Chapter 12 #2
“I hope so,” he whispered, “because I don’t think I can handle this anymore. Honest to God, in a way I’m sad that I’m even awake right now.” He glanced around the hospital and noted, “It must have been bad for me to have gotten here.”
Ashton nodded. “It absolutely was.”
Then Grandpa reached out both hands. Crystal and Ashton each grabbed one. Grandpa added, “I guess I can’t leave yet, not while everything’s in chaos.”
Ashton stood outside the hospital and stared up at the sky. This was a good ending, yet it wasn’t any kind of ending at all.
They had so many more things unsettled and yet to be discovered, and he knew the answers to come could be even more painful than even he suspected. When a hand slipped into his, he looked down, squeezing it gently, and muttered, “Hey.”
“Hey,” Crystal muttered back.
“How’s he doing now?”
“Well, he’s asleep now,” she admitted.
“That’s a good thing.”
“The doctors wanted him to get some rest and suggested that I leave.”
He nodded. “Better for both of us in many ways. Let’s just give Grandpa his time and space and hope that he can recover from this.”
Crystal noted, “It’s also a little frustrating that he wasn’t quite all there and couldn’t really tell us anything yet.”
“Well, what he could tell us wasn’t helpful either,” he pointed out. “So, as much as we might think that we now could have answers, we don’t. He couldn’t even tell us who put him in that barn or how he ended up there.”
“He had been drugged, so he’s still fighting the effects of that. Plus, we don’t know how quickly he was drugged. So, if somebody came up behind him, it’s possible he never saw them anyway.” Crystal wiped the tears from her eyes.
Ashton let go of her hand to pull her close into a hug. He whispered to her, “We found him. He’s alive and recuperating in the hospital. That’s all that matters for now.”
She looked up at him and clarified, “You found him. I had no idea.”
Ashton shrugged. “We all expected that he had met a foul end at the hands of Mother Nature.”
“Not one of us thought it was foul play,” she stated, then turned to him. “Except you, you had some idea.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything, unsure of what he could say to make her feel better. He was still angry and hurt, feeling guilty for not being here sooner.
“The fact that you even thought of foul play made all of us look at you in shock, horror, and disbelief,” she admitted, with a wave of her hand. “And yet you held steadfast. I don’t understand. How did you know?”
“Partly instincts,” he replied. “Partly because there was absolutely no need for this to happen to him. This is his property. He knows the ins and outs of it better than anyone,” he shared.
“And, although he could have had a heart attack and collapsed, he would have been found with all the people out and about on the property. But the fact that he was nowhere, that made me the most suspicious.”
She sighed, rubbing her head against his chest.
He just tucked her up closer as they stood here, watching the rest of the world go about their business all around them.
Crystal sighed. “It’s rough to even imagine that he was stuck there. And for how long?”
“We know he’s been missing for four or five days,” Ashton replied. “Maybe his kidnapper didn’t expect the ketamine to affect him like that.”
“Perhaps they thought it would just knock him out temporarily.”
“But even then”—he nodded, his chin brushing her head—“what were they planning? They had an eighty-year-old man tied up in a barn. What did they hope to gain?” he whispered.
She stiffened ever-so-slightly and then relaxed.
Finally he said, “I need to go back home and take care of a few things.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“I still have a packed day and then some. I still have people I need to contact. And we still need to see that the deputies do their damn job.”
“What about Oliver?” she asked, turning to him. “Doesn’t sound like he’ll have an easy time of it either.”
“If he had nothing to do with Grandpa’s kidnapping, then at some point the sheriff will let him go,” Ashton pointed out, “but it might not be fast or easy.”
“And, if he had nothing to do with it, that’s so not fair,” she muttered.
“How do you feel about Oliver now?”
“I think he’s innocent,” she stated. “I think he’s just another victim. A victim of my, I mean, our grandmother,” she added, turning to him.
He nodded, albeit a little grimly. “Yeah, and don’t you see that it’s all coming down to a pattern?”
“But surely not Grandpa’s disappearance, surely not out of something so base as greed or spite.”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “I haven’t figured that one out. What I do know is that the sheriff hasn’t been able to find her. And now I don’t know whether that is also a part of this kidnapping mess, part of her gambling mess, or something else entirely.”
