Page 24 of Trip Me Up

“Grandpa?”

Sally and Susie bleated back at me. I rubbed their soft ears with my gloved hand. Grandpa wasn’t in their stall. I walked to the alpacas’ pens and found them empty. We’d let them out into the pasture earlier that morning. I spun around, scanning the barn. “Grandpa!”

A moan came from the corner, next to the ladder that hadn’t been there when I’d left.

“Grandpa!” I raced over to the ladder. Beneath it, Grandpa lay on his stomach, one arm under him and the other flung out to the side, his fingers covering the handle of an old broom. “Grandpa!” I gripped his shoulder.

“I slipped,” he rasped. His back rose, twitched, and fell.

I touched his neck, gently. The angle seemed right. “Does this hurt?”

“No. My arm.”

The arm I could see looked all right. I palpated it.

“Other arm.” It came out as a grunt.

I gripped his shoulder and hip and pulled him toward me, cradling his body with mine. He wasn’t frail by any stretch, and he was heavier than he looked. He whuffed when he landed on his back.

I grimaced. The arm tucked over his chest was bent wrong. The wrist dangled like a marionette’s. “Grandpa.” The word squeezed out of me like one of Thorin’s squeaky toys just before he ripped it open.

I levered to my feet. “You know the cobwebs are my job.” The job I’d forgotten to do that morning, too focused on how my story wasn’t coming together. I fetched the first-aid kit from the cabinet by the barn door and picked up a foot-long scrap of wood from the bin.

“Can you sit up?”

His eyes flashed at me. “I broke my arm, not my back.”

“There you are, old man.” From behind, I pushed him upright, mindful of his wounded arm. Then, as gently as possible, I splinted his wrist.

“I haven’t heard you swear like that since you caught your foot in the combine.” I wrapped the mesh bandage one last time and secured the end with a piece of tape.

“I haven’t broken a bone in years. Forgot how much it hurts. You got an aspirin in that kit?”

I found a bottle and palmed it. “You sure you don’t want to wait for something stronger at the hospital?”

“Hospital? I’m good as new.”

“Your wrist is broken. This is just to keep you from doing more damage to it until they can set the bone and put it in a cast.”

“A cast?” His eyes were wide and unfocused. Maybe he’d hit his head, too.

I ran my hand over his thick, white hair. I couldn’t feel any bumps, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a concussion. “What’s today’s date?”

“January 31. Tuesday.”

“What were you doing when you fell?”

“Taking down cobwebs. Gotta do it, especially near the lights. They’re flammable. Danger to the animals.”

Okay, so he hadn’t lost his short-term memory. “How long have I lived at the farm?”

“Since you were just an anklebiter. Since your dad—”

“Your brain is fine. Let’s get you in the truck.” I gripped his good hand and elbow and tugged him to standing.

Much later, after the hospital, after dinner and evening chores, after Grandpa had gone to sleep thanks to the good painkillers, Mom and I sat on the old sofa in front of the fire. We each had a book—Treacheryfor Momand Sam’s book for me—but they lay abandoned on our laps as we stared into the flames. Thorin slept at my mother’s feet, twitching his giant paws.

I broke the silence first. “I don’t think I should go on the tour. I’ll call Qiana tomorrow and cancel.”

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