“I like to keep my options open.” The sound of a text dinging sent Libby fishing in her bag for her phone. The text was from the bride starring in today’s wedding.
Ginger the Bride: Rain on the horizon. Send sunny thoughts.
Libby: I’m on my way.
Ginger the Bride: Mom worried. I say it will be fine.
Libby: Umbrellas always packed. See you in thirty.
Libby grabbed a granola bar from the cabinet that Mrs. Mancuso kept stocked. “Sierra, why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be at the venue setting up catering tables or presearing salmon patties?”
“Rick’s got me on cleanup crew, not setup.” She made a face. “Can I ride with you?”
“Going now.”
“And you have your camera equipment?”
“All in the bag.”
Libby had been obsessing over worst-case scenarios since the sixth grade. Maybe it had been because of her mother’s worsening mental health and suicide, which might have made her mental herself. Regardless, she liked to make lists of all possible disasters.
If she had an event or party that she was excited about, she made lists of all the things that could keep her from going. In college, she could not sleep unless all her homework was done, her coffeepot was set, and her clothes were laid out. Her mother jokingly had called it a “belt and suspenders” approach to life, which she sometimes took too far. So together, she and her mother had both planned for all the minor disasters as major ones swirled around them.
Thankfully for today, she had listed Sleep through the alarm and Hurricane. There was also Swerve to miss a deer, Road washed out (from the hurricane), and Run out of gas.
“We’re okay on time,” Sierra said. She tossed her an extra granola bar. “Better get going.”
Libby picked up her camera bag and purse and hurried to her car. She placed it all in the back seat before sliding behind the wheel. As Libby started the engine, Sierra got into the passenger seat and hooked her seat belt. Libby fastened her seat belt and confirmed her gas gauge was full.
She backed out of the driveway, glancing toward the house. “The coffee maker is off?”
Sierra sipped her coffee. “It is. And it’s also washed out and unplugged.”
“Bless you. I’d hate for your mom’s house to burn down.”
Sierra pulled down the visor and traced her red lips with fingernails painted to match. “You can mark off House burning down from your list.”
A smile teased the edge of Libby’s lips as she drove down the tree-lined road and onto Main Street, which was the only thoroughfare in town.
Bluestone, population two thousand, was nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. German, English, and Scottish migrants had settled this part of Virginia’s frontier in the mid-eighteenth century, and for a generation, farms around Bluestone had been connected to the outside world by only the Great Wagon Road. The railway had never made it as far as Bluestone, but eventually the interstate had skirted by close enough. In the last decade, the creation of wineries and cideries had brought boomers and millennials to the area looking for a slower pace of life.
“I’m excited to see Woodmont Estate,” Sierra said. “I didn’t get to go on the walk-through two weeks ago.”
“They’ve done an amazing job of restoring the gardens.” Libby drove through the town center, dutifully following the speed limit, and accelerated only as she passed the forty-five-miles-per-hour sign.
Virtually closed to the public since it was built in the eighteenth century, Woodmont sat on two hundred acres that rolled along the James River. Ezra Carter had built the two-story house, made of hand-molded brick, after he had received a land grant from King George II. The Carter farm had begun growing tobacco but had shifted to wheat production as prices soared for wheat during the Seven Years’ War. Ezra Carter’s savvy ability to read the markets had made the Carters one of the wealthiest families in Virginia for generations. Elaine Grant, the current descendant, had embarked on a massive renovation of the property, but it was rumored the family finances were dwindling.
When Libby was a kid, the estate had opened only once a year for Historic Garden Week, and for several years in a row, she and her mother had visited Woodmont. Even then, the walled gardens had shown signs of age. Many plants, though still pretty, had been overgrown and in need of pruning or replacing. The garden, her mother had said, was due for an overhaul. Libby had never seen the imperfections in the encroaching wildness. For her, the gardens had been a rare magical escape she shared with her mother.
The estate had never been open to weddings or events until today. The bride, Ginger Reese, had grown up on the estate, playing on the grounds her parents had tended. Her father had been the estate’s manager while her mother, Margaret, had overseen the inside of the house. These days, her brother, Colton, managed the grounds as their late father had, and her mother still ran the house.
Today’s wedding was a kind of trial run for the property. Ginger had reached out to Libby via her wedding photography website, hiring her because she was local to Bluestone and familiar with the venue. Ginger was an ob-gyn in Charlottesville. And her groom, Cameron Walker, was a surgeon at the UVA Medical Center.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Did Ginger rent the white tent?” Sierra asked.
“No. She said a tent tempted the law of attraction and would invite rain,” Libby said.
“Are you kidding?” Sierra shook her head. “If that’s how the law of attraction works, then I have a bone to pick with it. Not once did I manifest this life I have.”
Libby could not laugh off Sierra’s sarcastic quip stuffed with bitterness. She too had never pictured or imagined any of the lost babies, the divorce papers, or her father’s funeral. And yet they had shown up one by one, ready to reiterate that bad luck lived by its own rules.
Clouds hovered over the mountains. “So much for positive thinking.”
“As of yesterday, the chance of a downpour was twenty percent.” Sierra glanced at her phone, her brow rising. “It’s now fifty percent.”
“Think we’ll beat it?”
Sierra shook her head.
Libby turned down a smaller road and drove past a sprawling vineyard built thirty years ago by a New York investor whom none of the locals had met yet. Beyond that were long stretches of fencing and rolling hills dotted with grazing cows.
Out-of-town folks dependent on GPS often had trouble locating the Woodmont Estate. Two weeks ago, upon her arrival for the walk-through, Libby had overshot the final turn by a few miles. It had taken an extra ten minutes before she had righted her course and finally spotted the brick pillars surrounded by fully blooming yellow-and-purple pansies.
Now, confident in her approach, she spotted the final turn and followed the long gravel driveway flanked by white oaks that dated back to the War of 1812. According to her mother, the planting of the trees had been by design because they consumed so much water that they helped keep the road dry during heavy rains.
Up ahead, she saw the brick home bookended by the gardens on the east and west sides. Many of the April and May blossoms had peaked, but the sunflowers, snapdragons, hydrangeas, and zinnias remained lush, bright, and bursting with color.
She followed parking signs to the closely cut field. There were two catering trucks, Ginger’s Volvo, a blue van, and a red pickup truck. Today’s bride was dressing inside the main house. At forty-one, Ginger had opted out of having bridesmaids, so the morning shoot should be fairly uncomplicated.