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

they would never see each other again. Each of their friends demanded an invitation as soon as the guest rooms were ready and groaned with envy as they described the house, the porch, the meadow, the view. It wasn’t an ending, they all tearfully insisted, it was a beginning.
    Still, it was hard to say good-bye.
    Cici slipped away from the crowd and approached Lori, who was happily chatting to a display of Christmas cards that framed a doorway. Snatching the earpiece from her daughter’s ear, she said, “She’ll call you back” and dropped the device into the capacious pocket of her skirt. Lori whirled. “Moth–er!” This was followed by an eye roll. “Very mature.”
    Cici kissed her bangs and dropped an arm around her shoulder. “Merry Christmas to you, too, darling. Are you having a good time?”
    Again a slight upward shift of the eyes. Cici wished she could remember when young girls outgrew that manner-ism. Age twenty-one? Could she hold out until then? “The crowd’s a little old for me, Mom.”
    “You’ve known most of them all your life. It won’t hurt you to be nice for one evening.”
    “True.” She shrugged. “It’s just hard being nice every single minute.” Then she grinned. “Tell Aunt Bridget the quiche was awesome. Of course it would have tasted even better with a margarita.”
    “Don’t they teach math at UCLA?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then maybe you can help me figure out exactly how many months it is you have left until you are of legal drinking age?”
    “Mom, you are so quaint.”
    “Thank you, sweetheart. Long one of my goals.” She tidied the strands of shiny copper hair her initial embrace had disarranged, and her smile softened as she did so. “You look pretty tonight.”
    “So do you,” Lori replied generously.
    “So. How does it feel, saying good-bye to the house you grew up in? Are you going to miss the old place?”
    Lori thought about this. “A little, I guess. But everything changes. And it’s not as though I hadn’t already moved out.”
    Cici nodded sagely. “Very sensible. So you’re not mad at me for selling?”
    Lori gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Of course not. I know all about that midlife crisis stuff. It’s just like Dad driving around in a Porsche and dating models half his age.”
    “Nothing,” replied Cici evenly, “is like your dad dating models half his age.”
    She grinned. “It’s okay, Mom, even he knows it’s stupid. But it’s like my social psych prof says, it’s a life passage. And at least you didn’t marry the pool boy or run off with your Italian lover.”
    Cici lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t know those were options.”
    “It has to do with reinventing yourself. Men do it because they’re afraid of losing their virility. Women do it because, once their children leave the nest, they don’t know what their role in life is anymore. Some women go to spin class. You bought a hundred-year-old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. It’s no surprise to me.”
    “Well, as glad as I am to know you’re learning something in social psych class, let’s go back to that Italian lover I could have run off with.”
    Lori laughed. “See? No surprise. You’re a nut, always have been.”
    Cici hugged her. “I love you, baby.”
    “Love you back.”
    “I wish you were coming with me.”
    Lori looked very seriously into her mother’s eyes. “Mom,” she said, “I have a life.”
    Cici didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, and she struggled hard to keep from doing either. “But you’re coming this summer, right? Aren’t you dying to see the place?”
    “Well, maybe not dying . . . it sounds like an awful lot of hard work to me. But I’ll definitely try to make it out for my birthday. There’s an airport there right?”
    Cici realized she had no idea where the nearest airport was in relation to her new home. Had she ever in her life lived further than an hour away from an airport? “Oh sure,” she replied airily.