Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [29]
Cici said, “I had the works. Six bridesmaids, all in buttercup yellow. A big puffy dress with a train halfway down the aisle. Freesia and candles and white satin bows on every pew. The groomsmen wore cutaways with gray satin cummerbunds.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale,” Lindsay said.
Cici shrugged. “I guess. I don’t remember much about it. I was too stressed to enjoy it, and Richard and I had a big fight at the reception. I dumped a glass of champagne over his head.”
Bridget and Lindsay chuckled. “Signs of things to come,” Lindsay said.
Bridget’s voice softened with fond remembrance as she said, “Jim and I were married at City Hall. Jim had just gotten a job teaching at Columbia and he had to be there the next day. I wore a pink suit with a corsage of sweetheart roses. My best friend Martha stood up with me, and afterward she threw rice at us on the steps and a policeman yelled at her for littering.” She grinned. “We were brushing rice out of each other’s hair all the way to New York.”
Cici smiled. “And you were married how long?”
“Thirty-four years.”
“Well, then,” said Lindsay, leaning back in her rocking chair. “There you go.”
“Right,” said Cici. “It’s not the wedding; it’s the marriage that counts.”
“Try telling that to Bridezilla.”
“Or Bridezilla’s mom.”
Bridget said softly, “I miss him every single day.”
Lindsay reached across and squeezed Bridget’s hand. “You were lucky, Bridge. You got one of the good guys.”
“There aren’t many of them left,” Cici said.
Bridget smiled. “I know.”
They were quiet for a time. The mountains began to fade to black in the distance, and the warmth of the day leeched into the twilight, leaving a mild and not entirely unpleasant chill on bare arms and ankles. A light came on in Noah’s room overhead. Lindsay finished her wine. Cici ate another cookie.
Bridget said reluctantly, “Well, I guess I’d better go fax this menu to the blushing bride.” But she made no move to rise.
“And I’ve got to e-mail Catherine about the contract,” Cici said. “Again.”
“A lot of good our policy of not answering the phone after five did us,” observed Lindsay.
“That’s the price you pay for life in the modern world.”
“If you ask me, life was a lot easier before we got so modernized.”
No one argued with that.
They sat there for only a moment longer. Then one by one they got up, went inside, and went back to work.
August 12, 2003
My darling,
Sometimes during the day I think of things I want to tell you, or I see something that makes me smile, and I think how it would be if you could see it, too. Here are some of the things I wish I could have shared with you today.
A vanilla-caramel swirl ice cream cone
A fat rabbit that darted right out in front of me when I went to get the paper this morning
A brown and white puppy with a red collar
Are you eating ice cream where you are? Is someone makingyou smile?
Please be happy. Because the truth is that I can never be until you are.
6
A Few Complications
The phone on the desk beside her began to ring, and Cici shouted up the stairs, “Fax!” Until the North-Deres had blown their way into their lives, the trusty old fax machine that Cici had kept for home use back in Maryland had been boxed up in the cellar behind Lindsay’s rowing machine, a garment rack, and three boxes of unused glassware. Now it was plugged into an extension line of the house phone, and when the telephone rang the women never knew whether they were going to hear the frustrating beeeep of the fax machine or the sound of an actual human voice.
Until slightly more than a year ago, they had not even had cable television and had to drive to the library in town for high-speed Internet. But when Lori had finally convinced them of the practicality of bringing twenty-first-century conveniences to the nineteenth-century-house, they hadn’t counted on how much space—and time—those amenities would consume.
There was a small anteroom off