At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [11]
Lori looked suspiciously from Bridget to Lindsay to her mother to Ida Mae. “And what about you guys? What are you going to be doing?”
Bridget widened her eyes innocently. “Why, I was planning to go to Acapulco.”
“And I was going to write a novel,” offered Cici, leaning back in her chair as she sipped her iced tea.
“Damn,” said Lindsay, “that’s what I was going to do. No, wait, maybe I’ll just read one.”
“In fact,” Cici said, with an air of determination that made even Lindsay and Bridget uneasy, “I thought this spate of warm weather might be the perfect time to start refinishing the floors.”
Lindsay groaned out loud, and Bridget said, “I don’t know what would make you think that.” Noah suddenly became very interested in a cloud formation in the distant sky and Lori, for once, had the very good judgment to keep silent.
“Come on,” Cici insisted, “we’ve been putting it off for a year. We don’t want to wait until it gets too hot, and it’s warm enough now to leave the windows open to air the place out. Jonesie said we could rent a sander from him, and the whole project could be finished in three days. Well, five,” she modified, “before we can move the furniture back in.”
One of the first things they had loved about the old house was the beautiful heart pine floors that covered the downstairs living areas. Unfortunately, years of neglect had left them in less than optimal shape. After painstakingly restoring the stair treads of the grand staircase to all their gleaming glory, however, their enthusiasm for further work on the floors had waned. They had spent an entire spring and summer thinking of reasons not to tackle the floor refinishing project. But they all knew Cici was right. They couldn’t put it off forever.
“Well,” Lindsay agreed reluctantly, “this is the perfect weather for a project like that.”
“I saw some really pretty rugs in the JCPenney catalog,” Bridget volunteered. “Couldn’t we just . . .” But a look at Cici’s expression persuaded her not to finish the sentence. “No, I guess not.”
“Well, if ya’ll are going to start tearing the house apart,” grumbled Ida Mae, heaving herself up from the rocker, “I’ve got things that need to get done. Varnish ain’t never going to dry if it rains, you know.”
“Wait,” Cici said. “There’s news.” She took a breath, set her glass down, and glanced around the table at them with a smile that barely concealed her excitement. “Derek and Paul called before lunch. They’re driving down next weekend.”
Exclamations of delight rippled around the table until Noah said, “What? Them queer guys from the city?”
Lindsay shot him a look. “That’s not a polite term, Noah.”
“Jeez, where were you raised, in a barn?” Lori added. “They’re gay, okay?”
He shrugged. “Queer is queer.”
Lori opened her mouth again and Cici cut her off with a warning. “Lori . . .”
Bridget said quickly, “Do they know something about the wine?”
In the 1960s and ’70s, the farm—known then as Blackwell Farms—had operated a winery. Ida Mae had given the women the last bottle of Blackwell Farms wine from that era as a Christmas present, and it turned out to be quite valuable. Derek, an amateur wine connoisseur, had offered to help them place the wine for auction with a friend of his who specialized in such things. They had been waiting weeks to hear how much it would bring.
“I think so,” Cici said, her eyes taking on a spark of excitement. “Derek said he wanted to talk to us about it in person.”
“That could be really good,” Lindsay said hopefully.
“Or really bad,” Bridget ventured.
“I better start airing out the guest room,” Ida Mae said with an air of martyrdom as she trudged back inside. “Like we didn’t have nothing better to do.”
“What I’d really like to do,” Cici said, “is get the floors finished before they get here.”
“They’ll be our first real overnight company,” Bridget said happily. “We’ll have cheese blintzes with wild blueberry sauce for breakfast.”
“You’ll have to make scones,” Lindsay added. “You know Paul will consider the trip wasted