“In the meantime . . .” She smiled. “You’re right, I do have a family. And it includes Cici and Lindsay. We’re about to go off on a marvelous adventure together, and we’ve earned it. Some day, if you work hard and live right, the two of you might get a chance to have as much fun as I’m having. So be happy for us, okay?”
She stood, then, and extended her hands to her two rather dazed-looking offspring. “Now, unless you’re planning on serving me with papers for a competency hearing . . .” She paused only slightly to toss Kevin a look of mild inquiry. He quickly stood up and grasped her hand. “Let’s get back to the party, shall we?”
His name was Peter Shepler, and he insisted everyone call him Shep. He was over six feet tall, slim and muscular with iron gray hair and a nose like Richard Gere’s. There had been a time in Lindsay’s life when the mere sight of him could stop her breath.
Now all she could notice was that he had had a lot of work done on his teeth. His smile was about three shades whiter than the brilliant white satin she had used for the buffet. She thought about complimenting him on it, but wasn’t sure that would be polite.
He looked down at her now with that sad, tender, sweet expression in his eyes that once upon a time had melted her heart like chocolate in the sun. “So,” he said, “after all these years, it’s good-bye.”
Lindsay actually remembered a very distinct good-bye some five years ago, when he had married another woman. But she merely smiled and agreed. “It looks like it.”
His gaze swept her face, her hair, and barely skimmed the glitter-dusted curve of her cleavage before returning to her eyes, the tenderness in his smile never wavering.
Subtle, Shep
.
Very nice.
“You’re finally getting a chance to paint full-time, just like you always wanted,” he said. “You’re going to have gallery owners beating a path to your door.”
She smiled. “I don’t know about that. But there aren’t too many times in life you get a chance to go after a dream. This is mine.”
He nodded. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you, Shep.”
“I remember that weekend we spent in Charleston. You did some fabulous paintings there.”
Back in those days, he had been the principal at the school where she taught. She had been madly in love with him for almost a year before he noticed. It had taken another three years for him to finally convince her he would never make a commitment. A month after she had accepted a teaching position in another school, he announced he was engaged to be married—to someone else, of course.
She said, “Actually, I only took photos. I never travel with painting supplies.”
He looked surprised. “Are you sure? I distinctly remember you painting the bridge at Magnolia Gardens.”
“That’s a pretty popular scene to paint. But I never got around to it.”
“Not even a sketch?”
“Not even.”
“Funny how the mind can play tricks.”
“I guess.”
“Anyway, you’re going to be great. And I’m envious.”
She said, “I’m a lucky woman,” and meant it.
She sipped her wine. He said, after a time, “I love the Shenandoah Valley.”
“Me, too.”
“Maybe I’ll drive up some weekend, after you get settled.” Still the same bedroom eyes.
Damn him to hell.
“We’d love to have you,” she said. “How is Estelle, anyway?”
He flinched. “Still in rehab.”
“Oh.” She did not look away. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He gave her an apologetic smile. It was another one of his tricks, that little quirk of the lips, half begging, half flirting, that used to work every time. “It just seems so strange, knowing you won’t be here. That I’ll never bump into you on the street again, or see you at a soccer game or band recital. That . . . you just won’t be here.”
That almost got her. Suddenly she found herself thinking about all the things that simply wouldn’t be there anymore. The familiar desk in room 312, the giant hemlock in her backyard, the eighty-year-old clerk at the Shop-and-Go who always gave her the wrong change. The Cineplex, the creaky board in her bedroom closet, the teller at the bank who called her “Miss Wright” because three of her four children had been in Lindsay’s class, cranky old Mr. Daughtery who lived on the corner and refused to clip his overgrown hedges despite the fact that they were a traffic hazard . . . she had lived here for twenty-three years. What was she thinking?
Shep reached out, lightly touched her arm. “We were good together, Linds,” he said softly. “Whatever happened to us?”
