie?”
“And the ham?” added Lindsay.
“And leave my screwdriver in the pantry?”
Ida Mae shrugged, and did not even have the grace to looked abashed. “Didn’t think you’d mind,” she said. “You had plenty.” She took a sip of the tea and wrinkled her nose. “Your pie coulda used more ginger,” she added, stirring sugar into the tea.
Bridget looked at Lindsay. “Amazing,” she said.
Lindsay looked at Cici. “Unbelievable.”
“That would be one word for it,” agreed Cici, and she looked at the strange old woman sitting beside her at the counter. “What I don’t understand is why you had to keep sneaking around like that. Why didn’t you just come to the front door and introduce yourself?”
Ida Mae Simpson looked slightly indignant. “Why, I had to see what kind of folks you was first, didn’t I?”
“But,” exclaimed Lindsay, “you’ve been living in our house! Without our permission! Don’t you see that’s just–just—”
She looked helplessly from Bridget to Cici and Bridget supplied, “Wrong.”
Ida Mae did not react at all.
Cici took a calming breath. “Okay,” she said, “you said you had nieces or nephews. Do you happen to know any of their phone numbers?”
She shrugged. “Got no need to call them. They’re up in Michigan somewheres.”
Bridget suggested, “Maybe you have relatives around here?”
“Nah. Outlived them all.”
“Oh,” said Lindsay. “Congratulations . . . I guess.” She looked from Cici to Bridget with an exaggerated lift of her eyebrows, telegraphing a question.