Chapter 25 #2
“She said she has family to think about. She wasn’t talkin’ about Danny.”
“You’re right.” I furrow my brow. “There was a photo behind the counter. Young guy, mid-twenties. She moved in front of it when she saw I noticed.”
Wyatt’s jaw works once. “That’d be her boy, Stanley. Some trouble a couple years back ran him out to Sage Harbor.”
“Then that trouble followed him.” I look across the cab finding Wyatt’s green eyes fixed on me. “That wasn’t a worried mother; that was a woman waiting on the next bad thing to walk through her door.”
“You want to look into him?”
I shake my head sharply. “No. We go after Stan and we tip our hand. Alma goes quiet, and we lose the only lead we’ve got.”
“So what now?”
“We wait. She didn’t throw my card away.” I lean back against the headrest. “I don’t know when, but she’ll call.”
He turns the key and the engine rumbles to life. Then he checks the mirrors and the street before pulling out and turning toward the ranch road.
The silence between us settles into something different than what it was on the way out.
Not uncomfortable, but full, the way a room feels after someone’s said something that can’t be unsaid.
Wyatt drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh, and I watch the valley scroll past without really seeing it.
My mind is still in that bookstore, turning over every micro-expression on Alma’s face, cataloging what she said and what she didn’t.
“Tom used to ride the east fence with me on Wednesdays.”
It comes out of nowhere. I shift my gaze around to him.
“Didn’t have to. Wasn’t his job. But every damn Wednesday, he’d show up at the barn before dawn with two thermoses, and he’d ride the whole line with me. Four hours, sometimes five. Hardly talked. Just rode.”
I can picture it so clearly, it makes my chest ache. Dad and Wyatt side by side on horseback in the early light, saying nothing because they didn’t need to.
“He was checking on you.” The words are soft. “Not the fence.”
“Took me about two years to figure that out.” He clears his throat. “By then I’d stopped mindin’.”
The road curves, and he takes it one-handed easily, the muscle memory of a man who’s driven this stretch ten thousand times.
“That last Wednesday before he died, we got to the top of the ridge, and he pulled up. Just sat there looking out over the valley for a long time. I thought somethin’ was wrong with his horse.
” Wyatt pauses. “Then he said, ‘You’re a good man, Wyatt. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Especially yourself.’”
He huffs a quiet breath. “Man had a way of sayin’ things that stuck.”
My throat closes, and I press my lips together, only able to stare out the window because if I look at him right now, I’m going to lose it.
“Didn’t think much of it at the time. Tom said things like that.
He was generous that way.” Another pause stretches for longer this time.
“After he died, I replayed it so many times I wore it out. Trying to hear what I missed. Whether he was saying goodbye, or asking for help, or warning me somethin’ was comin’. ”
“He was telling you the truth,” I manage. My voice comes out rough. “That’s all. He meant it.”
“I know.” He takes a breath. “I know he did. But I keep thinkin’, what if I’d pushed? If I’d said, ‘Tom, what’s going on, talk to me.’ Maybe he would have told me about the proof. Maybe he would have told me what he’d found.”
“And maybe whoever killed him would have come for you too.”
The words land harder than I intended, causing Wyatt to look at me, then back at the road.
“That bank call kept you alive.” My voice is steadier now.
“I know you’ve spent three years turning it into a failure.
But someone made that call because they needed you out of the way, which means if you’d been on that road, you’d be in the ground beside them.
And your family would have lost three people instead of two. ”
His throat works. He doesn’t speak for a long time, and I let him have the silence because I’ve said what needed to be said. It’s up to him what he does with it.
When he finally talks, his voice is stripped back to something I’ve never heard before. No gravel. No shield. Just Wyatt.
“I miss them, Daisy. Every goddamn day.”
“I know.” I reach across the console and put my hand on his forearm. “Me too.”
The ranch gate appears ahead of us, and Wyatt slows. Neither of us is in a hurry to go back to what’s waiting.
He pulls through the gate and I hop out to close it behind us, the way I used to when Dad would drive us in from town. The metal is warm from the sun and the latch catches on the first try. When I climb back in, Wyatt is watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“What?”
“Nothin’.” He puts the truck in gear. “You still close a gate the same way. One hand on the post, swing it with your hip.”
“Dad taught me that.”
“I know.” I can hear the wry note in his voice. “I taught him.”
The smallest laugh escapes me before I can catch it, and Wyatt’s eyes soften in a way that undoes something in my chest.
“Liar. Dad was closing gates before you were born.”
“He was closin’ them wrong before I was born.”
I laugh again, and his mouth curves just enough for me to catch a glimpse of who he might be if he ever let himself stop carrying the world.
He parks beside the barn instead of pulling up to the house. Then he kills the engine, but neither of us moves.