His father.
She opened her door in the loft at the same time he opened the front door. She expected him to at least turn toward her, wave, say he would call her later, confirm their date at seven o’clock that night. Something.
Trap did none of those things. He walked out of her tiny house andslammedthe door behind him as he left. Lila Mae cringed and then took in the messy, unmade bed he’d left behind, and hoped that whatever his father had needed was a true emergency, or else Trap might be eating dinner alone, in the hospital, once Lila Mae got done with him.
10
Trap couldn’t believe he’d set his alarm for five fifteen p.m. instead of a.m. His phone had shut off in the heat, and Trap had fumbled with it in the middle of the night to get the alarm set.
He cursed himself as he swung wildly around the corner that led onto Seven Sons Ranch. JJ had recently been working with their cousin Isaac to extend the road all the way to his house, a couple of miles further east, on the other side of the property. He wanted a road that would connect the two halves and be unobtrusive. As this road bordered their southern farmland, JJ had thought it the easiest to extend. It would have to jog north about a half mile to get to his house, but they’d just started harvesting the alfalfa in this sector.
Once that was done, JJ was going to plow it under and start building the road foundation. Trap couldn’t believe that was what was on his mind as he once again turned left onto the property and went through the gate, which now had a huge arch above it that bore seven stars, one for each of the Walker brothers who had come to this part of the Texas Panhandle and once lived on and worked this ranch.
His momma and daddy’s house sat on the left, with Uncle Skyler’s and Uncle Jeremiah’s sprawling mansions on the right. His momma’s restoration barn stood straight ahead, and Trap kept going past it, as if he’d go to Uncle Liam’s house.
Instead, he turned right into the cowboy cabin parking area where the four structures stood, and he lived in the last one. His daddy sat on his front porch, in the only chair Trap could fit there and where he often sat while he physically whittled as he worked through anything he had on his mind.
He’d like to sit there and think through the events of the past forty-eight hours, as it felt like he’d climbed a tall mountain, come to a precipice, and flung himself off of it. He existed in a free fall now, panicked, with no idea what to do.
From his front door to Lila Mae’s was twenty-three minutes when he pushed the speed limit, which he’d done that morning.
He pulled up behind his father’s truck, as his daddy had parked in his place, and got out. “Hey, sorry,” he said, jogging down the length of his father’s vehicle.
“You’ve been out already today?” Daddy asked, because they had a long-standing Tuesday morning breakfast date where they met to talk about business and life, and anything and everything in between.
Trap shook his head, his words all balled up down in his chest. He really didn’t want to tell Daddy that he’d passed out and had a mild case of heat stroke, because then his mother would check on him every thirty minutes for the next six months. He also didn’t know how to keep it to himself, and he knew his father wouldn’t keep a secret from Momma.
“Come on in,” Trap said. “I can whip together some pancakes real quick.”
Pancakes were the first thing his daddy had taught him to cook, when he was eight years old. Trap’s emotions swung like a ship on stormy seas, pitching back and forth as his father stoodand looked at him with that edge of concern that told Trap he’d be spilling his guts within the hour.
“We’re not eating breakfast here today,” he said, a hint of a frown pressing against his eyebrows. “I thought you wanted to try the biscuits and gravy at Sunnyside Up.”
“Oh, right,” Trap said. “I did. Yeah.” He needed just a few minutes to calm himself down, and he couldn’t do it in front of his father. He did turn right around and headed back down the steps he’d already come up. “I’ll drive. I’m behind you.”
“Trap,” his daddy called, but he kept right on going.
He didn’t want to talk out under the big Texas sky anyway. It would be easier to tell his father everything in the cab of his truck or the safety of a diner booth. Trap got behind the wheel and noticed the frustration on his father’s face as he came past his truck and joined Trap in the cab.
“What is going on with you today?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Trap muttered.
Thankfully, his father focused his attention out the windshield and then the side window as Trap drove off the property.
“Well, I know it’s something,” Daddy said. “And if you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s fine. But I went inside your place like I always do, and you didn’t even have coffee made.” He looked over at him now, and Trap shifted in his seat. “The first thing you do when you get up is make coffee, whether you’re meeting with me for breakfast or not. You can’t function without it. At least you haven’t been able to for the past twenty-nine years.”
“That’s not true,” Trap said. “I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was sixteen.”
“Fine. The past thirteen years,” Daddy said. “I know you, son. You’re a creature of habit.”
Trap looked out his side window too as he passed the lane that Uncle Rhett and Uncle Tripp lived on. Conrad’s place was coming up on the right, and then they’d hit town, with the little mechanic shop always welcoming them at the junction that met the southern highway.
“I didn’t sleep at my place last night,” Trap said, because he might as well get the hardest thing out first.
“Oh.” The surprise in his father’s tone made Trap’s heartbeat sprint down to his toes and up to the top of his head.
“It’s not what you think,” he said. “But I stayed at Lila Mae’s.”