She looked at his fingers on her bare arm for a long time, and slowly the panic that had begun to gather in her chest dissipated. She looked at his face. She smiled. “You got married,” she said, “and I got smart.”
She glanced over his shoulder, and saw Cici and Bridget standing across the room. They raised their glasses to her, and she returned the salute. “It was great talking to you, Shep. Now,” she said, turning her smile back to him, “if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the party.”
Delores and her secretary, Sheryl, were waiting for them in the media/game room downstairs, where the baize card table had been claimed as a temporary office. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she declared as they came in, “so I can get back to what I do best—drinking.”
Years of chain-smoking had given the attorney’s voice a gravelly tenor, and she had a habit of chewing on the tip of her pen when cigarettes were not an option. Her spiked silver hair and crocodile-tanned skin spoke of a woman who wasn’t afraid of living, and her shrewd black eyes didn’t miss a trick. She had handled Cici’s divorce, Jim’s estate, and Lindsay’s contract dispute when she left her former school system early due to the aforementioned incident with Shep. She was a woman who knew how to get things done.
“So.” She peered at them across the spread of papers as they sat down. “Last chance to back out. You’re really going to do this thing?”
Almost as one, they burst into laughter. “Are you kidding me?” “Silly question!” and “Let’s get on with it, Delores! We’re missing the party!”
“All righty, then. The closing documents are pretty straightforward. I’ll go over them as you sign, and Sheryl here will witness. I’ll fax them to Virginia first thing in the morning and we’re done. Here’s your Agreement to Enter into Joint Venture.” She distributed three copies of the document between them. “It covers everything from how much each of you is required to contribute to household expenses each month to how many pets you’re allowed to have.”
“I still think this is unnecessary,” Cici said.
“How many pets are we allowed to have?” Bridget asked.
“As many as we want,” Lindsay said.
Delores answered Cici. “It’s like a prenup. Everyone thinks they’re unnecessary until they don’t have one.”
Cici murmured, “Well, I guess I can relate to that.”
Delores said, “You’ve been lucky. Everything has gone smoothly up to this point. But what if things start going bad? How much more are you willing to invest? Where are you going to draw the financial line?”
Lindsay said, “What line? It’s drawn. All I’ve got left is my retirement fund, and I’m not touching that.”
Bridget spread her hands. “My financial life is an open book. All I have to live on until Social Security kicks in is what’s left of Jim’s life insurance, unless we’re talking about selling my jewelry.” Absently she fingered the emerald and diamond ring which had been Jim’s last anniversary gift to her. It was extravagant, but he hadn’t been able to afford an engagement ring when they had gotten married, and this had been his way of making up for its absence.
Cici said, “And I’m not borrowing money from my ex. I don’t care if he is richer than God. So there you go. We’ve invested all we can afford to.”
“Exactly.” Delores tapped a clause on the document with a sharp red fingernail. “All written down plain as day in paragraph 12-A.” She flipped over a page. “Heirs and assigns, fair use of property . . . okay look at paragraph 15, term of contract. We talked about your agreement to give this situation a year before reassessing. We still good with that?”
She glanced around the table, and received three nods. “Okay, so at the end of a year, any one of you can offer your share of the property to any of the other two, or jointly agree to offer the entire property for sale to a third party at a mutually agreed upon price, or renegotiate this agreement or any part thereof in any way you choose. Understand?”
“It all sounds so lawlerly,” complained Lindsay.
“Can’t help it, dearie. I’m a lawyer. Now I need a date of termination. Shall we say January first?”
They consulted each other with a questioning glance, and shrugged. “Sure.” “Suits me.” “Sounds fine.”
Delores scrawled the date on her copy of the contract, while Sheryl went around the table and did the same to everyone else’s. “Okay, ladies, get out your pens. Let the signing begin.”
Six minutes and a flurry of signatures later, they all sat back and looked at each other in a kind of stunned astonishment. Just like that, it was over.
And it had just begun.
