Alex practically jumped out of his booster seat the moment she turned off the engine at the River Bow Ranch on Saturday. “I want to see the dogs!” “Dogs!” Maya squealed after him, wiggling and tugging against the car-seat straps. The only reason she didn’t rush to join her brother outside the car was her inability to undo the straps on her own, much to her constant frustration. “Hang on, you two.” Their excitement made her smile, despite the host of emotions churning through her at visiting the River Bow again for the first time in a decade. “The way you’re acting, somebody might think you’d never seen a dog before.” “I have, too, seen a dog before,” Alex said. “But this isn’t just one dog. Miss Bowman said she had a lot of dogs. And horses, too. Can I really ride one?” “That’s the plan for now, but we’ll have to see how things go.” She was loath to make promises about things that were out of her control. Probably a fallback to her marriage, those frequent times when the children would be so disappointed if their father missed dinner or a school performance or some special outing.
