Amelia
"God, it's hot," Amelia complained, fanning herself with her hand as she stepped inside the stuffy air of the barn and hefted her bucket onto a table, water sloshing over the rim. Josh grunted his agreement, pitching the last of the soiled straw into the wheelbarrow and stepping back, leaning on the shovel and swiping the back of his hand over his sweaty face. Rebecca sat crosslegged on a blanket by the door of the barn, naked as the day she was born and playing happily with the alphabet blocks Melissa had given her for her second birthday.
"God, it's hot," Rebecca repeated, giving Amelia a toothy grin before returning to her blocks. Josh laughed and rolled his eyes at Amelia.
"We've moved on to repetition," he informed her. When Amelia had left to draw the water Rebecca had been entertaining herself by pointing at every object in sight and naming it. If she didn't know what it was actually called, she asked. If she wasn't in the mood for questions, she'd just chatter along in their conversational wake, echoing phrases to herself. When she'd first started the Great Speech Renaissance, several months before, her parents had found it adorable. Endearing. They'd stayed up late at night, discussing their daughter's keen intellect.
Now...
"On to rep-er-tison!" Rebecca declared loudly, groaning when her stack of blocks tumbled.
Josh leaned his shovel against a stall door and joined her at the table, using a tin cup to draw out some water and guzzling it with a dramatic groan of ecstasy. His histrionics drew Rebecca's attention and she tottered to her feet and hurried over, yanking at his pant leg. "Papa! Me! Water!"
He bent, drawing her into one arm and rising to his feet. Refilling the cup, he handed it over and she tipped it back, sputtering as half of it splashed across her face. Her expression screwed up with consternation and Amelia clicked her tongue.
"I told you to be careful with the big cups, Reb," she scolded, biting back a smile at her daughter's petulant frown.
"I am!"
Josh snorted and refilled the cup, this time keeping hold of the bottom, controlling the angle as Rebecca tipped it up and took several careful sips. The triumphant smile she shot at Amelia when she finished drinking made her heart flutter. Every day she woke up loving her daughter more. There was so much love in her heart it hurt her. At dusk it hurt her, when she kissed Rebecca's freshly-scrubbed cheek and drew the blankets up around her. In the morning it hurt, when the constant chatter made her want to scream and her mind couldn't wrap itself around the visceral combination of bone-deep love and skin-prickling annoyance. It hurt her when Rebecca fell down, and when she laughed. When she yawned and when she threw tantrums. Being a mother hurt. It hurt so beautifully she didn't understand how she had ever lived without it.
"I made some sandwiches," she said, reaching out and plucking her daughter from Josh's arms. Do you want to finish up here and we can have a picnic by the river?
He grinned at her, and she thought that was another type of love. The kind that didn't hurt and never would. Loving Josh was the easiest thing in the world.
* * *
She'd just finished packing the picnic basket when she heard the clomp of Josh's boots on the porch and the telltale splash as he rinsed his hands in the basin by the door. It was one of her house rules-- no boots beyond the mudroom, beat the dust of your clothes, and wash your hands and face before you enter. Josh abided by her rules religiously. Amelia herself followed them when it was convenient. Rebecca followed them when she was forced.
"You 'bout ready?" he called.
"Right there! Don't take your boots off!"
She met him in the mudroom, handing him the picnic basket and the still-naked little girl so she could sit on the bench and pull on her own shoes. There were times when it was worth the struggle of wheedling her wild child into clothing, and a hundred degree summer day with nary a breeze in sight was not one of those times.
Outside, she found her daughter sitting proud and straight-backed on Copper while Josh lashed the picnic basket to the saddle. Tulip was saddled as well, tail swishing absently. Amelia stroked the animal's nose, discreetly pulling a sugar cube out of her pocket and offering it up on a flattened palm while Josh still had his back turned. He claimed she was spoiling the horses rotten and if she kept it up they'd be too fat to ride. She ignored him because she'd been spoiling them for two years now and they were as fit and as energetic as ever.
It was a Thursday. Thursdays were Josh's day off at the ranch. She'd had to introduce him to the concept somewhere around their first anniversary.
"But I don't work on Sunday mornings," he had said, perplexed.
"Right, but you're not home on Sundays. What about a day where you let Paul run things and you just stay home with me?"
Her inspiration for this suggestion had been two-fold. On the one hand, it was an act of love. There was an ever-present mountain of chores to complete around the house and, although Amelia carried more than her share, she couldn't do it all. Josh split the wood and mucked the stalls. He repaired things and built things and took care of all the grittier livestock tasks that she had yet to master. Which was a fine and normal amount of work, except he was gone all day running the ranch. So she'd wake for her own morning chores to find him already hours into working with the horses. She'd lay awake in her bed after dark and listen to the thud and crack of axe on wood. He was wearing himself to the bone and she hated it.
