Chapter Seven #3
Amy set the spoon down with a loud clack.
“Not that you care to ask, but I've spent the whole day feeling as though I can't do anything right! Noah would rather climb a wobbling chair than let me hand him a tin of oats. Maggie asks me to hold her one minute, then cries because I buttoned her dress instead of you. I can’t even keep a bed sheet on the washing line, and every time I turn around, you're standing there with no offer of help nor word of thanks, smirking away as if the whole thing's a big joke to you!”
Caleb leaned one hip against the table. “Amy—”
“If you wanted a perfect ranch wife, you should’ve married one,” she snapped, feeling utterly fed up.
Caleb’s faint smile disappeared. He looked toward the stove before meeting her eyes again. “I didn’t ask for perfect,” he insisted.
“You’ve spent the whole day pointing out everything I’ve done wrong.”
“I was trying to help.”
Amy looked down at the spoon in her hand. "You always seem to know what I should've done." She glanced at him. "It would've been helpful before breakfast instead of afterward."
Amy untied her apron and placed it on the table. She could bear criticism far more easily than pity, and if she stayed, she feared she'd earn both. Before the tears burning behind her eyes could betray her, she slipped past Caleb and headed upstairs, clinging to what remained of her composure.
She closed her bedroom door and sat beside the window.
The ranch carried on below her window, the chores waiting for whoever was willing to do them, whether she'd spent the morning fighting tears or not.
Noah returned to the chicken enclosure, somehow finding more work to do there, while Maggie drew crooked lines in the dirt with a stick..
Amy wondered when they found time to simply be children, though she suspected the answer would only reveal another way life in Wyoming differed from everything she'd known.
Caleb emerged from the house several minutes later and headed toward the barn.
He hadn’t even apologized. He'd tried to smooth everything over, but he'd never once said he was sorry for making her feel foolish.
Amy pressed her fingers against her temples.
She had expected ranch life to demand a lot of work from her, but she hadn’t expected every ordinary task to reveal how little she knew.
At the library, people had trusted her judgment.
Every room in this house carried reminders that the Whitakers already knew how to live together.
Amy was the only one still trying to find her place.
She stayed in the bedroom until the sting of the argument eased enough that she trusted herself to speak again. When the long shadows stretching across the yard reminded her how late it had grown, she drew a steadying breath and went downstairs to finish supper.
Caleb and Noah came in as she lifted the stew from the stove, both of them brushing dust from their clothes before washing at the basin. Amy filled the bowls and carried them to the table while Maggie climbed into her chair with Eloise, her doll, tucked beneath one arm.
Nobody mentioned the morning. Noah thanked her when she passed him the bread, Caleb spoke only to ask Maggie to mind her manners, and quiet settled over the table more comfortably than that morning’s conversation.
When the children had finished eating, Caleb sent them upstairs to wash for bed, leaving the kitchen silent once again.
Amy began clearing the table. The laundry basket waited near the back door, reminding her that one remaining sheet still needed washing after its fall beside the trough.
She carried a lamp outside and crossed the yard toward the line.
The sheet she'd left crumpled in the basket that morning now stirred gently with the wind where it was hung.
It was stretched neatly between the posts, every edge folded over and secured against the wind.
The other linens had been straightened as well, while the empty wash bucket rested upside down beside the porch.
Amy stood beneath the quiet evening sky and touched one corner of the cloth.
Caleb had finished the work she’d abandoned without a word.
The gesture was thoughtful in its own restrained way, yet it left her with the same hollow ache.
He'd helped her silently, while the argument between them remained exactly where she'd left it.
Footsteps sounded behind her, though she knew who it was before he came into view.
“The wind settled,” he said.
Amy glanced toward the sheet. “That must explain the improvement.”
Caleb followed her gaze to the laundry, a thoughtful crease settling between his brows. “Could be.”
She waited, wondering whether he would apologize now that the children weren’t listening. He only picked up the empty laundry basket.
Amy should have remained angry. His teasing had embarrassed her, and his refusal to acknowledge it still pricked at her pride.
Yet the carefully hung sheet chipped away at her resolve to stay angry.
Caleb might never say the right thing, but apparently he wasn't entirely careless.
Amy followed him toward the house, troubled by the growing suspicion that understanding her husband would prove far harder than learning how to take care of the ranch chores.