“Oh my gosh,” she muttered, “I didn’t even think of that.”
“Right,” he replied, “so now we essentially have yet another missing person, our grandmother.”
“And yet, as far as most of us are concerned, she’s probably just booked it in order to save her own butt.” She pulled back slightly and added, “She has gotten a little weird over the last while.”
“More than what you’ve already told me?”
“When I say a little, I mean a lot. But I wouldn’t have thought that she would have done something like this to Grandpa.”
Ashton didn’t say anything but stared off in the distance. “Let’s head home, and I can carry on with the things that I need to get done there and in town, if needed.”
“Agreed. I also have the horses to feed.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, with a grimace. “We did get them back to the barn, but they do need to be taken care of.” And, with that, he led her back to the truck, and he drove home, his mind preoccupied with everything that had just happened.
After parking, they walked into the main house together to see Jenny standing there. The three dogs came racing in the front door to greet them. After several moments of chaotic greetings by the dogs, Jenny waited for them, a stillness that showed how much the news meant to her.
He smiled at her. “Alexander’s awake. He’s alive, and he’s awake.” The look of relief on her face said so much. He nodded. “I know it’s been a pretty rough few days, but he is alive.”
The tears welled up in her eyes.
He walked over and gave her a gentle hug. “Thank you for holding down the fort and keeping the faith that he was okay.”
She sniffled and nodded slightly. “It’s a good thing you came home.”
He winced at that and then realized that she meant it sincerely. “I don’t know how much of it anybody will be grateful for at the end of the day,” he clarified, “but I’m here, and I’m here to stay.”
She stepped back, looked up at him, and smiled. “And that’s the way it should be. It’s your place. It’s the passing of the line, the right and proper thing.”
He nodded. “If you will put on some coffee, I’ll go to the office and try to pick up the lines that still need help right now. We have a lot of unanswered questions.”
Crystal stepped back. “I need to go home and get chores done. I’ll take Khan with me and my dogs.” She smiled at both of them, then turned and walked out, the animals with her.
Ashton turned to go to the office, but Jenny called out, “Was it really Oliver?”
“No,” he replied, turning to look at her. “Who told you that it was Oliver?”
She frowned and asked, “I thought Alexander was found at Oliver’s place.”
“He was, but Oliver didn’t know anything about it.”
Her eyes widened. She stared at him for a long moment.
He hesitated and asked, “Have you seen Oliver over here? With Grandma?”
“I did see him with Johanna a couple times.” She frowned. “It was more casual than anything else. I did worry that there might be some shenanigans going on between them, but I don’t think he necessarily saw your grandmother in that light.”
He stared at her, his mind balking at the idea of his grandmother even having a beau while her husband was missing somewhere, possibly dying.
Jenny frowned at him, questions in her gaze. “I don’t think that’s what it was about, … but, anytime I asked her, she got very defensive.”
“Of course she did.” He thought about it and then began, “I guess we might as well just put the truth out there. Trying to protect Grandma’s secrets has been part of the problem as it is. So you should know that Grandma sold this property to Oliver and accepted a half-million-dollar deposit.”
Jenny just stared at him, her jaw dropping. “But it’s not hers.”
“Yeah, and Oliver didn’t know that. She gave him the impression that it was hers and that she wanted to sell it. So, he paid her the deposit and became yet another victim, at least for the moment,” he said. “And that’ll be another huge problem for me to resolve.”
“Oh my gosh.” She stared at him in outrage and shock. “But that is so wrong.”
“It absolutely is so wrong,” he confirmed. “And, of course, now she’s nowhere to be found. You haven’t seen her, have you?”
“No, no, not at all,” she muttered, staring at him before glancing around.
Jenny’s shock and dismay echoed his own feelings all over again. “So, no idea where she would have gone?”
She shook her head. “No, she always comes home. She’s always been the lady of the manor, and, in order to be the lady of the manor,” she noted, “you have to be in residence.”
He smiled at that. “Agreed, and that makes sense. It also says an awful lot about how she looked at this property as being hers and her source of income, regardless of the damage she did to it and to us.”
“I’ve never …” Then she stopped.