Partly, though, it was pure selfishness. She didn't like that he was carrying so much on his shoulders, and she also very much didn't like that his workload kept him from her and Rebecca. She wanted him with his feet up in the sitting room, offering his dry commentary to whatever book she was reading to Rebecca. She wanted him lounging at the kitchen table, helping with the prep work while she made dinner. She wanted him on his belly on the floor, playing with his daughter. She wanted him in her bed, doing something more than collapse into the sleep of the dead.
So she'd hinted and then suggested and then reminded and the needled and then bullied and then eventually demanded, and he'd gone to his father to inform him (inform, she'd advised, don't ask) that he would henceforth be claiming Thursdays as a day to tend to his own homestead, leaving the ranch in Paul's capable hands.
So it came to pass that Thursdays were the best day of the week. Thursdays meant doing the morning chores in no particular hurry and eating breakfast together, chatting between bites, sipping coffee and planning out the day as the sun rose in the east-facing window. Thursdays meant Josh chasing a muddy, gleeful Rebecca around the yard while Amelia tended to her little garden. It meant lazy lessons with the horses and laughing at each other's attempts to work Rebecca into their tasks. When Amelia was cooking, Rebecca got to help by stirring little pots of water or mixing unwanted bits of produce into her own culinary creations, which inevitably found their way to the compost. When Josh mended tack, Rebecca sat beside him with her tongue poking out the side of her mouth, studiously and intently rubbing "oil" into strips of unusable leather. There was no chore on the ranch with which their daughter didn't "help." She had a miniature washing board, a tiny hammer, small leather gardening gloves, and a pocket-size tin of saddle soap. It thrilled Amelia. It terrified Amelia.
This particular Thursday, she was neither thrilled nor terrified. She was heavy with the still summer air, and listless with contentment. She and Josh rode side-by-side toward the stream, and she wished absently that she could paint. She wanted to capture the image of her husband with that lazy arch in his back, swaying with the horse's slow steps, one loose hand on the reins and an arm around their fierce little hellion who perched proudly on his leg. She wanted to immortalize the way the sun hit the shiny dark bronze of the horse's hide and the bright pink cloth over the picnic basket-- such a ridiculous contrast. She never, ever wanted to let herself forget the way Rebecca clasped the looped end of the lead rope, which Josh had wound tight around the saddle horn before passing to his daughter, letting her think she was steering. The giddy thrill on Rebecca's face. The affection scrawled in every hard line of Josh's profile. Even if she could paint, Amelia decided, even if she was da Vinci himself, she could never capture it all.
At the grassy river bank, in the shade of the trees, Josh hobbled the horses and set them up with bags of feed while Amelia whipped out an old quilt and carefully spread their dinner over the surface while Rebecca "helped" by banging two tin cups together. They went to the river as a family and waded in with rolled up pant legs and hiked-up skirts, washing their hands in the cool spring water. Then they sat on the blanket, with Rebecca nestled in Amelia's lap. They helped themselves to the meal-- sandwiches and sliced apples and strawberries from Amelia's garden. With red-stained lips and fingers, Rebecca wandered off to splash in the shallow water while her parents lounged with full bellies on the blanket, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes.
"It's hot," Amelia noted absently, tugging her sweat-damp dress away from her body before leaning back on her arms.
"You've mentioned that a few times," Josh said wryly, sprawling onto his back and tossing a forearm over his eyes. "Aren't you supposed to be bragging about how this isn't a real summer?" He took on what she supposed he considered a mocking, feminine southern lilt. "'Now a Missouri summer? That's a real summer!'"
Amelia laughed, coming up off one hand to swat at his side. "You forget, I'm not as arrogant as you, Joshua. I don't need to make people feel small about hating bad weather." She lowered her own voice to a cracking rendition of his gritty drawl. "'You think this is cold, little lady? This is mild. You ain't even seen a real winter here yet. Now git on out there! The chickens need fed, got dammit!'"
"I don't sound like that," he rumbled. "And you got a lot of sass for a woman who can't go outside nine months of the year without hysterics." Shifting back to the warbling falsetto, he went on without lifting his arm from his eyes. "'Oh please, Josh, no! Don't you see! There's a bit of a breeze and three clouds in the sky! I'll freeze to death, Josh! I'll perish in the raging arctic tempest! Oh please, Josh, don't make m--'"
He cut off with a grunt as, breathless with giggles, Amelia tugged his arm away from his face with one hand and beat at his chest with the other. "Stop," she pleaded, tears of laughter pricking her eyes. "You're a bully."
"'You're a bully, I do declare!'" he mocked, capturing her wrists to stay her onslaught. "'Oh my heavens, oh my lord, whatever shall I do with such a cruel and thoughtless bully for a husband!?'"
"I said stop," she wheezed, freeing one hand and clapping it over his mouth. She knew the best way to shut him up, but dratted Rebecca was within earshot and eyesight. Of course, she could always count on Josh to follow through on her half-formed notions. In an instant she was on her back, pinned beneath the weight of his body while he drew the laughter from her mouth with a searing kiss.
