Page 77 of Cattle Stop

“The hell?” Cooper asks.

The screen door bangs open. Whit’s dad, Cooper registers, nearly dwarfed by an armful of boxes, though he manages to wave despite them.

“Cooper,” Luis says, dropping the boxes on the table as he comes inside and pulling Cooper into a long hug. “Cooper, Cooper, Cooper. We heard you were still in these parts. So good to see you.”

Diana, who’s walked in right behind, hugs Cooper as soon as Luis lets him go. Mrs. Whit’s Mom, Cooper had called her once, and she’d laughed like Whit never does, a tinkling chuckle, her smile creasing her eyes that look so much like Whit’s.

“You are here,” Diana says, stepping back to hold Cooper at arm’s length as the others file in. “And we’ve heard so much about all the changes to the farm. Penny just showed us the fence you boys are setting up.”

“Mom,” Whit says, shutting the door.

“We’d have come by sooner to say hi, but every time we started packing up these albums to bring over”—Diana nods at her husband, who’s already opening a box full of old photos—“well, it’s a bit distracting.”

“Just look at them.” Luis turns an album to show around the room. “Whit in that tuxedo. You clean up good.”

“I didn’t know they were coming,” Whit says. “Papá, please.”

“Is that prom?” Cooper takes the thick book and tips it toward the light. Whit in a tux, with Penny next to him in a shimmery purple dress, her hair swept up on top of her head, with curled bits hanging near her face.

“And graduation,” Luis says, flipping forward a page. “Look at him. Oh, we were so proud.”

Whit and Drew, Whit and Penny, Whit and Penny and Drew. Some others too, people Cooper half recognizes. Travis was on their football team, a freshman when Whit was a senior, and some of the girls on Penny’s lacrosse team, who used to come by the farm once in a while back when Cooper first started spending time here.

“I’ve got the box from high school,” Drew says, waving a picture toward Cooper. “And by high school, I mean Whit’s freshman year, and I’m keeping it.”

Penny opens an album as thick as her palm. “Please, that’s nothing on baby Whit. I mean—look at those curls. And those cheeks, oh my God, Whit.”

Whit touches his fingers to his forehead. “Guys.”

“I’ll raise you braces.” Drew slides a photo across the table toward Cooper. “What a looker, am I right?”

Whit crosses his arms. “Everyone else had them off by ninth grade.”

“Coop, tell us honestly, would you or wouldn’t you have fallen desperately in love with this handsome gentleman if you’d known him in high school?” Drew holds up a picture of Whit in his baseball uniform, his hair cut too short, and his mouth full of metal.

Cooper did know Whit in high school. He pushes out a laugh. No, he wants to say, but it’d probably come out like the lie it is. He shuffles through the photos, plucking one of a school play, Penny on stage in a scarecrow costume, and another of Whit holding a basketball.

Cooper reaches beneath a stack of sports photos to one of Drew and Whit at what must be Whit’s house. Cooper never went there, never did more than drive by the outside of Whit’s family home, but it looks like the right type of kitchen to fit the space.

Whit’s parents don’t know about him and Whit, Cooper realizes. No, there’s no gentle chiding from Luis and Diana, no significant looks, no sense of a hint hanging in the air that they have any idea that their son and Cooper have spent this spring and early summer…

What? Sharing a room? Messing around? Cooper tosses the photo back into the pile. It skids across the table and pushes another to the side with its momentum. Penny and Drew in this one, their heads close together, Penny’s hair braided into pigtails, a hat sideways on her head, and a summer sunburn across Drew’s cheeks and nose. Late in high school, it must’ve been, because Cooper recognizes the T-shirt Drew’s wearing from a concert they’d driven all night to go see. And the next photo beneath must’ve been the same day, and Whit’s in it on Penny’s other side.

Hell if Cooper’s in any of these. Maybe he took this shot and doesn’t even remember now. Though no, it was more likely Drew’s aunt, and Cooper had probably already headed back to the city, a too-quiet apartment greeting him as he shook out clothes that still smelled like hay and sunshine.

Whit reaches past Cooper, his arm brushing against Cooper’s shoulder. “Pen, you were cute as a button.”

Penny grabs the photo from him. “C’mon, tease Mr. Lobsterman Drew here. Could you even fit more freckles on your face?”

Cooper tries for a smile, poking a finger into Drew’s cheek. “The beard only does so much, my dude.”

Drew bats him away. “It intimidates the squirrels and that’s all I need.”

“You kids,” Diana says, her voice fond.

Cooper bends down and rubs behind Sadie’s ears. The three of them, Diana might as well say.

“Barely kids anymore, you all are old.” Luis curves his arm around Whit’s shoulder and jostles him, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. “Speaking of, we gotta go, ’cause we got the rest of the garage waiting for us.”