Chapter 9: Grandpa's Goats

The box popped again, and a little puff of blue smoke rolled out of it.

The teenager looked at it fondly and set it down on the porch rail.

"Don't worry," he said. "That one's just a radio. Mostly."

Fern got out of the car and pointed at the barn.

"What happened to the roof?"

"Okay, so, in my defense..."

"There's no defense," rumbled a voice from the doorway.

A big old man came out onto the porch in a red flannel shirt and suspenders.

He had a white beard, enormous hands, and Hank's exact dark eyes in a much friendlier face.

He came down the steps, ignored Fern and Linus completely, and crouched in front of Mabel with his knees cracking.

"So you're the one who adopted my son."

"Yes, sir."

"He any good at it?"

Mabel considered the question.

"He's very tired," she said. "But he's trying."

The old man threw back his head and laughed so loud a goat answered from somewhere behind the house.

"Call me Grandpa," he said. "Everybody does. Even the goats."

The teenager was her third brother.

He was sixteen, all elbows and hair, and he talked faster than anyone Mabel had ever met.

"You're not sick," Mabel said to him that night, at the kitchen table.

"I'm extremely sick." He pointed at his head. "Up here. That's what Mom says, anyway."

"He set fire to the garage in the city," Grandpa said, passing the potatoes. "Then he set fire to my barn."

"The barn was an improvement on the garage. Smaller fire."

"He's grounded," Grandpa said. "Till he's thirty."

Mabel looked from one to the other.

Sick meant grounded.

She decided not to tell Linus she'd ever believed otherwise.

The farm was the best place Mabel had ever lived.

There were nine goats, and every one of them had a name Grandpa wouldn't tell her because "names are for people who can't remember faces".

There was a woodstove that cracked and popped all night.

Keep reading free with an account. Start This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.