"Rebecca is ten feet away," she said on a gasp when they parted for air. Josh twisted to glance over his shoulder.
"She's fine."
"I know she's fine, Josh, but she could be watching!"
"What kind of degenerate do you think I am, Ames?" he asked with mock indignation, punctuating each sentence with a kiss. "It's just a kiss." Kiss. "Maybe a little touching." Kiss. "We'll wait 'till later," kiss, "to make her a sister." Kiss. "After the sun sets."
"Or a brother," she teased, drawing her fingers over his shoulders and down his chest. She wrinkled her nose. "And you'd be hard pressed to convince me to let you try, smelling like this."
When they'd married, her comment would have stopped him in his tracks. He'd have shoved himself off her before she could say she was joking, rattling off apologies and fleeing outside to scrub himself with soap until he smelled like nothing but well water and the dull bite of lye. Now, he just pressed himself closer as she clasped his sweaty shirt in her hands and drew him in. "You're not smelling so sweet yourself, sweetheart," he breathed in her ear. "I think you need a bath."
And before she could register what was happening, he'd hefted her into his arms and was stalking toward the creek. She yelled in protest, squirming in his arms, listening to Rebecca's happy squeal of approval and the sound of splashing as Josh plowed into the water. Abandoning her effort at escape, she wound her arms around his neck.
"Don't you dare drop me, Joshua," she ordered, glaring up at him with every ounce of gusto and threat she could find while her insides were splitting with laughter.
"Oh sweetheart," he crooned, bending to drop a kiss on the tip of her nose. "I wouldn't dare."
And then they were falling, plunging together into the water as he tipped them backwards. His arms released her the second they slipped beneath the surface and she came up sputtering, glaring, laughing. Rebecca hopped up and down on the shore, cackling and clapping her hands. Her eyes went wide and her mouth stretched into a wild grin when Josh abandoned Amelia and plowed up out of the water toward his daughter. He plucked her up just as she was turning to run and charged back into the cool blue current.
"Papa, don't throw me!" she squealed happily, with all the carefree glee that came from her absolute certainty that danger couldn't touch her. They'd played this game before and it was one of her favorites. Josh lifted her up high above his head and then let her plunge toward the water, his hands still secure around her waist, dunking her just to her neck and no further before lifting her back up. "Again!" she yelled, and he did it again. And again... and again... again, and again, and again. And again.
Amelia sank up to her neck in the slow, refreshing current, grateful that she was wearing a light summer dress that didn't weigh her down, letting the water soothe away the heat of the day. Josh and Rebecca laughed and splashed, a charming, riotous combination of feral joy and doting patience.
When Reb had exhausted herself and Amelia and Josh had cooled down, they trudged out of the water. Amelia dried her daughter with a towel, and she and Josh peeled their sodden clothes off, spreading them out on the nearby rocks to dry while they sprawled on the picnic quilt in their underwear. In the time it had taken them to undress, Rebecca had subsided into unconsciousness, one thumb jammed into her mouth, a habit Melissa promised she would outgrow.
The drifting afternoon sun warmed Amelia's chilled skin, and she shifted onto her side, her damp shift already drying. Josh lay on his back with an arm once more tossed over his eyes, breathing deep and slow. Rebecca lay between them, and it was a good thing because if she hadn't been there as a buffer Amelia couldn't been held accountable for her actions. Not with him laying there, all sleepy and shirtless.
"Hey Josh?" she asked, hoping she wasn't waking him. He lifted the arm and opened one eye in question. "Did you have a nice Thursday?" she asked, not because it was a necessary question or a particularly important one. She just liked to ask him because she liked to hear his answer, which was always the same.
Rolling up onto an elbow, he reached across the Reb-filled space between them and slipped his hand around the nape of her neck. He pulled her close and kissed her, gently but with the passion of repressed desire. Then he drew away and flopped onto his back once more, closing his eyes.
"Best one yet, I reckon," he answered plainly, his words thick and drowsy.
Smiling, Amelia rolled onto her own back, watching clouds pass by, the beginnings of a much-needed breeze tugging at the branches overhead. Birds sang and the river hushed by, and the happy echoes of the day hummed in her ears. Best one yet.
It wasn't, of course, truly the best Thursday yet. There had been Thursdays with much better weather and Thursdays with less work. Thursdays where Rebecca hadn't thrown a tantrum over breakfast, and Thursdays with grander adventures than this trip to the river. But even this regular old Thursday, and even the bad Thursdays where they were sick or snippy or bored, were the "best one yet."
If she was honest, Amelia had to agree with him. Every Thursday was the best Thursday, because it meant one more week as a family, bound by law and love. One more week without trial or trouble. They had both been fighting so much, for so long, and Amelia had quietly begun to accept this was simply their due-- one more week of easy paradise. The best one yet.