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  ‘I’m talking too much,’ she said.

  ‘Never!’ he said, and she could tell he meant it.

  ‘I’m so glad you caught me stealing Miss Sadie’s ferns, it was truly meant to be. I’m grateful that you and Cynthia invited me to live with you, though I couldn’t leave Mama. You let me know there was a way out if I really needed it. And then Mama died and you and Cynthia and Olivia promised it was not my fault, it was just the perfect and incomprehensible timing of God.

  ‘Mama dying was hard, but it saved my life. I was like a chick hatching from a dark shell into a new world.

  ‘And now all this—the wedding, the farm, everyone being together like family. A lot of times it seems like a dream. But I know what it is. It’s grace. Totally.’

  ‘You’re precious to all of us,’ he said. ‘You’ve helped our son become a thoughtful, deeper man. You’ve touched us in ways that make us better.’

  He could say it now, this truth that must be told. ‘God will use this loss for good. I promise.’

  There seemed nothing more to be spoken. They were quiet amid the symphony of crickets and night birds.

  Little by little, he was gaining helpful information.

  ‘So, what is Dooley wearing?’ he said over breakfast.

  ‘A white linen shirt, khaki linen slacks, and loafers,’ said Lace.

  ‘With socks?’

  ‘No socks.’

  ‘Ha!’ From now on, he would get the skinny on such matters from the horse’s mouth.

  As for music, Dooley’s old friend Tommy from Mitford School was a great guitar and mandolin player who was in a group called the Ham Biscuits. They were pretty famous in these parts, and this would be a freebie.

  As for the Potluck Paranoia so recently broken out in their household, it was unanimously decided last evening after supper that they’d leave this conundrum to God and be completely happy with whatever turned up.

  He’d been glad to say, in Baptist fashion, ‘Amen and amen.’

  Wed. Can there be such a thing as too much love? I am serious about this. I am filled with all the love for D that I was never able to give to my mother or my father or my brother or anybody. And so I love D with all this held-back love. Is it overpowering to him? Is it too much? I am certain that God does not ask himself these stupid questions, He just loves us.

  He called late last night and I was so worn out and crazy and he was too and we just went to sleep with each other on the phone. Okay, so that was a waste of money. I do not care. Just to be doing the same thing at the same time with him was a beautiful communication. Amazing that we woke up at the same instant around two in the morning. He said, “Whoa. Hey, girl. I love you.”

  Thurs. Irene McGraw called today. She said her twin sister Kim Dorsay, the film actress, loves the painting Irene bought~ she sent Kim a pic from her iPhone~ and that Kim is doing a beach cottage in Malibu and would like to see my work. If I would ever say it, which I will not, I would say OMG!! I will take pics and email to Irene. Will send my portfolio too. Even if it is old I think it’s some of my best work.

  Fri. D says he is partying down and all the girls are crazy about him. So strange that a year ago it would drive me nuts if I knew he was out partying, but now I know he loves me so much that nothing could ever happen. It’s almost scary to know he loves me like this.

  Made barbecued ribs tonight. I cannot believe it. I have never done it before. People practically licked their plates. I should truly be vegetarian but maybe later.

  Sat. To church in the morning to worship at Lord’s Chapel and see Father Brad. We all try to clean our country selves up as best we can. When we don’t go to LC, Fr Tim celebrates Holy Communion here and sometimes Evensong. I love Evensong, especially when the crickets are out. I am glad we don’t do Lauds and Prime!

  I have never seen so many ugly dresses. I cannot find this dress, which was woven out of daydreams and naiveté. I am not giving up. When I am too tired to do anything else I am searching for my dress. Hello, dress of my dreams! Please be out there!

  She rolled onto her back and laughed. How perfect. How perfect! There was no other word. ‘Thank you!’ she said. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  She had waked up knowing exactly what it would be, as if the idea had created itself in her dreams. She had hoped to give him a yellow Lab puppy or maybe a Golden, but hadn’t been focused enough to make this happen. Which was good, because there was too much going on right now for a puppy.

