Chapter 6 - The Emergency Call
The front door slammed shut behind Grandma as she stormed out to her old Buick, her suitcases thrown roughly onto the porch by a father whose spine had finally straightened. The silence that filled the farmhouse afterward was heavy, but for the first time in three years, it didn't feel like a prison.
Dad sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, surrounded by the scattered letters and the broken padlock. I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do or say. The distance between us felt vast, bridged only by the wreckage of secrets we were now forced to look at in the harsh light.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Dad whispered into the wood grain, his voice thick with self-loathing. “I was so blind. I thought I was doing the right thing by letting her help. I thought she knew better than me.”
“You didn't know,” I said softly, walking over and placing my hand gently on his stooped shoulder. It was the same touch I used to give him when he came home covered in sawdust, exhausted from a twelve-hour shift.
Before Dad could reply, the landline phone on the kitchen wall rang out sharply, breaking the quiet night air.
Dad jumped slightly, wiping his eyes quickly with the back of his sleeve before reaching up to snatch the receiver. “Hello?”
I watched his expression shift from weary sorrow to utter confusion, then to stark, absolute terror.
“What do you mean she’s not there?” Dad shouted into the phone, the color vanishing from his face completely. “She left here twenty minutes ago... No, highway patrol? What accident?”
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My stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit. I stepped closer, grabbing the edge of the kitchen counter for support.
Dad slammed the phone down onto its cradle, his chest heaving as he stared wildly around the room. “That was the local sheriff’s department. Grandma’s Buick... it went off the old bridge on Route 9. The car rolled down the embankment into the ravine.”
