The tension left the room with her cheerful arrival and evenhanded approach. All the children watched as Margaret served bowls of salad and sliced tomatoes along with a macaroni casserole.
Jon sat at the head of the table, looking around at the young faces that were so dear to him.
The twins had obviously been comforted by their promised trip to the ranch. Even Vanessa appeared somewhat mollified. Only Steven was quiet, his handsome face looking bored.
Steven resembled his father more than any of the other children, but nowadays he lacked any trace of Jon’s casual air or easy smile.
Jon felt increasingly troubled about the boy.
When Steve was a child, they’d had a warm, open relationship. Father and son had spent long hours together on their windswept prairie ranch as they fished, rode horses and tramped through the coulees. These days, though, Steve was slipping further away from the entire family, wrapped up in some mysterious world that Jon could no longer enter.
“How are your classes, Steve?” he asked.
The boy shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
Jon glanced at his elder son again, but didn’t press. Instead, he turned and addressed the twins. “Tom called me last night. He says the calves are just about ready to sell.”
“What else did he say?” Ari asked.
Tom Beatch was the foreman at the ranch, a grizzled old cowboy who was a great favorite with the twins.
Jon told the children the news from Tom and the other cowboys, including the latest in Tom’s sporadic courtship of Caroline, who ran a lunch counter in a Saskatchewan border town.
“Those two will never get together,” Margaret said placidly from the sink. “Tom Beatch doesn’t want to get married any more than my Eddie does.”
“When’s Eddie coming back?” Jon asked the housekeeper.
“Next month,” Margaret said, beaming. “He’ll be home for a whole week at least, then off north to look for work again.”
Jon looked at the twins, whose animation at the mention of Tom seemed to have disappeared. They were picking at their food, looking disconsolate. Apparently, their homesickness was as deep as ever. He sighed and cut up a tomato, searching for something else to say.
“Tom’s getting real worried about me,” he told the children finally. “He wonders what I’m going to do with myself for a whole winter here in the city.”
Steven gazed out the window at the trees bordering the front driveway, clearly lost in his own thoughts. The twins exchanged an unhappy glance and continued to move bits of macaroni around on their plates while Margaret watched them.
Only Vanessa, who seemed to have recovered from her sulks, was interested in what her father was saying. “I know what I’d do,” she told him. “I’d spend the whole day shopping. I’d buy every single thing I ever wanted, and spend all day trying clothes on.”
Jon watched her pretty face, wondering whether her preoccupation with material things was just a teenage phase—something she would outgrow. “Well, Van, I know what I’m going to do, too,” he said calmly. “I’ve got it all planned. In fact, I started today.”
“What’s that, Mr. C.?” Margaret got up and began to load the dishwasher.
“I’m going back to school.” Jon helped himself to more casserole while the others watched in astonishment. “I had my first two classes today.”
Vanessa’s jaw dropped. “Back to school?” she said at last. “Like, to college, you mean?”
Jon smiled at his elder daughter. “Don’t look so amazed,” he said. “I took two years of college when I was young, then had to quit before I graduated. I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to finish my degree.”
Vanessa gripped her fork and continued to stare at her father, aghast. “You’re going to university?“ she asked. “On the same campus with Steven? The same place I’ll be going next year?”
“The very same,” Jon told her solemnly.
She dropped her fork, speechless with horror. Privately, Jon was a little amused by her reaction, but took care not to show it. In fact, he often tried deliberately to ruffle Vanessa’s feathers to keep her from getting as self-absorbed as her mother.
But this time, judging from her look of whitelipped shock, it seemed Jon might have pushed his daughter too far.
“It’s a big campus, Van,” he told her gently. “Thousands and thousands of students. Nobody’s going to notice me.”
“But what if you’re in one of my classes next year?” she wailed. “God, I’d just die.”
Steven’s lip twisted. “Oh, shut up, Van,” he muttered. “Why do you always have to be such an idiot?”
Jon frowned at him and turned back to Vanessa. “I won’t be in any of your classes, You’ll be a freshman. I’ll be taking fourth-year courses next term.”
“But having my father on the same campus…” Her face twisted with distress. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said tragically. “The totally, absolute worst.” She pushed her chair back, got up and ran from the room.
There was a brief silence in the kitchen.
“She’ll get over it, Mr. C.,” Margaret said comfortably. “She gets upset about a dozen times a day, and every time it’s the very worst thing that’s ever happened to her.”
Jon looked at the doorway where his daughter had vanished. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “She won’t be so upset once she realizes that our paths are never likely to cross on that big campus.”
Steven’s brief spurt of animation had vanished. He ate macaroni in gloomy silence.
“How about you, son?” Jon asked. “Will it bother you, having me on campus?”
Steven shrugged. “Why should I care?”
“You don’t seem to care about much of anything these days,” Jon said, trying to keep his voice casual. “What’s the matter, son?”
Steven looked at him with a brief flash of emotion, and Jon held his breath, hoping the boy was about to say something meaningful. But the moment passed and they all returned to their meal, eating in silence while Margaret continued to load the dishwasher.
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, on a hill near the house, Ari lay on his stomach in the slanted rays of evening sunlight. He drummed his feet on the ground as he chewed a spear of grass.
“Churks,” he muttered. “Fizzlespit.”
Amy looked at her brother with tense sympathy. These words were part of their private language, seldom used and shockingly profane. The fact that Ari was saying them now showed how sad and lonely he was.
“We get to fly to the ranch this weekend,” she said, watching a dark green beetle as it lumbered through the tangle of grass. “Daddy promised. It’ll be fun to see Tom and ride our ponies, won’t it?”
But Ari wasn’t ready to be comforted. “I wish Daddy would get married.” He plucked another blade of grass. “We need a mother.”
Amy turned to him in confusion. “We already have a mother.”
“I mean, we need one who lives in our house. If Daddy got