4. City Boy Problems #2
We stop at Magnolia Diner for lunch because it's noon and I'm hungry and Jolene will know something is wrong if I drive past without stopping.
Then I'll have to explain myself later which is always more trouble than simply stopping.
The diner is busy the way it's always busy at noon on a Thursday.
Every booth along the window is full and the counter has exactly two empty stools and the smell coming out of the kitchen is the specific combination of grilled cheese and something with garlic that means Jolene is in a good mood and cooking accordingly.
Jolene herself spots us the second we walk in.
She is fifty-eight years old, sharp as a tack, and misses absolutely nothing that happens within fifty feet of her.
She has fed me lunch approximately four hundred times and she has the particular maternal energy of a woman who considers feeding people an act of love and will not be argued with about it.
She looks at me. Then at Beckett. Then back at me with an expression I recognize immediately. She mouths, Wow!
I slide into the nearest booth before she can say whatever she's thinking.
Beckett sits across from me and picks up the menu, which is a single laminated page that hasn't changed in eleven years. He reads it with the same focused attention he gives everything, like the choice between the chicken fried steak and the pulled pork sandwich requires genuine analysis.
"What's good?" he asks.
"Everything."
"That's not helpful."
"The brisket plate," I say. "But don't tell Jolene I steered you there or she'll think I'm playing favorites and I'll never hear the end of it."
He sets the menu down. "What does she usually push?"
"Whatever she thinks you need." I fold my hands on the table. "Don't fight it. It's faster."
Jolene arrives with water and coffee without being asked and sets both down and looks at Beckett with the open assessment of a woman who has earned the right to look at people however she wants.
"You must be the new ranch owner," she says.
"Beckett Wilder." He smiles and it changes his whole face. I notice this from across a table in a busy diner in the middle of a Thursday and I am genuinely annoyed at myself about it.
Especially because the man spent yesterday losing a fight with irrigation equipment and oversized boots.
"Jolene Mercer." She pulls out her pad. "You look tired."
He blinks. "Good afternoon to you too."
"It's an observation, not a criticism." She taps her pen on the pad.
"You're going to have the brisket plate and the cornbread and I'm bringing you a piece of pie whether you want it or not because you look like a man who hasn't eaten a proper meal in about six months."
Beckett looks at me.
I look at my water glass.
"Yes ma'am," he says.
Jolene nods with satisfaction and disappears toward the kitchen.
The lunch crowd hums around us. Silverware clatters somewhere behind me and the sharp sweet smell of fresh pie drifts out from the kitchen.
Beckett leans back in the booth and looks out the window at Main Street with the still, unhurried expression of a man who is slowly stopped running from something without realizing it yet.
He watches a couple of old ranchers cross the street. A kid on a bicycle. A dog sleeping in the shade outside the hardware store.
"It's a good town," he says quietly.
I follow his gaze out the window.
"Yeah," I say. "It is."
We sit with that for a moment and it is almost comfortable.
That is somehow the most unsettling thing that has happened all day.
Suddenly a storm comes out of nowhere.
That’s not entirely accurate. Silas texted me at eleven-thirty this morning with a single word that said "weather" which in Silas language means pay attention.
I paid attention. I just didn't expect it to move this fast.
We're loading the last of the supplies into the truck bed when the sky does that particular thing that Texas skies do before a serious storm.
It goes a color that isn't quite green and isn't quite gray and is entirely its own specific warning system that anyone who has lived here long enough learns to respect immediately.
The wind picks up all at once.
"We need to move," I say.
Beckett glances at the sky. Then at me. "It was clear an hour ago."
"Texas doesn't negotiate." I slam the tailgate. "Get in the truck."
We make it three miles out of town before the rain hits. Not a gentle start. No polite warning drops on the windshield. Just suddenly and completely raining.
The way only Texas knows how, like the sky has been saving it up and has lost all patience. The road ahead disappears into gray and I slow down and grip the wheel and focus.
Beckett is quiet in the passenger seat, which I appreciate.
We get within a mile of the ranch entrance when the road dips through the low creek crossing and I stop the truck. The water is already moving across the concrete pad faster than I like. It's passable now. In twenty minutes it might not be.
I make the call and go.
The truck pushes through with water sheeting up both sides. Beckett braces one hand on the dash without comment and we come out the other side onto higher ground and I exhale.
"That was fine," I say. Mostly to myself.
"Completely fine," Beckett agrees, in the tone of a man for whom it was not entirely fine.
The barn appears through the rain and I pull the truck beneath the open equipment overhang beside the main barn. I cut the engine hard.
The sound of rain hitting the metal roof overhead is immediate and enormous, the kind of sound that fills every available space and makes the world outside feel very far away.
Water sheets down just beyond the edge of the overhang in thick gray curtains.
We sit there for a second.
Then we both reach for the door handles at the same time.
"Wait," I say.
"What?"
I point toward the open stretch of ranch yard between us and the barn doors where water is already rushing across the gravel in a fast-moving sheet.
We are not getting out of this truck immediately.
Beckett leans back in his seat. Looks at the rain hammering the roof overhead. Looks at the water flooding across the yard. Then he looks at me with an expression that is almost amused.
"So," he says.
"Don't," I say.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were absolutely about to make a joke about being trapped in a truck with your ranch manager during a flash flood."
He's quiet for a second.
"I was going to say it's a good thing we got the supplies loaded before this hit."
I look at him.
He looks at me.
Outside, the rain intensifies and the roof above us roars with it. We are very much stuck and very much alone, and the space inside this truck suddenly feels a whole lot smaller than it did this morning.
"Right," I say. "Good thing."
Neither of us makes any real move toward getting out of the truck.