My heart squeezes, and I feel that all-too-familiar anxiety gripping my chest. What could he possibly want after all these years? My daddy ain’t never needed anyone in his life, so hearing him say that over a voicemail has me terrified of what he’ll tell me when I call him back.
I take a deep breath, blow it out, and then push the call button.
Please don’t let me regret this. Please don’t let me regret this.
My dad picks up on the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s…Sutton.”
He’s quiet on the other end of the line for a full minute. I pull the phone away from my face and look to make sure that the call didn’t get disconnected. Then I hear him clear his throat. His voice is gruff, grittier than I remember. I can almost picture him standing in the kitchen and using that old beige phone that was attached to the wall.
“I need your help,” he growls without so much as a greeting.
His phone skills still need work, I see.
“Okay.”
“The cattle are dying. They’re dropping like flies, and I…I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t…Doc Lucy is doing everything she can, but nothing’s working. I’m going to go broke trying to fix it or lose the ranch. It’s not just me, though; it’s…it’s the whole damn town. Every ranch owner is having the same issue.”
“I work in a research lab. I don’t work in the field.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he hisses. “You’re the best in the country with infectious diseases, Sutton. I need you to come home and help me figure this out.”
Did I hear him correctly?
His words roll through my brain, and I’m surprised by them. I am the best in the country with bovine infectious diseases and have the awards to prove it. If he knows that, does that mean that he’s been following my career?
My father just complimented me for the first time in my life and asked for my help. I’m stunned into silence momentarily as I try to figure out what’s happening.
My father has been kidnapped by a pod person. That’s the only explanation.
“Dad,” I start softly, my voice filled with emotion that I don’t want him to hear.
“Cowgirls don’t cry, Sutton. Sooner you learn that, the better you will be,” he had growled at me the first time I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. “You want to work this ranch, be successful, then you got to close off those emotions or you’ll never survive out here.”
I mull over my words carefully, not really knowing how to continue the conversation. I’m in total shock by everything that’s happening.
“Sutton, you left this family, and…you turned your back on us. Don’t do it again.”
And there it is.
I almost growl. I swallow the anger that’s wanting to explode out of me. I take a few deep breaths, grabbing onto the pillow next to me on the couch. I grip it tightly, taking all of my frustration out on it.
“Doc Lucy can have the samples sent to me here in Billings. That would be more feasible. My team and I could…”
“That ain’t good enough. I told Doc I’d call and ask you to come home. She offered, but I knew I needed to make the call.”
Whoa. I gasp, shocked by his admission.
Yeah, this is definitely a pod person. It has to me. My father would never say this.
“Dad, I don’t know that…”
“I know that I was a bastard to you for most of your life. I just…your mama warned me time and time again that I was too hard on you. That’s how my parents were to me and…” He coughs in the middle of his babbling before he continues. “Can you please come home?”
That scared little girl inside me who always needed her dad’s love and affection responds to his request before I can think too much harder about it.
