Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,32

pool of blood already—

I’m not sure how I ended up at the top of the stairs. I slipped twice on the salt water and kicked up the worn braided throw rug on my way, but before I could take even one breath I was beside Nan. She’d just begun to lose her balance on the top step and I saw her bare feet slipping out from under her. She turned her head toward me with a frightened look in her eyes, her mouth shaped as if letting out a silent scream, at the same time I moved toward her. I reached out and grabbed her by the upper arm, using, in my overexcitement, far too much force than common sense would dictate I should use with her. When I pulled her up toward my chest, toward safety, there was a sickening popping sound.

But she was safe. I hoisted her in my arms to the other side of the banister and set her down on steady ground, while she let out a little terrified squeak. “My arm,” she said.

It hung down at her side, limp. She tried to lift it but winced. The cycling began at once in a torrent, a hailstorm thudding against my eye sockets, but I knew for sure that her arm was broken. Despite the pain in my head, I sighed with relief. The alternative was a lot worse.

My mother stood in the doorway to her room, clutching the side of her head with one of her hands and wincing a little despite a small, contradictory smile on her face. “See?” she said to me. “The good side.”

If I really wanted to give myself a headache, I can think back to what exactly it was that put Nan’s life in danger. I wouldn’t have dripped water up the stairs, making them slick, if I hadn’t been so rattled by my talk with Taryn. I wouldn’t have gotten rattled by talking to Taryn if I hadn’t met her on the boardwalk the day I was supposed to save Emma. I wouldn’t have gone fishing if I hadn’t lost my job and had nothing better to do. I wouldn’t have lost my job if it hadn’t been for Taryn.

Taryn, with her innocent angel face, had already wrought havoc on my life. That was enough of a reason to forget about her.

Instead, though my mind was again screaming with visions being threaded out and replaced, the one thing it kept hitching on was her. Nan was safe now. Taryn had the power to make me feel normal somehow. Being with her felt right. And she was the only person in the world who knew what I had. So what if she’d somehow deluded herself into believing her grandmother caused it?

Maybe her grandmother had caused it. Maybe Taryn was telling the truth. Why would she lie about that? What else did she know?

I sat in the hospital room with Nan while her cast set, itching to get out of there and find some answers. The vision of her at the bottom of the steps was nothing more than an image from a vivid nightmare. It was realer than if I’d just imagined it, but now when I thought of her death, I saw her back in the old recliner, dozing peacefully into oblivion. The thought was a pile of bricks off my chest, yeah, but my hands shook and my mouth tasted sour, thinking of what new bricks would be laid down, one by one, as the images settled. Right now, all I could see was this: red velvet, LUVR, powdered sugar. I heard a tick-tick-ticking-ticking sound.

I really hoped my new future didn’t suck.

Nan sat on the hospital bed, looking so fragile and small in the fluorescent light. Her bones were delicate twigs, so it was no surprise I’d broken her arm in two places. She needed one of those giant casts that covered everything from wrist to underarm. It looked mega-uncomfortable. “Don’t worry yourself, honey bunny,” she said to me. “If you can just help me pick tomatoes when we get home? That was what I was heading out to do when …”

“Oh. Yeah. No problem.”

She put her hand on mine and patted it. I was supposed to be there to soothe her, but as always, she was the one doing the soothing.

“Nan, it was—you were going to—” I started to explain, but she raised a finger to shut me up. She’d come to accept our weirdness without question.

“I understand,”