Baby My Baby (A Ranching Family) by Victoria Pade

crate and the rest of it in the trash out back,” she told herself as if there were nothing to it.
    Pretending that that was the truth, she got out of bed, crossed the room, knelt down beside the offending box in the corner and quickly took the four top items off, setting them aside without more than a cursory glance at them.
    “See? You were making a mountain out of a molehill.”
    What was left in the crate was a silk suit and a blazer still in the cleaner’s plastic. She took them out and hung them in her closet. Then there were several items of winter clothing she’d kept in the bedroom of the house on the reservation that would have been the nursery. Those she stuffed into the bottom drawers of the bureau that faced the bed.
    And that was that. She had only to toss those first few articles back into the crate, get rid of it, and she could be done with this whole business.
    But was she sure she really wanted to just throw those things away? her traitorous mind asked her as she bent over to pick them up.
    There was a great big, plaid cashmere bathrobe that was so old and worn around the edges that it wasn’t even fit to give to charity. And yet when her hands clasped the downy softness, she couldn’t resist fingering it, rubbing her palms against it, finally slipping it on, smoothing the ragged lapels over her chest.
    She’d replaced it for Ash their first Christmas together, but when she’d been about to throw it out the next day she hadn’t been able to. It had occurred to her that if she got rid of it she wouldn’t have it to wear on cold Sunday mornings when she was padding around in her pajamas and stocking feet, or to pull over her when she was sick and lying on the couch.
    There was something comforting about it in a way her own robe didn’t match. It wasn’t just that it was warm or soft or broken in; it always made her feel as if Ash himself were wrapped around her.
    Just like now...
    “This has to go,” she said firmly, shrugging out of it as if it made her itch and tossing it into the crate.
    Then there was his college sweatshirt.
    She thought he would have wanted that back for sure. After all, it was a memento of his fraternity.
    For Beth, on the other hand, it was a memento of something else.
    The first time she’d worn it had been during a game of Boat.
    Boat was something she’d heard a therapist on the radio suggest to a caller with marital problems. Beth hadn’t considered what was happening in her own marriage a problem at that point—after all, it had only been a month since their wedding. But the game had seemed like a way to lure Ash home from doing paperwork at his office on a Sunday afternoon.
    The instructions were to gather special foods and wine and maybe some body oils or lotions in a basket. Thus equipped, the basket was then to be taken to the bed, which was designated as a boat in the middle of the ocean, and, for a time, they couldn’t leave it for any reason.
    Ash had been only too happy to go along with the idea. He’d undressed her and flung her clothes far out into their imaginary sea. After they’d put the lotions and oils to good use, the only article of clothing she could reach when she’d wanted to dress again before their picnic had been his college sweatshirt.
    That sweatshirt had become a part of the Boat basket from then on.
    Unfortunately Boat had lost more and more of its power to bring Ash home as the years had gone on, until Beth had given up trying. Still, the memory of that first time was so sweet it hurt.
    She folded the sweatshirt and set it in the crate with the robe.
    A white dress shirt was the third item lying on her bedroom floor at that moment. It had become hers during a long business trip Ash had taken early in their marriage. He’d left it for her to launder. But when she’d tried to do that, the scent of it had reached out to her. Ash’s scent. That mingling of his clean, spicy after-shave and the masculine smell of his skin.
    She’d