Page 19 of Christmas at the Ranch
At dinner, Samantha sat beside Drew and they talked about the year he celebrated Christmas in Fiji. The locals served spiced mutton wrapped in leaves and cooked in coconut cream over an open stove. Everyone gathered in community houses and there was traditional dancing. Samantha listened to Drew, her cheeks flushed from the wine, and thought Fiji was the perfect setting for a Sloane Parker book. She could already see Sloane trapped for days in the Fijian jungle, frying bananas over hot coals and drinking coconut milk to keep away the hunger.
The next morning, she selected the tie-dyed alpaca sweater and paired it with camel-colored slacks. First there was something she had to do, then she would join everyone at breakfast.
“Bruno!” she said when she entered the barn. “It’s Christmas, I didn’t think anyone would be here.”
“I always spend Christmas morning with the horses,” Bruno replied, turning to greet her. “When I was younger, I’d go for a ride before breakfast. Snow everywhere you turn, and not a person in sight.” He smiled and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “It made me feel closer to God than attending Christmas services.”
Samantha unwrapped a napkin. Inside were golden-brown sugar cubes.
“I brought the horses some sugar.” She showed them to Bruno. “I hope that’s all right.”
“The horses will love them,” Bruno said and smiled, filling a bucket with hay. “Though don’t feed Blixen first. He’s very greedy. He’ll take everything in your hand and ask for more.”
Samantha fed sugar cubes to a white palomino. Its jaw nuzzled her palm, and it tipped its head in a thank-you.
“My wife wanted me out of the apartment anyway,” Bruno said conversationally. “We’re FaceTiming our grandchildren in an hour and I was distracting her from getting ready.”
“My parents are in Norway,” Samantha remarked. “I’ll FaceTime them later. It’s the middle of the night there.”
Samantha had checked her Instagram feed this morning. Her mother had posted a photo of them holding hands with strangers and dancing under a giant Christmas tree. There was a photo of them sitting at a café and holding mugs with pictures of reindeer.
The caption read, “Our first cups of glogg!”
Samantha wondered if her mother knew glogg was made with red wine. Her mother never drank red wine; it gave her a headache.
“Elaine thinks FaceTime is the most wonderful invention,” Bruno was saying. “Our daughter and her family live in California. We never miss our grandchildren’s birthdays, and we can spend holidays together without doing all the cleaning up.”
“I suppose,” Samantha sighed. “People spend so much of their lives online. My mother takes travel advice from a reality chef, and even the tour guide at the Elk Refuge only cares about Yelp reviews. And it’s terrible for authors. Readers don’t buy a book based on the writing. They buy it if they like the author’s Instagram feed.”
“I doubt that’s always the case.” Bruno frowned. He moved his bucket to the next stall. “Black Beautywas the first book we gave our daughter, and it’s now our granddaughter’s favorite.”
“That might happen if I ever write a classic,” Samantha said glumly. “But just because Sloane Parker knows her way around Saks’s dress department as well as she does around the Sahara Desert, readers think I should be the same.”
“Elaine was up half the night reading your new book,” Brunocommented. “She wishes there’d been books like it when we were first married. Sloane Parker is a great role model. Years ago, Elaine wanted to get her pilot’s license and learn to ride a motorcycle, but women didn’t do those kinds of things.”
Samantha would never have Sloane ride a motorcycle. You only had to read the statistics to know it was dangerous. And wearing a helmet did terrible things to Sloane’s hair. But Sloane got her pilot’s license in the first book. British Intelligence wouldn’t hire her without it.
“I wish more readers felt that way,” Samantha sighed, taking another sugar cube from the napkin. “Writers have always had odd habits but no one cared. Hemingway could only write standing up, and Victor Hugo wroteThe Hunchback of Notre-Damecompletely naked. He was on a tight deadline and didn’t want to be tempted to leave the house.”
“I’m sure you’ll continue to be a success,” Bruno said, stroking Blixen’s nose. “I’ve always taught my daughter the same thing,” he reflected. “The only limits we have in life are the ones we put on ourselves.”
Samantha sat at a table in the ranch’s dining room. The breakfast that Martha had prepared was delicious. The sausages were flavorful but not spicy, and the poached eggs were perfectly timed so that the yolks were runny and the whites were firm without being dry. Samantha had tried for a year to make poached eggs. She never seemed to get it right. Even Socks grew tired of eating her failed attempts.
Outside the window, a light snow was falling, and inside, a Christmas tree twinkled near the fireplace. All the guests were ina good mood. The sound of clinking cutlery mixing with the scent of warm pastries made Samantha feel as if she were at some exclusive resort.
The only thing missing was Drew. He wasn’t at breakfast and Samantha wondered if he grabbed a cup of coffee and went for a walk. For some reason, she wished he was here beside her.
The door from the kitchen swung open and Drew appeared. He was wearing a snowflake-patterned sweater and there were circles under his eyes.
“Samantha,” he greeted her. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”
“Please do.” She made room for him. “Is something wrong? You look like you haven’t slept.”
Drew sprinkled salt on his omelet.
“I stayed up rehearsing how to tell my father that Beatrix isn’t coming. It didn’t go well,” he said glumly. “Every time I came to the part where he might ask me why, I couldn’t think of how to reply.”
“You haven’t told your father about her ultimatum?” Samantha questioned.
