Page 66 of Keeping Secrets

“What for?” Scot asked, annoyed.

“Lunch with a friend,” he said flatly.

He was due to meet Rachel at a little diner in Half Moon Bay. It was a late lunch, an hour that the place was open but hopefully empty. He wanted to talk to her one more time, get their story straight in case the detectives digging into Adam’s death ever did link him to the crime scene somehow.

And more than that, he hated the idea of the girl sitting there alone, waiting for him. She had been through enough, been treated as an object and dehumanized and disregarded. He refused to be yet another man who treated her like garbage. She deserved better.

“Quality control is an important part of the job,” Scot was saying. Travis put his thoughts of Rachel and Adam to one side and tried to focus on what his boss was telling him. “You know everything you need to about running the bar, but don’t forget that you need to keep an eye on the kitchen too. People come in for the food even more than the alcohol. If the food starts to slip, our regulars will stop coming. We can’t have that.”

“I know,” Travis said, then tried to carve the impatience out of his voice. He looked out at the landscape, bright wildflowers on one side and the gray Pacific on the other, but the beauty of the coastline wasn’t enough today. He had too many worries for them to be washed away by a few minutes of driving up the California highway. “I’ll talk to them. I know that the quality of the food is important.”

Scot gave a discontented harrumph of acknowledgement. “If they’re sending overcooked food to me, I hate to think what they’re serving up to everybody else.”

“I’ll talk to them,” he said again.

There was a moment of silence, and then Scot said, “I made an appointment at the bank for Monday. I want you to come with me.”

“You need me to drive you?”

“I want to put your name on the business accounts so that you can sign everyone’s paychecks and just generally start to manage things.”

Travis felt a jolt of shock. “I don’t need to do that. You can do that.”

“And if I end up in the hospital again? In a coma next time? How will you keep things running?”

“God, Scot, you’re not going to go into a coma all of a sudden.”

“I need you to be my second in command, Travis. I need you to step up and take the wheel before things all go to hell.”

He shook his head, willing Scot to stop talking.

“Unless you don’t want to take over the bar,” Scot said quietly. “I won’t ask you to take it if you don’t want it. I just thought… but of course you don’t have to. The thing is, I need an answer. One way or another. Because if you don’t want it, it’s time I thought of selling the place.”

Travis took a deep breath as he turned off Highway One and onto one of Half Moon Bay’s quiet streets. “Let’s talk about this in person, okay?”

“Yeah,” Scot said gruffly. “Sure. Of course.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to run the place,” he said as he parked the car, “or that I don’t appreciate what you’re offering me. It’s just that it all feels premature. Like giving up. It’s too soon for you to hand the place over to me. You need to heal from your fall, that’s all.”

“I was going downhill fast before I cracked my head, son. You know that.”

“It’s too soon.” Travis said quickly, talking over the way that his heart had cracked when Scot called him ‘son.’ “You’re fine. Your mind is fine.”

“Better too soon than too late.”

They were quiet for a moment. Travis was all out of hopeful things to say, out of energy to protest.

“You go on,” Scot said. “We’ll talk later.”

“Okay. I’ll stop by with dinner.”

“Don’t bother. I have plenty of food. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Talk to the boys and tell them to stop overcooking every God-damned thing.”

Travis smiled, relieved to hear Scot sounding a bit more like himself. “I will.”

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