Chapter Forty Nine

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

Stop

Stop was indeed in the town’s tiny hospital, which was little more than a glorified clinic, really. They delivered babies there and bound up broken bones and put Branny Jacob’s eye back in after Tom Kidd had popped it out with the butt of his knife, though. Twice. “The first time you pop out my eye, shame on you,” the nurse said to Branny after he came to, “but the second time that you do it, shame on me

Stop lay in bed, hooked up to tubes and monitors and wires. His hospital gown was on backward so they could easily reach in and adjust all manner of medical doodads on his chest, and he had an IV slowly dripping a clear, benign looking substance from a bag into a long tube that ended on the back of his hand.

“Oh, Daddy,” Bryony said, dropping to her knees beside the bed. She kissed her father’s shriveled hands and smoothed his white hair away from his gray face. “I have missed you so much, and talking to you on the phone isn’t enough. I need to see you with