  This new idea meant that nobody would be allowed in her room until after the wedding, especially Dooley. She had the old key in a jar on the bookshelf. She would lock the door every day and wear the key around her neck on a chain with the cross he gave her the year of the great Christmas snow.

  She sat up and blinked, dazzled. For some reason, this idea was her first truly deep connection to the huge change in their lives. The thought of making his gift also made it all real; she couldn’t wait to begin.

  But she couldn’t begin today. Lily was dropping by at seven-thirty this morning on her way to Wesley and had something ‘important’ to discuss.

  ‘Is it about the wedding?’ she had asked when Lily called last night.

  ‘Honey, everything’s about th’ weddin’.’

  Later Olivia would drive out with lunch, and she and Olivia and Cynthia and Marge would make bow ties for the dogs. Then they’d drive up to see Clarence and Agnes at Holy Trinity and talk about the lovely gift Clarence would carve for every guest.

  Tomorrow was her day for food shopping in Wesley. What she needed to pick up was only a block away from the grocery store. When she got home, she would carry in the shopping, then carry everything else up the back stair to her studio.

  She ran into the small room with the door on which she had hand-lettered Poudre, and brushed her hair and applied blusher and lip balm, then wriggled into her oldest jeans and threw on a shirt and sweater and slipped into her sneakers.

  She took the Dooley book from the shelf, opened it hurriedly, and wrote:

  Woke up and there it was~ everything I needed to know about D’s wedding present!

  She added what Father Tim liked to say.

  Deo gratias!

  She was so excited she could throw up.

  She ran downstairs, smelling the coffee. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes . . .

  ‘Do you know how much work a potluck for fifty people will be?’

  Lily looked totally serious.

  ‘I’ve been to lots of potlucks,’ said Lace.

  ‘But have you ever done one?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Me, either,’ said Cynthia, who could feel a tempest brewing in the household teapot.

  ‘I’ve been workin’ here regular ever since you an’ Father Tim hired me nearly seven years ago, an’ now y’all an’ th’ Owenses are like family. So let me just tell you. You think a potluck weddin’ will be the easiest thing you ever did in your life, right?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Lace.

  ‘But you will be deeply disappointed, trust me. Lord knows, I have tried to keep my trap shut about it, but I cannot hold it in another minute.’

  ‘Go for it,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘Work, work, and more work is the underbelly of th’ whole potluck scheme. If you don’t have organized help, you will be dead th’ next day or wishin’ you were. How many platters and bowls and pots and plastic containers will roll in here? How many will not have a lid or a top or any ID whatsoever on the bottom?’

  There was no known answer to this.

  ‘How many will ask for leftovers to take home? Wait till you see how many!

  ‘How many rolls of foil and Saran Wrap will you go through while people stand there tappin’ their foot? How many will be ticked off that nobody ate what they brought, and how many will be pouty that people didn’t leave anything for them to tak
e home?’

  ‘Clearly we don’t know,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘Plus if there’s nothin’ left of what they brought, they will want their platter, pot, pan, bowl, or plate back washed, and that’s not to mention th’ rented dinner dishes.

  ‘Rented dishes is not th’ same as throwin’ paper plates in a smelly garbage can an’ settin’ it on th’ truck to be hauled off to parts unknown. You will be scrapin’ an’ washin’ dishes till the cows come home from Mink’s place—which, trust me, will be a long time, since Mink also has a bull that’s pretty cute.

  ‘Plus, who’ll be carryin’ th’ dirty dishes all th’ way from th’ barn to th’ kitchen sink? Per head, that’s two glasses, a cup, a saucer, a dinner plate, an’ a salad plate. Times fifty.

  ‘Plus there’s all th’ glasses people will be drinkin’ out of before an’ after dinner. They’ll be up in your barn loft an’ down in th’ stalls an’ lyin’ out in your grass . . .’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Cynthia. ‘The people?’

