No Way to Run by Holly Crichton

Author:Holly Crichton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781987915259
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Published: 2016-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Riding in Judy’s truck, we passed Jay’s truck parked about a kilometre from home. That was where the RCMP had stopped Mat and Jason and transferred them to separate police cars.

When we got to the cattle guard farthest from our farm, we found it blocked by a police car. Jason asked the officer who was guarding the gate if we could go in to get medical supplies for me, and he explained there were dogs that needed to be looked after as well. While the officer checked with his higher-up, I finally opened my snack bag and offered snacks to everyone in the truck. Carting that bag around was the only thing I’d done all day that felt normal and right. It seemed like a lifetime since I’d left the Mattson farm, but it had only been six hours since I got the phone call from Mat.

A police corporal eventually showed up, to take us down to the farm. I learned later he was the officer who had first talked to Matti and had arranged for Jason to bring Mat out from the farm to meet the police.

I got my supplies from the house while Jason went to look after the rams. Jenny got Tank and Bella from the house she and Mat shared. I fed Wilbur, the house cat, and Laurie’s hedgehogs, which were in a cage in her bedroom downstairs. When I got back outside, Hobo, the hundred-and-ten-pound Great Pyrenees who normally guarded our sheep, tried to crawl onto my lap. He was agitated by all the unusual activity. My van was still parked at the farm, and the corporal gave me permission to take it.

At the time of Sandy’s death, Jason had a lovely modular home on one of our quarter sections about six kilometres from the home place. The house was perched high on a hill, with a view of the faraway Rocky Mountains. His place was wheelchair accessible, so I knew I’d be able to get in there to wash, eat, and meet with people. We decided my best option for sleeping would be to stay in my van overnight, since there was a fold-down bed in the back. I could run an extension cord to the house for my electric blanket. I backed up as close as I could get to the little cement pad a group of us had helped Jason pour at the base of his wheelchair ramp the summer before. My van door opened onto gravel, but it was level. Once I unloaded on my lift, I didn’t have far to go before I was on concrete and could roll up the ramp to Jason’s door.

We’d no sooner got to Jason’s house than people started arriving. It felt as if we were in a disaster zone, with everyone stepping in to answer phones, make coffee, and hug me or Jenny. I took Jason’s cordless phone and went down to his bedroom, closed the door behind me, pulled my address book out, and started phoning Sandy’s brothers and sister.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.