“Can’t a guy come see his parents without…” He paused as he laid the blanket on a ladder-back chair in the foyer. “Something being on his mind?”

“Yes, but I know you.” Pearl made sure that Sonny was seated at the table, and then she got down dessert plates and ice cream from the refrigerator. “Sure you don’t want just a sliver?”

“Maybe a tiny piece,” Cody said as he poured three mugs of coffee. “I want to save room for some of Addy’s cobbler too.”

“Boy, as skinny as you are,” Sonny chuckled, “you could eat this whole pie and a cobbler too, and still need to gain weight. You’ve got muscles, but you could use thirty more pounds.”

“Dad, I’m six feet, four inches tall, and I’m pretty much at the right weight for my height now that I’ve put on ten pounds from eating such good food since I’ve been home.” Cody carried all three mugs to the table and then sat down. “If I keep having double portions of dessert, I figure, by summer, I’ll have to buy new jeans.”

Pearl cut the pie and put a scoop of ice cream on the slice she set before Sonny. “How much is just a tiny piece?” she asked Cody.

“Half as much as you gave Dad,” he answered. “You were right, Mama, I do have something on my mind, but I probably need to start from dirt…”

Sonny chuckled again. “I remember the days when you were a little boy, and I’d ask you a question. You always had to give me an hour’s worth of backstory before you ever got around to answering it.”

“And you got to where you would say, ‘Just the facts, son, not the story from back when God made dirt.’” Cody was so grateful his dad’s illness hadn’t stolen his memories and his mind.

Pearl slid his pie across the table and then cut herself a slice. “That’s right, but we’ve got time, so give us the full story.”

“You remember me telling y’all about my doctor buddy, Nate?” Cody asked.

“The British guy, right? I always kind of thought of him like Ducky on NCIS,” Sonny answered.

“He called me last week, but before I tell you the story and show you the pictures, I want you to know that I turned him down.” He told them what the conversation had been about between bites, and after he had shown them the pictures on his phone, he ended with “I want to be here in Honey Grove, living on Sunflower Ranch and doing exactly what I’m doing.”

“Something tells me that’s not all.” Pearl finished off her pie.