Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [5]
Lindsay lifted a hand for attention. “You close the article, Bridge. Listen.”
After almost three years of hard work and sacrifice, the house is still not fully restored, and the farm is a work in progress. Every day is an adventure for the residents of Ladybug Farm, and not every adventure has a happy ending. If they had it all to do over again, would they have made the same choice? Do they have any regrets?
“When we bought this house,” Bridget says, “we all had our ideas of how it was going to turn out, and big plans for what we wanted to do. Of course nothing turned out like we thought it would.” And she gives a slow, shy smile that seems, in a way, to exemplify the charm of Ladybug Farm. “It turned out better.”
Lindsay looked up, smiling, and the three women shared a moment of silent appreciation for the memories they had made together. But it was only a moment. The screen door squeaked and banged, and Noah exclaimed, “Hey did y’all see this? They put one of my pictures in the magazine!”
He came in with a magazine upheld, page turned to the pictorial display, and Lindsay grinning, held up her own copy to match.
“You’re famous,” Cici said, pulling one of the six copies of Virginians at Home out of his hand.
Noah hooked an ankle around the leg of a chair to pull it out from the table and plopped down, his head buried in his own copy. “Pretty cool,” he admitted. “Of course, they didn’t say much about me.”
“A picture’s worth a thousand words.”
“I guess. I wonder how come they only used one.”
Cici rolled up her magazine and rapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Because the article wasn’t about you. It was about us.”
“You’re going to have lots of articles written about you,” Bridget assured him soberly. “But we’re old. This could be our last chance.”
“Well,” he agreed thoughtfully, “there is that.” And then he laughed when all three of the ladies rolled up their magazines and pummeled him indignantly.
Noah Clete bore little resemblance to the sullen, gangly, greasy-haired teenager they had taken in a little over two years ago. He had lost his awkward angles and gained confidence. Two part-time jobs—one at Ladybug Farm and another at Family Hardware in town—had given him long muscles and sun-golden skin. His dark hair had remained neatly trimmed since a girl—now long forgotten—had mentioned she liked it that way, and was now worn short and spiked as much as the school dress code would allow. His voice had deepened, and he shaved regularly to keep the faint bristle of beard at bay.
When he had first shown up at Ladybug Farm, secretly sleeping in a shack in the woods and stealing from their garden to live, he had attended public school only sporadically but treasured a sketch pad on which he chronicled scenes from everyday life. Lindsay bribed him with art supplies and homeschooling, and discovered he was an excellent student, given the right motivation.
Last year he had won Young Artist of the Year in a competition of over three thousand students sponsored by the Virginia Council for the Arts. His charcoal drawing of a soldier at a train station was entitled “Homecoming.” The award had included his choice of a cash award or a one-year scholarship to the college preparatory school of his choice. The women had brought all their persuasive powers to bear, but in the end all three were surprised by how easy it was to convince the once-mercenary young man of the advantages of spending his windfall on higher education.
Within weeks of applying, he had been accepted to the John Adams Academy for the Arts and Sciences, a privately funded college prep in Staunton, Virginia. The open-campus nature of the school, which was an hour away, made it possible for him to attend classes only three days a week and still keep up with his responsibilities on the farm, his part-time job, and his art. It was Lindsay’s proudest accomplishment that, even though the majority of his education had been obtained at home, through her own rather inventive and sometimes bizarre curriculum, he was an honor student.