A Year on Ladybug Farm #1 by Donna Ball Read Free Book Online

hearts—had made her eyes flood with tears. She was leaving more than a house behind. She was leaving a lifetime. And so were they all.
    As though reading her thoughts, Lindsay said softly, “Good times.”
    “So many of them,” agreed Bridget, and her voice sounded a little shaky.
    Cici was surprised to find her own throat thick with emotion as she said, determinedly, “But better ones ahead.”
    The women released a collective breath, and Cici saw in their eyes an expression that had become familiar over the past months, that she had seen over and over again in the mirror—a kind of sparkling excitement and dazed amazement that was usually reserved for people half their ages; people who had lives filled with adventure and accomplishment and discovery ahead of them and who couldn’t believe their good fortune. They were doing this. It was crazy, it was unreal, it was outrageous, and they were actually doing it.
    “Girls, you are the best ! And I hate you every one, I really do.” Their friend Paul, whose syndicated “In Style” column was a must-read in metro newspapers up and down the Eastern Seaboard, rested one arm on Bridget’s shoulder and another on Lindsay’s as, careful not to spill his glass of chardonnay, he air-kissed them each down the line. “You’re going to make a bleepin’ fortune on that broken-down pile of bricks and all you have to do is move to the middle of East Nowhere, abandon every shred of modern civilization, and live like savages for a couple of years. I’m so jealous I could slap you. Would that I had your courage! And will you tell me what we’re supposed to do for Christmas from now on? Bridget, the crab cakes were divine, and the beef Wellington simply melted. Melted, I tell you, right on the tongue. How can we live without you?”
    Bridget laughed. “Well, you can’t, which is why you’re going to have to come visit.”
    “Oh promise you’ll invite me! I’m sure I must have something to wear to the country.”
    “And speaking of which . . .” Paul’s partner Derrick slipped up behind Lindsay and kissed her on the back of the neck. “That dress is you, my dear. You’ve never looked more lovely. It breaks my heart to think of your talent and extraordinary beauty languishing in that misbegotten cultural desert.”
    “And what about my beauty?” demanded Cici.
    “And my talent?” insisted Bridget.
    Lindsay sighed elaborately and caressed his cheek. “Why are all the good men gay?”
    “Not all of them,” corrected Derrick, smiling across her shoulder at Paul. “Just most of them.”
    “What I want to know,” insisted their neighbor Rosalee, joining them, “is what in the world you think you’re going to do with yourselves out there in the wilderness? Cici, this is the best party ever, and it just makes me want to weep when I think it’s the last one ever . How can you do this to us? Oh, give me a hug!”
    “The house I can understand.” Jena, a broker at Cici’s firm, joined the conversation and the embraces. “Prices are sky-rocketing all along the I-81 corridor and getting the place at below appraisal was just brilliant. But three women living together? Are you crazy? You’ll be pulling each other’s hair out and chasing each other around the kitchen with serving spoons before a month is out.”
    Derrick said, “I don’t know. Paul and I have lived together for ten years and we never chased each other with serving spoons.”
    “Well, there was that one time,” corrected Paul, leaning back into his embrace.
    Lindsay laughed. “Believe me, that house is so big we won’t even be able to find each other half the time. Did you see the pictures?”
    And so it went, the compliments and the good-byes, the disbelief and the regrets and the eager urging for details. Promises to keep in touch. Curious inquiries about the new families moving into the neighborhood. Sentences that began with “Do you remember when . . .” It was not, of course, as though