Read Online For Love and Family by Victoria Pade - Free Book Online

tell where the road actually was. But he didn’t seem to have any trouble and within minutes they were pulling up to a small pond beneath a stand of old oak trees that formed a semicircle around the far side of it.
    â€œWe can swim here in the summer but not tonight,” Johnny informed Terese as they got out of the truck.
    Hunter had brought several split logs with them for firewood but he dispatched Johnny to collect some kindling, leaving the truck lights on long enough for that to be accomplished and for the fire to be lit.
    Once it was blazing, the truck lights were turned off and they were left to the warm, golden glow of the bonfire. They sat down on logs that acted as benches along the bank of the pond.
    â€œWhat about cooking hot dogs on the end of a stick over a campfire? Have you ever done that?” Hunter asked Terese as Johnny hunted for just the right sticks for the job and his dad began to unload the picnic basket he’d packed.
    â€œNever,” Terese said.
    â€œShe go’d to boarding school,” Johnny offered from not far away. “But I still don’t understand. Don’t all schools have boards? In the walls or something?”
    It hadn’t occurred to Terese that this was how Johnny would take her statement about her schooling.
    â€œBoarding school means that you live at the school,” she explained.
    â€œDo you sleep in your desk?” Johnny asked, baffled.
    â€œNo, you have school in a school building and you live in a separate building,” she said.
    â€œWith your family?”
    â€œNo, with your classmates. Your family stays at home.”
    â€œYou don’t live home with your mom or dad or anybody?” the little boy said, sounding slightly horrified. “No.”
    â€œAnd you never got to go campin’ or cook on a fire or nothin’?”
    Terese smiled. “No, there was no camping or cooking on a fire. We ate all our meals in the dining hall.”
    â€œI wouldn’t like that,” Johnny decided.
    â€œIt wasn’t a lot of fun,” Terese assured him, thinking back on the stuffy, regimented environment where camping or cooking anything over an open fire would have been considered barbaric or unbearably pedestrian.
    â€œWhat about in the summer?” Johnny persisted when he’d shown her the fine art of poking the sticks through their hot dogs and they were all holding their dinner over the fire. “If you didn’t go campin’ in the summers, what did you do?”
    â€œI went to Europe most summers. Do you know anything about Europe?”
    â€œYep,” the little boy said authoritatively, surprising her. “My dad’s goin’ there in how many days now?”
    He’d begun that statement answering Terese’s question but ended it with a query for his father.
    â€œI don’t know that I’m going at all now,” Hunter said as if he didn’t want to talk about it.
    Johnny didn’t take note of his father’s reply; he simply filled Terese in on the details. “It’s a trip to look at some bulls so we can get our herd bigger and tougher. It’s ’portant.”
    â€œLooks like we’re about ready to eat these hot dogs,” Hunter said then, giving Terese the impression that he was trying to change the subject.
    But hot dogs and beans were a good distraction for Johnny. He took Terese under his wing and taught her how to pull the hot dog off the stick by using the bun, what condiments were best, and how to eat the beans they’d warmed by placing the opened can just above the flames.
    Beans weren’t Terese’s favorite food but she genuinely enjoyed the hot dog and she let her fellow diners know it.
    â€œI think this was a really good idea,” she told them, surprised that Hunter’s smile seemed as pleased as his son’s.
    â€œNow we get marshmallows!” Johnny announced when they’d finished the main course.