Spring
Starting Over
5
Moving On
Nine months to the day from the evening they had spent at the Holiday Inn with two laptops, a bottle of wine, and a legal pad between them, making their plans, a caravan of shiny SUVs pulled into the rutted and overgrown gravel drive that led to Blackwell Farm. They were loaded down with suitcases, pots and pans, nonperishable food items, art supplies, tools, pillows, linens, photo albums, electronics, toiletries, and all of those essential items that one snatches first from a house fire and refuses to trust to the movers. They had been driving for five hours, but the journey had taken most of a lifetime.
Lindsay, leading the procession, stopped fifty feet into the drive, sprang out of the car, and opened the back hatch. Bridget pulled in behind her, followed by Cici. From the top of a pile of boxes that was almost over her head, Lindsay slid a large, colorfully painted sign out of the van. Bridget came up quickly to help her. Between them, they carried the sign back to the end of the drive, followed by Cici with the hammer.
“Left,” Bridget advised, standing back as they positioned the sign in the midst of the weeds where the drive met the road. “No, left and back about three feet. It’s too close to the driveway.”
“There’s a big rock.”
“Leave room for the flower bed.”
“How about here?”
“It’s crooked. Go back a little.”
“There’s a ditch there!”
“Wait, I can do this . . .”
Straddling the ditch, Lindsay held the sign while Cici hammered it into the ground. “We’ll set it in cement later,” Cici said, and they joined Bridget to admire their work.
Cut in a sweeping scroll design, the sign was painted pastel yellow and decorated with three bright ladybugs. In flowing script, the lettering said, Welcome to Ladybug Farm.
The three shared a grin and a high five, and hurried back to their cars.
They had seen the house in November for a final walk-through before finalizing their offer, but had not been back since. They pulled their three cars in a semicircle in front of the house and got out one by one. They stood there for a moment in silence, taking it all in.
The good news was that the surroundings were even more beautiful in the spring than they had been in August when they had first toured the house. Baby grass the color of a chiffon ball gown swept in graceful arcs and curves around the house, and the red clover and yellow dandelions that dotted it were like colorful embroidery. The pear trees in the orchard were covered in snowy blossoms, and the apple trees were just beginning to show their pink flowers. The giant tulip poplars that surrounded the house were alight in brilliant green, and the big white flowers for which the trees were named were just beginning to unfurl. There was a crazy quilt of purple Siberian iris and bright yellow daffodils spilling across the path that led to the dairy, and the dairy itself was draped in purple clusters of fragrant wisteria. Wild dogwoods dotted the face of the distant mountains, which faded from dark to light in shades of blue and green.
The bad news was that winter had not been kind, either to the house or the yard. A hickory branch, big enough to be a small tree, had fallen on the barn, taking out part of the roof and one of the loft doors. A pile of sodden leaves and a network of thorny vines had blown onto the front porch, and mossy green mildew decorated the railings. The paint on the steps had flaked up in huge hunks, and there was more wood showing on the white columns than paint. The multigabled roof of the house had an odd, patchy appearance, and it took them a moment to realize that that was because quite a few of the clay tiles were missing. Rows of naked windows gazed down upon them like so many empty, forlorn eyes. A panel of torn screen on the little side porch flapped forlornly in the breeze.
Dead vines clung to the brick chimney and stretched their parasitic fingers toward the upstairs windows. As Lindsay’s dismayed eyes followed the path of the vines upward, she was struck by something odd. “Look at that,” she said, pointing.
“Look at what?”
“That top window there. The curtain is closed.”
“So it is.”
“But it wasn’t a minute ago.”
Bridget and Cici looked at her. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. When we first got out of the car all the windows were open. Now that one has a curtain over it. What is that, anyway, the attic? Someone must be in there.”
Cici thought about that for a minute, then shrugged. “Probably just a ghost.”
“Maybe it was Maggie,” Bridget suggested. The real estate agent had promised to meet them there to do a walk-through of the house and review some of the general maintenance and operating procedures.