Free A Wedding on Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball

more than it did common sense.  Or at least that’s the way Lori saw it.  
    She typed:  Mom, great to hear from u!   She paused, shifted her weight a little to avoid the encroachment of the teenager’s thigh—he had the body temperature of a blast furnace—and then shrank back as she felt a wedge of flabby skin press into her opposite side, leaving a damp patch on her sleeve.  She thought about standing up and walking away but she knew from experience that the only Wi-Fi signal in the entire building began at one arm of the sofa and ended at the other.
    She deleted the sentence and tried again.  Congrats, Aunt Lindsay!  Wish I could be there but
    But what?  She looked around the dingy little room and couldn’t think of a single way to finish that sentence. 
    The hostel had once been a municipal building of some sort, and must have been magnificent in its day.  Now the black and white terrazzo tiled floor was so covered with embedded grime that the difference between the black tiles and the white tiles was only a matter of degree.  The wide marble staircase was stained yellow with half a century of cigarette smoke, and the scrolled marble banister was so encrusted with neglect that it was sticky to the touch.  At first Lori had been horrified at the casual disregard with which the fine craftsmanship of these ancient buildings was treated, but after the first month she had begun to see the historic structures the way the natives did—not as treasures, but as just old.
    The two arched windows that faced the street were boarded over, but the front door was open to admit a trickle of dingy light and the smell of dank sewer water from the street beyond.  Lori’s eight-by-eight cell of a room with its one narrow window was already so hot and stuffy at ten o’clock in the morning that she was grateful for any semblance of a breeze at all, even one that smelled like garbage and urine.
    She erased the message and typed: Aunt Bridget, thanks for the great news!  I hope this time is the charm.  I wish I could see the sunflowers.
    She stopped typing because the words in her head were coming too fast to keep up with her fingers.  I wish I could see the sunflowers and Aunt Lindsay’s rose garden, especially the way it looks in late summer after a rainstorm with the petals scattered all over the grass like multi-colored confetti.  I wish I could see the kitten chasing shadows on the porch, and I wish I could sit and watch the sun set over the mountains with you.  I wish I could be in the kitchen when you’re baking sticky buns for breakfast and the whole house smells like cinnamon, or when Ida Mae is roasting a chicken for Sunday dinner, and the way she puts those fresh herbs under the skin that get all buttery crisp, or even when it’s canning season and tomato juice is everywhere and the humidity in there is like a steam bath and everything smells like vinegar … I wish I could wake up to Rodrigo the rooster crowing in the middle of the night, and watch Rebel chase the sheep across the meadow, and oh, what I wouldn’t give for just one slice of your pecan pie. I wish I were there, I wish I were there, I wish I were there …           
    She stared at the screen until her vision cleared and the hot moisture left her eyes.  Then she erased the message and started over.
     
    TO: Cici@ LadybugFarmLadies.net, Bridget @ LadybugFarmLadies.net, Lindsay @ LadybugFarmLadies.net
    Cc: [email protected]
    FROM: LadiLori27 @locomail.net
    SUBJECT: Your Wedding News
     
    Hi everyone!
    Great news about the wedding date.  So excited for you!!  You totally should have the burning of the vines ceremony the same day, print up flyers, get it in the paper, send out a press release to the travel mags, put it on the website—great publicity for the winery! I would love love LOVE to be there and am going to do my very best. I promise.  Things are really busy here this time of year so I must rush!  More