  ‘Th’ glasses. And who’ll put th’ rentals back in their crates for th’ rental people on Monday? Th’ plates, th’ silverware, th’ dirty napkins, th’ tablecloths—I could go on.

  ‘So, please, do not try to do this by yourself. I can get all my sisters out here and none of th’ family will have to lift a finger. As hard as y’all have worked, nobody needs to lift a finger the day of this weddin’, okay? Th’ Flower Girls are ready to give you th’ break you deserve.’

  Lily sat back in the chair, satisfied. ‘So tell me that that’s not music to your ears!’

  They hesitated a moment, somewhat stunned, then burst into spontaneous applause.

  He heard most of Lily’s sermon, with which he agreed wholeheartedly, but kept his head down. He poured a cup of coffee and checked today’s corkboard pronouncements, these in Lace’s quirky hand-lettering.

  5 days till graduation!

  6 days till Choo-Choo!

  7 days till Home Eucharist!

  8 days till grand opening!

  FYI May 10 is Mother’s Day

  He was exhausted from reading the timeline. He declined to read the work list; he knew what had to be done.

  Willie looked mournful. ‘We’ll be mowin’ twice a week. I ain’t never mowed twice a week.’

  ‘Saturday an’ Thursday is th’ way I see that goin’,’ said Harley, who was known in Mitford for his lawn services.

  As for his own observations, he quoted Uncle Billy from days of yore. ‘There’ll be no rest for th’ wicked an’ th’ righteous don’t need none.’

  The lawn improvement was his wife’s idea. ‘Just this once,’ she said, eager to finance the operation, gladly approved by Lace, as part of their wedding gift. He had pulled off the same deal on their lawn in Mitford; he was an old hand, he knew this stuff. Thus all supplies had been picked up at the co-op and starting today the three of them would initiate the program.

  First they would use an organic spray on the weeds, which unfortunately amounted to the greater portion of the lawn, followed by spreading a load of composted material over the entire area.

  This material would be raked in and seeded with a mixture of fescue, bluegrass, and annual rye. Then they would lime and fertilize and lightly straw the whole caboodle.

  ‘Lord help,’ said Harley, who offered his customers Mow and Blow only.

  Willie was speechless.

  As for moisture, they would have to keep their eye on it. He pressed ahead with his tutorial. ‘Comfortably damp but not too wet is what we’ll be looking for.’

  ‘This is a farm,’ said Willie. ‘Dogs pee an’ kill th’ grass. Chickens scratch around an’ make dust bowls. Vehicles keep th’ corncrib area half ruint. You can’t have a town yard in th’ country.’

  As instigator of this project, he didn’t include the astonishing news that there would be no more mowing grass down to the nub. Nossir, no more blade on grade. Three to four weeks from today, they would merely be taking the tips off, and by June fourteenth they would have a lawn ready for a magazine cover. A lot of work, to be sure, but all this run-up labor to the big day was suddenly the most fun he had enjoyed in a long time.

  Okay, so everybody was a bit frayed, but everybody was also wired. There was joy in the air; you could sniff it as plain as new-cut hay.

  She ran to the clinic with Truman following and talked briefly with Hal, Blake, and Amanda, their receptionist, scrub nurse, and all-around helper. Was there anything she could do? They were covered, but check back after lunch, if possible; two goats were coming in as well as the three Dalmatians from the Brewster farm.

  Goats again! Though Dooley would be running a small-animal practice, he had recently relaxed that policy. ‘We’ll take anything that can get through the door,’ he said. A horse couldn’t really make it through the door, nor a cow, but sheep and goats, yes, and maybe even a llama if it ducked its head.

  Four people in the waiting room—two with mournful hounds on leashes, one with a kitten in a carrier, and Lucy Bowman with her pig named Homer.

  Homer was wise and thoughtful; she had known him for years. Homer sat on the bench next to Lucy, a proper good pig. She knelt by the bench and gave him a scratch behind the ears. She hated that Homer’s eyes were cloudy now; she loved this pig.

