The Farmer's Son

Chapter 39 Not Set in Corn

Who's Dylan?

The words were almost past his lips before Ray caught and held them back. It was an innocent enough question, one that he would not have hesitated to ask a few months ago, but Alan's shifty glance as he quickly rejected the call was all the answer Ray needed.

Clearing his throat, Alan wouldn't meet Ray's eyes as he tucked his phone into his back pocket. "Someone I met in the program," he said vaguely.

"I didn't ask," Ray said lightly.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, a memory came to Ray: prying up rotting planks from the porch while Alan's phone chimed with texts, and the smile on his face as he looked at them. If Ray remembered right, they only lasted for a month or so. And then they started up again a week or two before Alan went back to the program. Ahh... Ray thought. That's what's different.

"Is it the same someone you were texting last year?" Ray asked. "When you were asking me about secrets?"

Startled by the question, and by the fact that Ray remembered, Alan looked at him. He didn't answer right away, and when he spoke, it still wasn't an answer—or maybe it was. "Does it matter?" he asked. "You were the one who said you weren't asking me to wait," he added in a low voice, sounding as if he wished Ray had.

This time Ray was the one who looked away, not with guilt or remorse, but in contemplation.

Alan's phone began to ring again, jarring the air between them. Alan glanced down at it.

"Aren't you going to answer?" Ray asked.

His tone was calm and curious, devoid of any jealousy or upset. And that only made Alan ticked off. "Not with you here," he muttered.

"Oh," Ray said. "Right." Unfolding his leg, he pushed off from the bed.

"I didn't mean for you to leave," Alan said quickly.

"What would I stay and do?" Ray asked with a smile.

Alan's jaw clenched and unclenched as he bit back the answer he wanted to give. He watched Ray open the door and step across the threshold.

"It's good to have you home, Alan," Ray said, pausing in the doorway and turning back to smile. "I missed you." Then both his gaze and his smile slipped away, and he disappeared behind the closing door.

Alone in the room, Alan watched the door with a frown. He forgot about the ringing phone, until the noise and his own frustrations came together to make him even more pissed off. "Oh, shut up!" he said, jabbing at the screen. With a sharp sigh he tossed the phone on the bed, then turned back to yanking things out from his backpack.

But when the phone began to ring for a third time, he sighed. Leaning across the bed to retrieve it, he held it to his ear. "Hey," he said. Looking at the closed door, he sighed again. "Yeah, sorry. I was...busy. But I'm not anymore."

*

The next morning dawned bright and sunny, and at half past six Dusty's van came careening down the drive, horn honking merrily.

"He's playing your song, sir," Ray said to Noah, getting up from the table with his dishes.

"That damned horn," Noah muttered, finishing his coffee in one swig. "Louder than a flock of geese being squeezed. I'm comin'!" he shouted as he pushed away from the table, and Dusty must have heard because the honking stopped.

"What about dinner?" Ray asked.

"I'll be back in time for dinner," Noah said, taking a darkly checkered jacket from the back of his chair and swinging his arms into it. "Make it something easy. But not—"