the residential part of Coral Canyon opened up. The houses along these streets sat fairly close together, and the farther they got from the historic Main Street, the more land surrounded the houses.
“Did you like growing up out here?” Bryce asked.
“Yeah,” Tex said, sighing. “We had a pond right on the property. We could ride our bikes anywhere. Dad let us go fishing every Sunday after church.” He grinned at his son. “It was an easy, slow life.”
He had liked it, and the tender part of his heart longed for that life again. He’d stepped back from Country Quad to do exactly that, hadn’t he? Relax more. Travel less. Find a community to belong to?
He had, and his chest swelled with another breath, which he blew out slowly. “It was a good life.” He looked at his son again. “What happened in Boise to make you want to leave everything you’ve known and come do your senior year here?”
His dad had always shot straight with him, and Tex wasn’t doing his son any favors by not making him talk. He’d stayed in touch with his son over the years, but Tex wouldn’t label himself a good father.
He could talk to his son, and he’d given his advice over the years, but he hadn’t been involved in the day-to-day parenting the way his ex-wife had. He knew that had been a major source of annoyance to Corrie, the woman he’d been married to for only two years before that marriage had dissolved.
He was actually looking forward to this summer and this year and all of this time off. He would finally be able to dedicate time and energy to Bryce, and they’d talked about this year a lot already on the drive here from Boise.
“Mom’s…she’s been saying some things.”
Tex kept his gaze out the windshield. “What kind of things?”
“Lots of stuff,” he said. “When she said she had put her whole life on hold to have me and she couldn’t wait to do what she wanted, I got pretty mad at her. There was…sort of a…blow up.”
Tex didn’t know what to say. His chest stormed and his stomach turned inside out. “She loves you,” he said.
“She told me she hated being a mom,” Bryce said. “That’s when I called you.”
Tex whipped his attention to Bryce. “She did not say that.”
“She said she wished she’d never had kids.” Bryce kept his gaze out the window. “It’s fine. I don’t believe her, and I know she’s been stressed.”
“About what?” Tex demanded, trying to keep his grip on the steering wheel loose. “All the money I send her for the two of you? Her summers off from teaching? That perfect, two-story house that looks like it came out of a storybook?”
Bryce said nothing, and Tex stewed in his anger. Corrie had no right to make Bryce feel like he was unwanted.
“Bud,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know she didn’t mean any of those things.”
“Yeah, I know too,” he said. “But since you were coming already, and we always have the summers, I just figured, why not senior year too?”
“Jenny’s why-not-senior-year-too,” Tex said, sliding his man-son a look out of the corner of his eye. “You’re still talking to her, right?”
“Yeah,” Bryce said with a sigh. “We talk.”
“You goin’ with her?”
“I don’t know what that means, Dad,” he teased.
“It means she’s your girlfriend.” Tex gave him a full look. “Your mother told me about the Sweethearts dance and the prom, and then the other prom….”
“Yeah, well, she lives in Boise, and I live here now.”
Tex made another turn, this time not looking at his son. “Once we have a real chance, we’ll look around and buy something. I’m going to stay here for a while.” The right side of the road didn’t have any houses, and the places out here were spaced far apart.
“Whenever,” Bryce said. “We can put it on our summer list.”
“I used to go with the girl who lived next door to me,” Tex said, infusing a smile into his voice.
“You’ve told me, Dad,” Bryce said dryly.
“See? You know what goin’ with someone means.”
Bryce scoffed—or maybe laughed—and shook his head. “All right, Pops.”
Tex laughed too, saying, “It’s right up here.”
“You sure?” Bryce asked. “I’ve been here before, and it didn’t look like this.”
Tex frowned out the window too, because his son was right. The land sat in shades of yellow and brown. The fence that ran around the pasture that bordered the road looked like it could collapse if a two-ounce bird