“I CAN’T GET a hold of Grandpa. He’s not answering the phone—again.” Meredith’s brother’s tone was more annoyed than frantic. For the last three months, Grandpa Stone had been acting more like a teenager—disappearing for hours, not answering questions directly, grumpy.
“You are still coming, right?” Zack asked.
“I’m just ten minutes from his house.” Meredith pressed on the gas pedal while assessing the dirt road that was more dirt than road. A few miles back some idiot in an old black truck—its windows so darkly tinted she couldn’t see the driver—had almost run her off the road. That was the last thing she needed if Grandpa truly was in trouble.
If...
Raymond Stone was eighty-two, born a little more than two decades after Arizona had become a state. He was hard of hearing, so the phone was more miss than hit lately. Thus her brother’s exasperation.
It was Grandpa’s forgetfulness and wandering, however, that had led to a recent powwow between the two oldest Stone siblings. They had agreed that someone had to stay with him for a while. Family emergencies weren’t Meredith Stone’s forte anymore. But this time it was her grandfather who needed her, and she was the best choice.
The only choice her grandfather might tolerate.
She put her cell phone on speaker so she could talk more easily. “I really hope we’re just overreacting and this isn’t necessary.”
Her brother, Zack, didn’t hesitate. “It’s necessary.”
Ah, the theme of her youth. Necessary was an important word in a household that had a father and mother who were gone too much. Both had been high-end real estate agents working a three city area. When Meredith was young, they’d worked seven days a week because it was necessary. By the time the real estate bubble burst, Meredith was a junior in high school and it was too late to suddenly have mother/ daughter chats or attend father/daughter dances on a Friday night.
Zack and Susan, being the middle and youngest children, had those memories, but not Meredith, the eldest.
Meredith had been raised in an atmosphere where chaos reigned. She, of all the siblings, craved order and control. The drive to excel, make goals and persevere had been necessary for her, as way too often, she’d been the parent. It had gotten her to where she was today: head animal keeper at a small but well-known habitat and at only twenty-eight years of age.
Only once had “necessary” been too high a price. The repercussions from that disaster still kept her awake at night, and it was the biggest reason she’d left her hometown of Gesippi.
She hadn’t gone far.
Zack obviously wasn’t going to say anything else, so Meredith tried once more. “You really think Grandpa needs someone with him all the time? He seemed fine at his birthday party. And he’s made it clear he really doesn’t want me living with him.”
“That party was five months ago.” Zack’s tone changed from worried to resigned. “Plus, he had the whole family doting on him. Even Dad showed up. With the Fourth of July celebration going on, nobody else noticed anything amiss, just me. You didn’t come home two weeks ago for Thanksgiving...”
No, she’d worked instead so that the other employees, the ones with spouses and children, could take the day off.
“All night, Grandpa kept looking over his shoulder as if he was expecting someone. I’m worried he was looking for Grandma. And in the last week, it’s gotten worse.”
Yikes, it was the beginning of December already. Time to decorate for Christmas. Had it really been five months since she’d visited? Bad granddaughter. Bad.
But it was Zack’s nature to fret. As middle child, Zack knew his job description. When they were kids, Meredith had made the rules: bed at nine, lights out at nine-fifteen. Zack had been the nurturer. He’d read Susan her bedtime stories; he checked under beds for monsters. His whole life, he’d expected to find one. He’d have battled it; Meredith would have fed it. Susan would have handed it her doll and ordered, “Play.”
Her parents would have sold it a haunted high-end mansion. The house, of course, would be in foreclosure now.
Zack continued, “Yesterday morning, I stopped by to see how he was doing, and he was clear out past the field. Claimed he was searching for Rowdy. I’m not sure how far he’d have gone if I’d not have showed up.”
Okay, now Meredith understood his worry. Rowdy had been her grandpa’s beloved border collie. Had been being the operative words. Rowdy had died when Meredith was eighteen: a decade ago. He’d died the week after her almost wedding.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I reminded him that Rowdy had gone on to greener pastures and led him back to the house.” Zack was in his second year of community college and determined to be a doctor no matter how long it took. He’d know how to gently break the news of Rowdy’s passing to Grandpa again.
Raymond Stone had never been without animals, both wild and tame. Under his tutelage, she’d learned how to work with the wild ones: how to mend broken wings, sew stitches in a rabbit’s side and bottle-feed a baby white-tailed deer. She had always been drawn to animals that had no one looking out for them. Maybe because back then, at home, no one had been looking out for her, and she very much wanted someone to.
On Grandpa’s farm, she’d also learned to milk cows, groom horses and feed chickens.
This past week, Meredith, as head keeper at a zoo, had been stepped on by an ostrich, kissed by an orangutan and sneezed on by a bear. She loved it, and she had Grandpa to thank for pushing her toward doing what she loved.
“The dog is another thing we have to worry about. Twice now Grandpa’s gotten up in the middle of the night and tripped over Pepper.”
Pepper was a big, old black-and-white dog. He was hard of hearing, like Grandpa, and no longer had the oomph to do much more than follow Grandpa around and sit and wait. Meredith figured the mutt was part golden retriever, part shepherd and possibly a bit standard poodle. Big dog; big heart.
“Grandpa would be miserable without a dog.” Meredith had no idea how she’d manage it, but she’d make sure Grandpa kept this one. Grandpa needed Pepper just as Meredith needed all of her animals. At last count, she’d cared for one hundred and eleven different species. All of which needed her, many of which loved her. But canines were what she did best.
Right now, she didn’t own a dog. Not really. Yoda, her favorite at the zoo, wasn’t really a pet she should keep in the backyard or take to dog parks. Yoda was a high-content wolf dog: half wolf, half German shepherd. He came when he was called and walked on a leash, but he was a little too wild to keep in her tiny apartment. He required space to run and dig and howl.
Plus, Yoda was the property of Bridget’s Animal Adventure, BAA for short. Except that he, like Meredith, didn’t really belong anywhere. At the moment, he was being sequestered in a barn off the property, away from the other two wolves BAA had because of a territorial battle between them that had resulted in a torn ear, twenty-nine stitches and new digs for Yoda.
But she shouldn’t be worrying about Yoda right now. She had her grandpa to think about. Still chatting with her brother, Meredith turned off the main road and drove past a dozen barbed-wire gates that guarded farms full of greasewood, paloverde trees and dirt. It took a good three miles before the tiny town of Gesippi came into view. A minute later, she drove by her parents’ house—the biggest in town—and tried to listen while Zack filled her in on the rest of the family.
By the looks of things at her parents’ house, only