Memories of You Read Online Free PDF Page A

sweetheart,” he said gently. “Let’s eat our supper.”
    While the twins ran out of the kitchen, he got up and seated himself at a big oak table that was neatly set for seven.
    When the twins came back, all four children joined him silently. A side door opened, and Margaret came in from the garden, carrying a basket of ripe tomatoes.
    The housekeeper was a big, friendly young woman with a mop of red hair and plump freckled arms. She had a boyfriend who worked on the oil rigs north of Edmonton, and who came home infrequently to visit his sweetheart. This erratic courtship seemed to suit both of them well enough, much to Jon’s relief. Margaret was the only housekeeper he’d ever found who was able to deal patiently and lovingly with all the children, and he dreaded the thought of losing her.
    She greeted Jon with a smile and carried the tomatoes to the sink.
    “What’s all this?” she asked when she saw Amy’s reddened cheeks.
    “They’ve been reading my diary,” Vanessa said sullenly. “But Daddy refuses to punish them, as usual. Little monsters,” she muttered, glowering at Amy, whose eyes began to glisten with tears again.
    “Poor little chicks.” Margaret ruffled Amy’s dark curls. “That’s all right, love. You know, Ari, you shouldn’t have touched that book,” she said, turning to the other twin. “Did you apologize to your sister? Poor Vanessa, she has to put with an awful lot from the pair of you. Steven Campbell, don’t you dare start eating till your daddy has a chance to dish up the food.”
    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 fromthe 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 toldthe 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