  ‘It’s ’is kidneys.’ Lucy blinked behind her bifocals. ‘An’ ’is teeth. They’re fallin’ out.’

  Maybe one day pigs could be fitted with their own little choppers, which a kind owner might put in a glass of vinegar and water at night.

  She gave Homer a hug and busied herself with greeting the other patients.

  Whoa. There went Harley blasting out the back door, smelling like an Italian gigolo. Harley had bought this startling fragrance a few years back when he’d been enthralled with his landlady, Helene Pringle. Sitting moribund in a spray bottle for half a decade had done the aromatics no favor.

  ‘And there he goes,’ he said, looking out the kitchen window to the white Toyota with the ski rack.

  At home in Mitford, they often sat in the study by their so-called picture window and watched the changing of the light. At Meadowgate, they were occasionally given to Reading the Sunset.

  ‘Look!’ said his wife. ‘Coral growing out of a Pacific atoll.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Don’t you see it? Or maybe more like Chicago with fireworks over the canal.’

  ‘An Arctic tundra, for my money,’ he said. ‘Except more colorful.’

  They could also do this mindless entertainment with clouds. It didn’t take much for them, not at all.

  Two hams on the mornin’ of a five o’clock weddin’? Are you sure you want to do that? This will be a busy kitchen.’

  ‘So I’ll bake the day before,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll still be a busy kitchen,’ said Lily. ‘We’ll have th’ last of th’ bread comin’ out of the oven and three hundred cheese wafers plus Lord knows what else. Plus you’ll be runnin’ to Mitford to pick up th’ cake, th’ ice, an’ th’ guestbook that’s shippin’ to your house, remember?’

  He felt a dash put out. ‘So I’ll work a five a.m. shift on the big day.’ Didn’t she know he was famous for baking hams for weddings, not to mention funerals? He needed somebody to cut him some slack.

  Cakes. Ice. Guestbook. White vestments. The Local. He jotted down the aforesaid items in the planner he recently bought at the drugstore. Very handy.

  With all that he’d been through as a working priest, he had never had a planner. But then he had never been part of a family wedding—other than his own, of course, which he recalled as very, very simple except for the bride getting locked in her bathroom.

  Lace had brought home last week’s issue of the Mitford Muse, which he read with considerable savor.

  He would check out the forty-percent-off sale at Village Shoes; he nee
ded footgear for the wedding.

  Six-year-old Grace Murphy of the curly hair was giving a tea party on Saturday to which all young guests and their moms, aunts, and/or grandmas were invited. The party would be held at Happy Endings Bookstore, reported Vanita Bentley, and afterward, ‘the world-famous author, our own Cynthia Coopersmith (Kavanagh!!) will read one (or maybe two??) of her famous Violet books. 10% off every purchase if wearing a hat, yayyy!’

  Esther Cunningham, former mayor and Absolute Mover and Shaker, was pictured holding yet another of her great-grans, the total of which numbered in the vicinity of Abraham’s stars.

  ‘Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge.’ There you go. A close second to his all-time favorite Muse headline, ‘Man Arrested for Wreckless Driving.’

  As for hometown news in the raw, J. C. Hogan was now taking personal ads.

  Not getting any younger—how about you?

  Attractive Two-step seeks a Tango

  And here was a new feature by the enterprising Ms. Bentley.

  LOL

  YOUR WEEKLY LAUGH

  Selected by

  Vanita Bentley

  —When you go to court, you’re putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty!!

  Right there was the only laugh some people would get this week.

  No warning ever again about not planting till May fifteenth. Hessie Mayhew had retired to a bench in the sunshine of St. Augustine. ‘Let people plant whenever they dern well please,’ she said before pulling out last October in what appeared to be a Plymouth Fury hitched to a 5x10 U-Haul.

  He folded Mitford’s weekly gazette and left it on the kitchen table to be enjoyed by other inquiring minds.

  He now understood why brides were often crazy, mothers hysterical, and fathers hiding in the tall grass. Each time one detail was settled, a dozen others reared their heads.