Page 41 of Hometown Cowboy

Surely…

He’d found the man’s actual address quite easily. A quick search on the White Pages, and boom! There he was. There was only one Alan J Thomas listed.

He put the address into his phone maps app and stared at the blinking arrow.

“Please proceed to the route.”

The normally soothing voice of the AI interface on his phone scraped at already sensitive nerves.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

He stamped on the accelerator and the ute bucked forward. A cloud of dust billowed up behind him from his driveway as he hit the blacktop, the tyres gripping and hurtling him forward toward the intersection to the main highway.

By the time he reached Talbot Street in Bialga, his stomach was a roiling mess.

He slowed and pulled up in front of the house. An ambulance sat in the driveway. He frowned, thinking hard.

Ahh. He thought he remembered his mother saying something about Alan being a paramedic, years ago.

“Looks like he still is,” he murmured.

Nerves flooded him. He shouldn’t be there. He should just go home.

“No.” He shook his head and got out of the Landcruiser, straightened his clean shirt and walked up the concreted driveway of the neat, two-storey brick house.

From the type and style of bricks used, the home looked around twenty years old. Neat as a pin and well-maintained, gardens surrounded it on all sides. The trees were well-established and healthy. The block itself was in an estate that had larger sized blocks than were selling currently. Trends of the time dating it to the house style reinforced his beliefs about when it was built.

He closed his eyes and pressed the lit doorbell on the right-hand side of the front door.

“Hello? Can I help you?”

Ryan spun to his right. A friendly-looking lady with a huge floppy hat stood holding a metal bucket, dirty gardening gloves in her hand. She looked to be anywhere from thirty to mid-fifties, he simply couldn’t tell.

“Um, yeah. Is, ah, Alan home?”

His voice came out croaky and soft, not at all like he’d meant it to.

The lady tilted her head, looking at him questioningly. “You look awfully familiar.” Her smile got bigger. “Yes. He was in the kitchen the last I looked. Come on in.”

Familiar? Not likely.

She came up toward him and placed a foot onto the first step just as the front door opened.

Ryan looked up, face to face with the man who’d fathered him.

He opened his mouth to speak but went completely blank. He had no idea what to say to the man.

Alan Thomas’s expression morphed from confusion, to recognition, to shock all in a split second.

“What are you doing here?” Alan croaked.

All the things Ryan had practiced saying fled. Gone.

A terrible, horrific mistake. That’s what this was. “I wanted to talk to you. I have questions.” Somehow, he managed to articulate that much.

The stark shock slowly faded from Alan’s face. “Oh.” He blinked. “Ah, come in?”

“Alan? What’s going on. Who is this?” The lady’s voice interrupted the surreal exchange.

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