All the Impossible Things by Lindsay Lackey

Author:Lindsay Lackey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Published: 2019-09-02T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter

32

Noah banged his truck against the new barn door. The dogs yapped and bounced around him. Both boys were shivering already, and Red knew she should have grabbed their coats, but there hadn’t been time. At least the barn would be warm.

The air inside smelled like sweet hay. Noah beelined for the chicken coop. His curls flopped around his ears, and, smiling, he pointed a fat, dimpled finger. Jack was still nestled against Red. He curled into her, tucking his hands between his chest and hers when she tried to show him the chickens. His breathing was ragged and wet sounding.

“Come on,” she said, hiking him up. Gandalf was at her side, peering at her with worried brown eyes.

Noah pressed his face against the rings of chicken wire, sticking his nose and lips through one of the holes. When he lost interest in the birds, he turned to the goats, who were inside because of the cold. He drove his truck over hay bales and along the rough floorboards. Red showed Jack how to hold long strands of hay out for Billie and Goat to nibble. Gruff was uninterested and stayed in the back corner with Lancelot and Merlin, watching them with a grumpy expression. Jack stayed cuddled against Red as she fed the goats. His skin was tacky with the sweat of crying and his ringlets stuck to her neck.

What was happening in the house? How long would it take an ambulance to arrive?

She pushed the questions from her mind. Tried to focus on keeping a two-year-old boy’s fingers far away from sharp goat teeth. Tried to keep the anxious spinning in her chest from leaking out into the air.

Noah grew bored with the truck after a while, abandoning it to Billie, who nibbled at it curiously. His feet thumped over the wooden planks of the barn floor toward the mountain of hay bales stacked against the back wall. Jack finally squirmed down and followed his brother.

Red trailed them, only half watching as they started to scramble onto the bales. The sound of Celine sick and in pain echoed in Red’s mind.

I should have told Jackson. She sat on one of the bales, offering Jack a finger to steady himself with as he climbed. Guilt and fear roiled in her. She should have told Jackson that Celine had dropped the rolls, that something was wrong. But maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.

The barn creaked softly in the gathering wind. Red focused on her breathing. She’ll be okay. She’ll be okay.

“Mousy!” Noah squealed.

A new panic cut through Red. She looked up to where Noah was pointing. There, atop the stack of hay, stood the most enormous rat Red had ever seen.

She leaped to her feet, stumbled back. The twins started climbing with renewed excitement, heading straight for the silvery rodent. If this was the thing Marvin had seen, then he was right—it was huge. It eyed the boys warily, its whiskers twitching. When she tried to shoo it, it hissed at her.

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