Caribou Crossing by Susan Fox Page B

that.”
    He stared at her. She couldn’t be serious. “Uh, you know the cattle and horses need feeding every day. We can’t just up and leave them.”
    She frowned. “Your parents went to Mexico one winter, and you came out to feed the animals. You could hire someone to do it.”
    Hire someone? Yeah, like he could hire someone to help with the haying? Or he could’ve hired someone to help when the cows were calving, so he wouldn’t have had to work twenty-four/seven? Hiring people required money, which they sure as hell didn’t have. “Don’t think that’ll be in the budget this year,” he said gruffly, hating to burst her bubble. Hating that he wasn’t a better husband who could give her the things she wanted.
    Jessie said, “Oh, who wants to go to Hawaii anyhow? It’s way more fun here, with the horses.” She began to gush about the latest exploits of Rascal, her foal.
    Wade smiled affectionately at her. Though she was impulsive and not the most organized kid in the world, she was turning into a mighty fine ranch hand. At the age of eight, she did a lot of the work with the horses, helped care for sick animals, and rode out to check on the cattle. The best thing was, she didn’t resent spending her summer holiday that way; she thought it was fun. Who knew, maybe he’d make a rancher of her after all.
    She was a good kid and he was more than happy to agree when she wanted to have Evan come out to the ranch to play, or to go riding with other friends from school. Or when she persuaded their neighbor, a retired rodeo rider, to teach her roping and barrel racing.
    Listening to Jessie boast about how Rascal was the smartest foal in the entire world, he glanced across the table at Miriam. In the old days, they’d have shared an amused smile. Now, Miriam stared at Jessie as if she was listening, but her lack of expression told him she wasn’t taking in a single word. She’d withdrawn again.
    His pleasure in the evening faded and Wade quickly finished the tough pork chops. He rose to see what they might have for dessert and found the usual. When he put a carton of Neapolitan ice cream on the table, Evan scooted to his feet to clear the dinner plates and bring bowls and spoons, and Jessie found a package of chocolate chip cookies in the cupboard.
    Miriam didn’t comment when their daughter scooped out only chocolate ice cream for herself and added three cookies. When Jessie passed the carton to her, Miriam waved it away. Evan served himself equal amounts of chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla and gave the carton to Wade.
    It was cold and wet in Wade’s hand. Yes, ice cream was a perfectly normal summer dessert, but he was sick of it. He put the lid back on the carton and got up to return it to the freezer. Once, there’d been homemade cakes, pies, and cookies in this kitchen. He sat down again and took a couple of cookies, so dry and flavorless compared to the ones Miriam used to make.
    She’d taken some big steps forward today, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t be impatient.
    But he felt so helpless. He loved Miriam, but these days he barely recognized her. He wanted to fix her, to heal her. But then he hadn’t managed to heal his own sorrow either. All he could do was carry on, and hope things improved for both of them.
    Jessie was now telling Evan about her rodeo lessons, and how she planned on riding the rodeo circuit when she got older. She and the boy were both big dream spinners. For her, it was horse training, racing, rodeoing, being on the Olympic team, or working with rescue horses. Evan’s dreams spun off in the opposite direction. The top student in grade two, the kid who treated the library as his second home, he was already planning on a scholarship to some big-name university like Harvard, Yale, or Cornell. Evan had his heart set on New York City, too. Ever since Miriam gave him that jigsaw puzzle at