Love Letters From Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [51]
“Maybe he would have been right.” Lindsay sighed. “At least when Noah’s without wheels we know where he is.”
“Cici!” Bridget was at the back door, telephone in her hand. “It’s for you.”
Cici rolled her eyes. “I don’t suppose she could take a message.”
“It wouldn’t matter. You’d have to deal with her sooner or later.”
“Catherine?” Cici inquired of Bridget as she took the telephone.
Bridget shrugged. “Believe it or not, no.”
She went to help Lindsay with the table rounds as Cici spoke into the phone. “This is Cici.”
The table rounds were not heavy, but they were cumbersome, and it took the two of them to maneuver one around the house to the front porch. Bridget and Lindsay reached the steps just as the screen door slammed and Cici came out.
She was dressed as they had last seen her, in rolled-up jeans, sneakers, and an untucked T-shirt, her hair escaping from her attempt to pull it back with a clip, her face devoid of makeup. What was different was that she had her purse over her shoulder and her car keys in her hand. Every freckle on her face stood out in stark relief, and her eyes had a stunned, blank look to them.
“Um,” she said, as though not quite sure where the next words were coming from, “I have to go.”
“Go? Where?” They propped the table top against a hydrangea bush and started toward her.
“Charlottesville.” Cici moved down the steps without looking at them, clutching the keys as though they had the power to unlock some magic door only she could find. “To Lori. That was the hospital. There’s been an accident.”
For Better or For Worse
April 13, 2005
Sweetheart,
It’s funny how, as time goes on, the things you used to think were so important are hardly worth remembering anymore, and the things you barely noticed suddenly seem like the most important things in the world.
Important: The way the kitchen smelled on a winter morning and pancakes were cooking.
Not Important: A pair of red leather boots I worked six months of nights to payfor. I don’t even know what happened to those boots now.
Important: Your smile
Not Important: My own laundry room
Important: Being safe
Not Important: Being rich
Important: Watching you sleep
Not important: A new car
I wish I hadn’t made so many mistakes over things that weren’t important. I wish I could take them all back.
Especially the one where I lost you.
9
Good in a Crisis
Later they would think about that moment, and how everything changed from light to dark in an instant. It was not the first time for any of them. A child runs into the street. A husband clutches his chest. A parent doesn’t know you anymore. Light to dark. One moment they were talking about goats and weddings on a spring afternoon. And then everything changed.
They knew this place, where the throat seized and the heart started flooding adrenaline and the world suddenly shifted, unmistakably and irretrievably, on its axis. They had been here before. But that did not make the terrain any less terrifying. Or navigating it any easier.
But because they had been here before, they knew the choreography almost without thinking. Lindsay took Cici’s keys and got her friend settled in the passenger seat just as Bridget arrived with Lindsay’s purse and cell phone. Bridget packed an overnight bag for Cici, told Noah and Ida Mae what had happened, phoned the Reverend Holland and asked him to look in on Noah, and was on the road little more than half an hour behind Lindsay.
Cici arrived just in time to drop a kiss onto her groggy daughter’s forehead before they took her to surgery. “I warned you about texting and driving,” she said shakily, trying to smile and fight back tears, and not succeeding very well at either one.
“Texting and walking, Mom,” Lori assured her. Her speech was slurred, one eye blackened and swollen shut, the other slitted and unfocused. “You look pretty.”
“So do you, sweetheart,” Cici said, smoothing back her tangled copper hair, and then the