Pamela Tracy - Holiday Homecoming

Yes, he was eighty-two, but, well, he was Grandpa. The thread that held the family together in so many ways.

As they drove home, he was quiet, too quiet, not even commenting on her driving. Usually he held on to the door handle and commented, “How fast are you going?”

Meredith kept shooting him glances, hoping he’d open up, tell her she was driving too fast or something. When he didn’t, she tried talking to him. “Do we need to fill a prescription?”

He nodded.

“You want to do that now?”

He shook his head.

She’d been communicating with animals for years now—spent more time with them than people, really—and was used to figuring out problems without the exchange of words. But Grandpa was about as easy to read as a hedgehog.

Either he was overly tired or something had upset him. Or maybe it was a combination of both.

“I just want to get home, Merry.”

When they finally got to the farm, she helped him out, opened his walker and then followed behind him as he walked unsteadily to the front door. Pepper came limping from the side of the house, greeting them with a wiggling body. Then, with doggy wisdom, he slowed down even more to walk sedately beside Grandpa.

Grandpa didn’t even acknowledge him.

But she knew something was really wrong when he walked past the television and went into his bedroom and shut the door, leaving both Pepper and her in the living room.

Meredith tried to soothe Pepper. “Come on, boy. I really need you with me, and Grandpa wants time alone.” She spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening walking Grandpa’s land. She found the remnants of a tree house and an old shoe that had probably belonged to Zack. By the time she headed back to Grandpa’s, melancholy had set in. She’d started off looking for the wolf dog but, if she were honest, she’d ended up looking for Jimmy.

She just wasn’t sure which Jimmy she was searching for, though: the idealistic boy from her youth or the man from yesterday who asked too many probing questions.

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