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Sleep took a while to come, because the fantasy of him and Tam married and living in her grandmother’s house played through his mind, and it was a very, very good fantasy.
13
Trey Chappell took off his gloves and clapped them together to get the dust off. That never truly worked, as everything he owned was perpetually covered in dirt, no matter how much clapping or washing he did.
About the only time he didn’t feel the grit of dirt on his hands was when he went to church. He hadn’t done that for a while, though, and a frown pulled his eyebrows down as he headed for the hay barn.
Part of his job of working with the trainers and various owners who rented stable space was to make sure they had the supplies needed for the hundreds of horses that lived and trained at Bluegrass Ranch. That required a lot of good-quality hay, and they grew that right here on the ranch.
With it this late in August, Trey needed to start checking their supply. They’d just finished their third cutting a couple of weeks ago, and the heat wave the South had been experiencing had slowed the growth of the hay. He’d still get another cutting from it before autumn started and he needed to get the ground ready for next spring’s planting.
He entered the hay barn, which was really one of the biggest buildings on the ranch. Trey managed the rotation of the hay to make sure they were using the oldest hay first and storing the newer bales. That way, the susceptibility to mold was reduced.
The building ran for a hundred yards, with a tightly maintained walls and roof, because water and hay didnotgo together.
The scent of hay and dirt met Trey’s nose, and he took a long breath of it. He loved the smell of earth and grass, sky and water, and the hay building epitomized all of those things. He took the clipboard from the nail next to the door and checked the date he’d been here last.
Just three days ago, because hay maintenance and the agriculture on the ranch was a full-time job. They employed a full-time ag manager to take care of the field scheduling and rotating, the baling, the cutting, the storage. He oversaw the maintenance of the equipment required to plant, grow, and harvest the hay, wheat, and barley they grew on the ranch.
Tucker Marshall also checked the hay barn every week for signs of mold, rot, and water, and he’d marked the clipboard yesterday as clear. The building was half-full of hay, and that would last them through the end of the year.
Still, a thread of worry snaked through Trey. With only one more cutting, Bluegrass might have to buy hay for their boarders over the winter. If that was the case, Trey would rather buy it right now. The price would be cheaper, and he’d be able to sleep easier from now until April.
He left a question for Tucker about purchasing more hay after their next cutting and quickly read the note about the placement of the flag. He frowned as he realized Tucker was saying it had been in the wrong place yesterday.
I left it, because I wasn’t sure what you were doing. Shouldn’t it be on the left, though?
Trey’s heartbeat skipped as he looked up. Though the light in the hay building wasn’t nearly as bright as outside, he could clearly see the bright orange flag they used to mark where the next bales should be taken from.
It was on the right side, and stuck quite a bit lower than where Trey had last left it.
“TJ,” he muttered to himself, trying to decide if he was excited or upset. TJ Dixon loved the hay building almost as much as Trey. The problem was, the five-year-old shouldn’t be in the building, especially alone. “Especially if he’s going to touch things.”
Trey frowned, definitely a little bit annoyed. At the same time, if TJ had been here, that would warrant a visit to his mother. An image of Bethany Dixon’s dark hair, dark eyes, and slim figure moved through his mind.
This was his chance. He’d told Blaine he’d ask Bethany to dinner the next time he saw her. That had been a few weeks ago now, but he hadn’t had a reason to go down the road to her place, so he hadn’t seen her.
He could now.
“TJ?” he called, though he didn’t expect the child to be there. He liked coming into the hay building, but his favorite place to hang out was in the hay loft in the barn closest to his mother’s farm.
Trey walked down the middle of the building, the bright orange flag they used to mark where the next bales should be taken from beckoning to him. He reached it and sure enough, it was far too low for a man to have placed it there.
It was on the wrong side too, and Trey plucked it out of the hay where TJ had put it and moved it back where it belonged. That way, whoever came to get hay would know which side to take from. They started down on the end next to the wall, taking what they needed from top to bottom, left to right, the way one might read a book.
The flag stayed on the far right, only getting moved back a row when the last bale was taken from the one in front of it.
Trey looked back into the recesses of the hay building, the space getting darker and darker with every step he took. “TJ Dixon,” he called. “If you’re in here, you better answer me.”
No one did, but Trey went all the way to the very back of the building. There were no little boys.
Tucker had left the note yesterday, so TJ had probably been here yesterday morning, or the day before that.
Something pricked at his mind, and Trey left the hay barn, got behind the wheel of his truck, and rumbled over to the barn where he’d found TJ several times. He didn’t blame the kid for coming to Bluegrass Ranch. The southeast barn was a tall, beautiful, dark red structure that had a loft with a slide back to the ground out the window. As a five-year-old, Trey had loved coming out to this barn with his father—or anyone else who’d take him—just to go down that slide.
He pulled up to the barn, noting that the front doors had been thrown wide open. That usually only happened if Duke needed the small tractor they parked inside to do something with the chickens, goats, or sheep they kept on the ranch.
Sure enough, the tractor was gone, and the back doors on the barn stood open too, letting sunshine in from both ends.
