| he was thrown into the thick of it. He enjoyed practicing medicine, but he wasn’t going to miss the hospital while he was gone. He needed a break. The only thing he’d miss while he was on this trip would be his wife. He felt a pang at the thought, deep in his chest, melancholy mixed with annoyance. Maybe he’d been too hard on Susanne, but he shouldn’t have had to be. She should have wanted to be with him. Still, the last thing he wanted was to be harsh with everyone around him, like his own dad had been. He and Susanne had a great relationship, and it shouldn’t matter that she didn’t like some of the things he did. She was fun and adventurous and his partner. But if he didn’t get her out enjoying what made Wyoming wonderful, she’d never fall in love with it. Then it would only be a matter of time before he’d be driving a U-Haul back to Texas. Trish looked up from her book. He knew she was reading Judy Blume’s Forever, again, even though she was hiding the cover. He and Susanne had decided to just let it go, even though the novel dealt with teen sexuality. Every teen tackled these issues. Hell, that’s why he and Susanne had married so young—because the teenage sex drive would not be denied. He smiled. “Like, why are we stopped? And you’re talking to yourself. Again.” Patrick hadn’t even realized his lips were |
a pinecone underfoot—by the carpet of browning pine needles and fat tufts of moss over the rocks. What had gotten the mare’s attention? She didn’t see anything strange, and the horse wasn’t acting skittish, so she decided it was probably nothing. Horses acted like total paranoid freaks most of the time. “Perry, where are you?” she said. He didn’t answer, so she raised her voice. The only sound in return was the song of a magpie. Goose bumps raised on her arms. It was spooky out here alone. The pine trees blocked what little sun was out, between the stormy clouds and early hour. The tree trunks and boulders provided endless hiding places. It felt like the witch from “Hansel and Gretel” would be jumping out from behind one any second. Every tiny sound made her jumpy. The creak of a branch, the snap of a twig, the chittering of a squirrel. They all sounded ominous. She’d just get her firewood and return to camp. Perry would probably beat her there. She hopped off Goldie, who dropped her head to nibble, even though the grass was almost nonexistent back in the trees. Trish picked her way around rocks so splotched with lichen they looked almost like someone had decorated them. Lime green and crackly, forest green and plush, and milky gray with black sporous dots. Threads of green moss wafted in the low fingerling branches of the pines. A juvenile squirrel sprinted up a tree trunk with a pinecone |
