“Hey! Watch the ancient artifacts,” she protested, logging out of the museum’s Facebook page and rising to her feet. “Some of them are even older than you are. And almost as brittle.”
“Thanks.” Grandpa shot her a smirk as he limped over to his desk, rubbing his knee. “Your concern is truly heartwarming, as always.”
She snorted. “Why are you giving tours anyway? What happened to Gene?”
Grandpa dumped a stack of mail onto his desk, then nearly knocked it off as he shrugged out of his suit jacket. Trinity had to dive to save it from landing in a nearby trashcan, which may or may not have been her grandfather’s intention in the first place.
“Quit right after his last paycheck bounced,” he muttered. “But really, it’s for the best. The idiot couldn’t even keep his Triassic and Jurassic time periods straight. How could he be expected to educate and inspire America’s youth?”
“Right.” Trinity sighed as she walked back over to her desk, ripping open the red-marked “Urgent” envelope at the top of the stack. This one was from the electric company, who’d been threatening to shut off power to the museum for the last three months. She didn’t know why companies bothered wasting paper on fourth and fifth notices. Just because they couldn’t afford to pay the first one didn’t mean they needed a new copy. “Well, I hope you charged the group full price, at least.”
Grandpa walked around to sit behind his desk, avoiding her eyes. “They were from a poor district in Stocktown. Mostly migrant farmer kids and illegals.”
“Of course they were.” Her grandpa’s kind heart was one of his best qualities—but it was also going to be the death of them. “And what about that history museum in Kentucky?” she asked. “The one you loaned the Ornithischian dinosaur exhibit to six months ago?” She flipped through the stack of envelopes, praying for something that resembled a check.
Grandpa waved her off. “Next week. They promised to pay me next week.”
Trinity gave up, plopping the stack of bills onto her desk. It was always next week, next month, next year. Except what Grandpa couldn’t seem to grasp was there wouldn’t be a next week, month, or year if they didn’t start finding a way to pay the bills.
Back in the day, Foxx’s Fantastical Fossils had been a famous West Texas attraction, luring tourists off the highway with exhibits that promised to rival all but the most top-tier institutions. Her grandfather’s collection of dinosaur bones from the Jurassic period alone was well worth the trip off the interstate.
But five years ago the main highway had been rerouted and traffic thinned to a crawl, the roadside attraction now too far a detour for all but the most determined of tourists. And though the money stopped flowing, the bills kept piling up, and much of the collection had to be sold off or loaned to wealthier museums just to keep the lights on and the doors open.
To make matters worse, her grandpa had started replacing some of his former exhibits with what some might call…questionable stand-ins, hoping to draw back the crowds. From a mangy Chupacabra corpse to a rack of jackalope horns, Trinity knew it was not for nothing the townspeople had started whispering about “Crazy Old Foxx’s Fossilized Freak Show.” It was only a matter of time, she knew, before they’d be shuttered for good.
And where would that leave her?
“Grandpa…” she started to plead, then closed her mouth. What good would it do? Her guardian, much as she adored him, was the quintessential nutty professor—too wrapped up in his own spectacular inner world to comprehend even the most basic of money matters.
Which left it all up to her.
Since she’d moved in after her mother’s death, she’d done what she could, from taking over the museum’s publicity and custodial duties after school so they could cut back on staff, to cleaning houses and mucking out barns on weekends to earn extra cash. But try as she might, it never seemed like enough. And her carefully constructed world was feeling more and more like a house of cards each day. Every time the phone rang or someone knocked on their door, she’d freeze in panic—convinced it was social services, come to take her away. Her caseworkers had never been truly convinced that her grandpa was capable of taking on the responsibility of an orphaned teenage girl. And they’d be more than happy for an excuse to throw her back into foster care.
But Trin was not going back. Not now that she finally found a family to call her own. And whether that meant hiding their financial situation from neighbors and teachers or begging debt collectors for “just one more extension,” she did what she had to do to keep the two of them together. Last week she’d even pawned her mother’s emerald ring to pay their overdue property taxes.
She involuntarily glanced down at her finger, still sporting a tan line from where the ring had been—before she’d been forced to hand it over to the shady-looking man behind the bulletproof glass. It had been the only treasure she’d been allowed to keep after her mother’s death and her finger felt naked without it.
But it was worth it to see her grandpa’s face, she reminded herself, when she presented him with the stack of bills. Enough money to pay their property tax and even a little left over to celebrate Christmas. Knowing their home was safe and their family intact was worth more than the Crown Jewels.
She sighed. Some days she felt much older than sixteen.
“Hey, hey!” her grandfather protested, catching her face. “Chin up, young girl! It’s Christmas Eve after all! And I’ve got a surprise for you.”