time, but it turned out to be true. I’ve been looking for you. I promise you that. I filed a missing persons report and everything.”
“You’ve been out for months.”
“I know.” He maneuvered his truck effortlessly around the sharp corners of the two lane road, his tires hugging the yellow double line. “I don’t really know how to do this whole family thing. Not any more than you do. You think Mom was any more interested in raising me than she is you? She wasn’t.”
“You have this whole other family,” he said. “But I don’t.”
“Yeah. Well. You probably do have another family somewhere. Who the hell is your dad anyway?”
Emmett shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure she knows.”
He remembered vividly when his mother had told him she was pregnant. He’d been eighteen, and it had been a hell of a shock. He’d already been in Texas, and as a result he hadn’t had a whole lot of opportunity to get close to Emmett.
“Yeah. I didn’t know who my dad was either. Not for a long time. But she knows. You could ask her.”
Emmett snorted. “I don’t think she wants me to know.”
“Well, if he had money she’d want you to know. I mean, she would’ve gone and asked him for it. She got a payoff from my old man’s wife.”
Emmett said nothing for a moment. “And you...you speak to them?”
“Yeah. We’re about to go talk to them now.”
“Doesn’t that make you mad? That his wife paid Mom off?”
“No,” West said. “She was protecting her own. It was Mom’s job to protect me. Tammy Dalton just did what she felt like she had to do. Hank’s the one who behaved badly.”
“Hank is...your dad.”
“Yeah. He’s not a bad guy. I mean, not really. They’re all pretty decent for a collection of rednecks.”
“Aren’t you a redneck?” Emmett asked.
“I suppose. I figure I’m pretty decent for one too.” West took a breath, then drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “They’ve got a school there.”
“I don’t want to go to school.”
“Tough shit,” he said. “If you want to live with me, there’s going to be some expectations of you. Look, the school at the Dalton ranch is different. There’s not a lot of homework or anything like that. There’s some physical work. You can learn a trade. There’s art...”
“I don’t want to do art.”
“Well, you don’t have to. You can figure out what you like. You can go to a regular school if you want. But I thought this might be a good chance for you to get a little bit more.”
“Why can’t I just work on your ranch?”
“Because.” He didn’t really have a better answer than that, even though reasons moved around in his head. No one had cared what he did. Not at all. And he knew that that didn’t help you get on any kind of good path. But he had the opportunity to get more. To get better. All the things that West had had to fight for, he could help Emmett get.
“You been doing a lot of camping, right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Emmett said.
“Right. Well, how many times did you come up on a trail that was all closed in and overgrown?”
“Lots of times.”
“You can get through those paths, but isn’t it easier to go through a spot that’s already been forged?”
“I guess.”
“I was you,” West said. “I know you might find that hard to believe, but I was. And I had to walk a trail that was all overgrown. I had to find my way through all that stuff. I knocked it all over for you. I cleared the way. I can show you how it can be easier, and I can help you. But you have to let me.”
Emmett frowned, but didn’t say anything more. When they arrived at the well-manicured Dalton ranch, all white fences and even the clipped green lawn, Emmett looked a little bit stunned.
“They have a lot of money,” West said.
He’d had nothing. And he’d also had an excess. Now he was somewhere in the middle, but even still, the Dalton family spread was pretty impressive. The house even more so. It was tacky rich. Gilded trailer park living, and he had to admit that part of him loved it.
When West found financial success, he’d done his best to assimilate. To blend in. He had been looking for a kind of suburban normalcy with his success. Hank Dalton obviously had no interest in normalcy, and there was quite a bit of him that respected