Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez

Author:Abby Jimenez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2022-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

The ambulance showed up fifteen minutes later. I got the medics up to speed and handed off the patient. When I came out of the room, the whole town was no longer on the lawn—they were in the living room. Daniel stood when he saw me, and everyone looked at me expectantly.

I smiled and put my hands up. “It’s a girl.”

The whole house erupted into cheering. I got hugs from about three dozen people before Daniel saved me.

He hustled me into a corner and slipped his arms around my waist, beaming down at me. “So you don’t know how to peel potatoes, but you can deliver a baby?”

“What, like it’s hard?”

He laughed and kissed me. And I didn’t care that he did it in front of everyone either.

Hannah came out on a stretcher with a beaming Emelia next to her, and as soon as they were gone, the weirdest thing happened. The houseguests didn’t leave. They mobilized. They poured into the bedroom and started stripping the bed, there was someone emptying the dishwasher, someone turned on a vacuum. The smell of Windex and Pine-Sol drifted up around us. The front door was still open, and I could see half a dozen people outside pulling weeds and mowing the lawn. Person after person streamed in with foil-covered casserole dishes, and someone was stationed in the kitchen, receiving them and putting them into the freezer.

“What are they doing?” I asked, looking around at the activity.

“They’re doing what we do,” Daniel said. “We take care of each other.”

Something about it made me feel a little emotional. This was more than just a handful of their closest friends. This was a whole town. The whole town was here.

This wasn’t just a community. This was a family.

Popeye shuffled up to us, holding a toolbox. Even he was helping.

“Hi. How you feeling?” I asked.

He looked at me with one eye squeezed shut. “Nifty coincidence you’re here, wouldn’t ya say?”

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He gave Daniel a knowing nod and then hobbled off toward the garage, mumbling to himself.

“What was that about?” I asked, looking up at Daniel.

“Eh, he’s got this theory about the town.”

“What theory?”

He looked a little amused. “He says the town has a way of protecting itself. That it gets what it needs. He thinks you were here today because Hannah needed you.”

I wrinkled my forehead thinking about it. “Huh. I wasn’t actually planning on being here today.”

“Oh, yeah? What changed your mind?”

My parents were playing golf with my ex?

“The weather was nice,” I said instead. I tilted my head. “Hey, do you know how to make a quiche?”

He peered down at me. “Quiche? Yeah.”

“Will you show me?”

He shrugged. “Sure. We can make one tonight and have it for breakfast.”

I smiled. “I think I’m going to want you to show me a lot of things, Daniel. There’s a lot I need to learn.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.