CHAPTER 26
Knox
My phone rings just after 6 a.m.
I fumble for it off the nightstand, groggy and half-blind, screen glowing against the soft wash of early sunlight.
“Hello?” I answer, the word scraping out like sandpaper.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Mom?”
Cami stirs, murmuring something unintelligible, then drifts deeper, her back curving toward me.
“What’s wrong?” Silence on my mom’s end snaps me wide awake, dread coiled hard in my gut.
“It’s your grandfather,” Mom says, her tone tight. “He fell last night. We’re at Brattleboro Memorial.”
Cold tremors run through me.
Grandpa.
The man who taught me how to cast a line off the dock—patient even when I snagged more seaweed than fish.
The one who, even at seventy-nine, still beats me at chess.
“How bad is it?” I push upright, pulse already speed-racing.
“Bad enough they’re keeping him. He’s in pain, Knox. His hip might be broken.”
Mom’s words hit like shattering glass. Sharp. Echoing. Impossible to sweep away. I’m already swinging my legs out of bed, tugging on a bathrobe, mind running faster than my body.Three-and-a-half-hour drive. I can make it.
Floorboards creak beneath me as I step into the hallway, phone still pressed to my ear.
“And Grandma?” I ask, the door cracked open behind me.
“She’s here at the hospital with me.”
I brace my hand on the door frame. “What happened?”
“He tripped while getting out of bed. Your grandmother didn’t hear him at first. He didn’t want to wake her. By the time she got him up, he couldn’t put weight on it.” Her breath hitches. “He’s been so stubborn lately. You know how he is.”
Grandpa’s as hardheaded as they come. He refused to let me carry his groceries in when I was there for a few weeks before coming here—said I’d slow him down.
“Driving up today,” I say, already planning the route in my head. “We should be there by noon.”
“We?”
Peeking through the cracked door, I catch a glimpse of Cami still tangled in our sheets, hair spilling wild across the pillow, one arm draped over where I’d been.
Will she want to come with me?
“I’ll explain later.”
“Okay. Drive safely. And thank you, sweetheart. He’ll be so happy to see you.”
Hanging up, I stare up at the skylight, early light brushing over a sky still edged with gray.
