“Your bio doesn’t say much about your childhood,” she observed. “Only that you grew up on a ranch and lost your mother when you were young.” The same as she had. “It’s as though you barely existed before you started playing for Oklahoma State.”

He’d composted most of the tomato plants, but a few remained, and he pulled off a couple of small tomatoes, popping one into his mouth. “We were tenant ranchers. Just my dad and me. Sixty acres, not all of it good. Some cattle and pigs. Feed corn. He was a Vietnam vet before anybody understood much about PTSD. Sometimes he was okay. Other times, he wasn’t.”

She sensed what was coming next—the alcoholism, the physical abuse. She wished she hadn’t brought up the subject.

But he surprised her. “Dad was a gentle guy—one reason the war was so hard on him. A lot of the time, he couldn’t function—could barely get out of bed—so I had to take over.” He pulled the cover off a pot of herbs he’d been guarding from frost. “I was around seven the first time I drove the truck. I remember sitting on a pile of feed sacks and riggin’ up some blocks so I could reach the pedals.” He laughed, but she didn’t find it all that funny. “There were a couple of winters where I swear I missed more school than I attended.”

“That’s not right.”

He shrugged and gathered up his harvest. “Animals have to be fed and watered, and Dad couldn’t always leave the house.”

“A hard life for a kid.”

“I didn’t know any different.”

She followed him inside. He set what he’d picked next to the sink and turned on the faucet. His sweatpants had fallen so low on his hips, she was glad his back was turned to her. “The first big city I ever visited was Norman,” he said. “I was sixteen, and I thought I’d walked into paradise. Once Dad died, I never looked back.”

She dropped her jacket over the back of a counter stool. “There must be something about rural life you miss, or you wouldn’t have created that amazing garden.”