At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [92]
Cici put down her spoon, her eyes growing bright with interest. So did Bridget and Lindsay. “Do you mean . . .”
Ida Mae nodded smugly. “Everybody thinks the Blackwells made their money in phosphates, but that was just the start. It was bootleg whiskey that built their fortune. Hear tell that door you found used to be in the floor of the chicken house, the last place the law would go looking for a speakeasy—or a distillery.”
She sat down at the kitchen table and sampled her soup. “Good soup,” she commented, “if I do say so myself.”
“Ida Mae!” Lori practically squealed. “Is that all you have to say? Tell us more!”
“Ain’t nothing more to tell.”
“Are you serious?” Bridget demanded. “There used to be a speakeasy in the cellar of our barn and you say there’s nothing more to tell?”
“What about the door?” Noah, who had been pretending disinterest in the entire conversation, spoke up for the first time. “Was that some kind of secret escape route in case of raids?”
Ida Mae chewed a morsel of cornbread for an inordinately long period of time. “The door,” she said at last, “was put in when they decided to make wine down there. Couldn’t exactly carry all them grapes and barrels and stuff down the stairs, so they cut a door in the hill down by the orchard. All they had to do was drive the trucks up and unload.”
“I know the hill she’s talking about!” Bridget exclaimed. “Where the raspberries are planted, right?” And then she frowned. “But I never saw a door there.”
“It would be all overgrown now,” Cici said. “That’s probably why we couldn’t get it open, too. Ida Mae—”
“Will you all stop pestering me about stuff that happened way back in the old days?” the older woman demanded. “Can’t a person have a bite to eat in peace?”
“We don’t mean to pester you, Ida Mae,” Bridget said, sounding a little hurt. “But you could be a little more generous with your information, you know. You know everything there is to know about this house and the people who used to live here, but every time we ask a question you brush us off. All we want you to do is tell us your stories. Why won’t you do that?”
Ida Mae dabbed a drip of soup from her chin, crumpled her napkin, and replied flatly, “Because those stories are mine. I can tell them or not tell them. This is your house now. Get your own stories.” And with that, she gathered up her dishes and took them to the sink, effectively closing the subject.
They gathered on the porch at dusk, but this time they did not even make it to the rockers. They sat on the front steps to remove their ruined work gloves and filthy boots, and they were too tired, for a moment, to go further.
Finding the winery—and later, uncovering the briar and vine-encumbered door that was cut into the hillside—had provided a welcome distraction from the drudgery of the cleanup, but eventually the inevitable could be postponed no longer. Lori had practically fallen asleep over dinner, and Noah had gone to his room directly afterward. Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget had returned to work until daylight died.
“You know,” said Bridget, resting her chin wearily in her hands, “I just realized something. I am really old.”
“I definitely can’t keep up this pace,” admitted Cici. “Especially on no sleep.”
“I’ve got to wash my hair,” Lindsay said, but made no move to get up. “I’ll never get the smell of smoke out of it. I’m going to look like crap in the morning.”
They were silent for a time, trying to wrap their minds around the fact that a crisis of a much different kind awaited them in town tomorrow. On another evening, they would have talked about the upcoming meeting, expressed their feelings, tried to prepare themselves for it. Now they could barely imagine it.
“One crisis at a time,” Bridget murmured.
Cici wearily rubbed the back of her neck. “Sounds like a slogan for the Ladybug Farm twelve-step program.”
“This is not going to make us look very good in the eyes of Social Services.”
Cici gave Lindsay a puzzled look. “Why? It’s not like we planned the fire.”
“I know. But it makes it look as though . . . I don’t know. As though