A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [95]
Bridget bristled visibly. “I never heard any complaints before.”
“Oh, Bridget, come on—”
“I didn’t mean—”
“When we bought this place,” Bridget said, her voice stiff with hurt, “I thought it was clear I was going to do the cooking. If you don’t like the way I do it . . .”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Bridget, you can’t be serious!”
“Hold on.” Cici held up a hand for peace. “Bridget, I don’t think there’s any argument that Lindsay and I both love your cooking and appreciate the fact that you’ve been willing to take it on.” Lindsay nodded vigorously. “And even though it has been nice being waited on these last few days, I for one am not all that interested in learning to live like a nineteenth-century woman of leisure. And I definitely can’t keep eating like this three meals a day.”
Lindsay murmured her reluctant agreement. “But come on, Bridge. Hasn’t it been kind of nice, having help in the kitchen? When I think of all the peeling and slicing and blanching and preserving we did this summer—”
“Help?” exclaimed Bridget. “I’m not even allowed to set the table!”
Cici nodded and held out her glass for a refill, which Lindsay obliged. “She is a bossy old woman,” she agreed. “And set in her ways.”
“With way too much energy for a person of her age,” added Lindsay. “Could someone clue her in to the fact that no one irons anymore? Maybe she should take up golf.”
“Well, she’s worked all her life,” Cici said. “I know how I’d feel if someone told me one day I just wasn’t needed anymore.”
Bridget thought about that for a moment, and sighed. “Yeah, me, too, I guess.”
“What she needs to understand,” said Cici, “is that you’re the chef. She’s just the sous chef.”
Bridget brightened a little. “Right. Sous chef.”
“Of course,” added Cici, “it’s not like she’s going to be here forever. As soon as we find her relatives . . .”
“No one I’ve talked to ever heard of her relatives,” Lindsay said, “not even Maggie. Besides, what are we going to do if we find them? It’s not like she’s sick, or incompetent. We can’t just call them up to come and get her.”
Cici sighed. “I’d just feel better if she had some place to go, that’s all.”
“If she had some place to go,” Bridget pointed out, “she wouldn’t have been living in our attic.”
“I wonder how old she is, anyway,” mused Lindsay. “She’s got to have some terrific stories about this place, but every time I try to draw her out, she brushes me off.”
“The worst part is,” Bridget said, shivering in the wool throw she had tossed around her shoulders, “it’s forty-five degrees out here and we’re sitting on the front porch because this is the only place we have to talk.”
“It does feel weird, having someone else live here. I liked it better when it was our house,” admitted Lindsay.
Cici said, “It’s still our house. We own this place. That means you, too, Bridget. And if she’s making you unhappy, then she’s got to go. It’s that simple.”
“Go where?” asked Lindsay. “We’re back to that again.”
They were silent for a while, rocking.
“She’s a good housekeeper,” Cici admitted at last. “After all these years, I guess she’s got the routine down. And with everything else we have to do trying to put this place back together, it’s nice not to have to worry about mopping and dusting.”
No one could argue with that.
“To tell the truth,” Lindsay said after a moment, “I kind of like having ironed sheets. It reminds me of when I was a little girl, staying at my grandma’s house.”
“And the price is right,” added Cici.
“But she’s making me crazy,” Bridget said.
Lindsay sighed. “Managing servants is an art.” When the other two stared at her, she added, “So I hear.”
Cici said, “We’ll have a meeting, lay down the ground rules for her. If she can’t abide by them, she’ll have to find another job. It happens all the time.”
Lindsay said, “Not when you’re a hundred and five.”
“Stop saying that, Lindsay,” Bridget said. “She can’t be more than . . . well, seventy or eighty.”
“Right,” agreed Lindsay. “That makes a huge difference.”
Bridget said,