Two.
I hauled Wheeler to her feet.
Plenty of people survived impacts going faster than twenty miles per hour. Most of those people were in cars and had seatbelts on and airbags, but yeah, most of them survived. At the same time, a lot of people died in impacts going much slower.
Three.
If we could keep ourselves in the basket, we had a much better chance of surviving.
My instinct was to hug Wheeler as tightly as possible, but logic told me to keep my distance. At twenty miles per hour we were each other's biggest threat.
Four.
I pushed her toward the corner nearest me and screamed, “Try to hold onto that rope! Use your legs as shock absorbers!”
She nodded.
Five.
I grabbed the parachute rope with my hand, dug my feet into the bottom of the basket and bent my knees.
Six.
I locked eyes with Wheeler.
She was crying.
Seven.
“It’s gonna be okay.”
Eight.
“Bend your knees!” I yelled.
Nine.
“We’re gonna be just—”
I never made it to ten.
“Were you really gonna do it?” Wheeler asked, holding her arm to her stomach. “Were you really gonna throw him over?”
We were sitting on the ground, leaning against the hot air balloon basket, which was on its side, the parachute billowing in the light wind that remained from the storm. I had a huge gash on the side of my head and my left knee was hurting, but I’d escaped serious injury.
“I’m not sure,” I said, answering Wheeler’s question.
When Jerry had mentioned his children it had given me serious pause. I had to weigh that burden with the prospect of Wheeler’s and my own survival.
But as fate would have it, I never had a chance to make a decision one way or another.
“Let me see your arm,” I said.
She held her left arm up with her right. There was a giant lump halfway up her forearm.
“It’s broken,” she said.
“How would you know?” I said. “You’re a veterinarian.”
She smiled weakly, then asked, “Are you gonna go check on him?”
I let out a long exhale and pushed myself to my feet. I couldn’t put much pressure on my left leg—I was guessing my knee was badly sprained—and I began limping toward Jerry’s body.
With Wheeler’s and my combined weight on one side, the basket had hit the ground at an angle. This turned out to be a blessing as Wheeler and I had both somehow stayed in the basket. Jerry, on the other hand, who had been clutching the high side of the basket on first impact, had been flung into the air.
As I limped toward his body, I could hear a soft moaning.
He was alive.
At least for the time being.
When I finally reached him, I cringed.
He was a mess.
A bone splintered through one of his shins, his hips seemed out of line with the rest of his body, and his head was caked in red.
A siren slowly began to intensify, and I turned and glanced back over my shoulder. Two ambulances were driving through the field, kicking up dust. Someone must have seen our balloon plummet to the ground.
I knelt down next to Jerry.
His body started to shake.
I reached out and gently touched his arm.
I don’t know if he knew I was there. And I don’t know if he deserved to have someone by his side when he took his last few breaths.
But he was family.
Chapter Thirty-One
September 19th, 2016
Tarrin, Missouri
“That is some good looking corn,” Randall said, twirling a golden cob in his hands. “Man oh man, is that some good looking corn.”
According to Randall, it was his best harvest to date. Nearly 160 bushels per acre, which was right on par with the yields of GMO corn.
Randall had already sold our entire harvest, save for a few bushels, which we would eat, give away, feed to the pigs, and use as seed next summer. As for the sorghum, Randall wanted to wait another couple weeks before harvesting, but he had high hopes for that as well.
Presently, we were celebrating. Both the harvest and that, as of two days ago, the Humphries Farm finished probate and was now officially mine.
Randall and I were manning a large grill, roasting about fifty ears of corn. Alexa was on another grill, cooking up enough hotdogs and hamburgers to feed the seven adults, four children, and two pigs.
Wheeler’s arm was in a cast, but she was doing her best to help Joan set the two picnic tables delivered the previous day. So far, Joan had put on a brave face, even cracking a smile here and there. It must have felt good to get out of the house for a few hours, to take a break from waiting on her husband hand and foot.
Turned out that Jerry didn’t die. Though he probably wished he had.
He broke his spine in two places. He was a quadriplegic, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his days. He would need a full-time nurse to feed him, to bathe him, to empty his colostomy bag. He couldn’t talk, but according to Joan and the straw Jerry blew in to communicate, he had all his wits about him. I couldn’t think of a worse suffering. He was locked in a biological prison. A skeletal Alcatraz.
Which was why, after the events of the balloon crash, Wheeler and I had decided that Joan didn’t need to know what Jerry had done, didn’t need to know that her husband was responsible for the deaths of six people. It would only make her life that much harder. And I didn’t want Patrick and Tyler to know their father was a murderer. I didn’t want them to carry that burden the rest of their lives.
Like Jerry’s wife and children, the town of Tarrin would also continue on without knowing the truth. For most of the town, the wounds had healed. Nothing could be gained by divulging the real motive behind the Save-More murders.
As for Mike Zernan’s murder, it would remain an open investigation, though without any family to champion his case, it had already
