Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)

by Abby Jimenez

“You’re new to this whole single-in-your-thirties thing so you don’t know what it looks like out there, and I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t look good. It’s like picking through a garbage heap looking for the least disgusting thing.

“Grace costs you nothing. My grandma used to say it. She especially liked to say it to herself when I was being a little shit.”

I started my countdown. My fingers angled the baby’s shoulders expertly, and then in a rush of fluid and blood, I pivoted the baby into a perfect somersault delivery. It was a girl. And my instincts had been right. The cord had just enough slack for the somersault. Not enough if I’d let her come straight out—and if I hadn’t been here, that’s how she would have come. Especially if Hannah wouldn’t let Doug help her. The cord would have pulled taut, and they might not have gotten it off in time. The baby could have had brain damage. Cerebral palsy, epilepsy, intellectual or developmental disabilities. She might have died. But she didn’t because I was here. This is why I did what I did. In moments like this I knew I was doing what I was meant to do. Moments like this made me know that no matter what Dad said, there was honor in my specialty—even if there wasn’t glory. I quickly unwrapped the cord from the neck and placed the baby on Hannah’s belly and started rubbing the baby’s back. She cried. A good, strong cry. I smiled. “Meet Lily.”

I heard a huffing noise, and we both looked over. Hunter had put his chin on the bed to look at us, his tail wagging. His lip was curled up around a single snaggle tooth, and his bushy eyebrows pivoted as he looked back and forth between us. This dog loved her. Alexis laughed, smiling up at me. “Did you know that dogs developed eyebrow muscles to better manipulate us?” I propped myself on my elbow. “Really?” “Yup. Wolves don’t have them. Dogs that had more expressive faces were more likely to connect with their owners. So they evolved.” She nodded sideways. “To this.”

I never told them what Neil did beyond the cheating. It was weird, but I got the sense they’d blame me for it. Like Neil was so far up on their pedestal, not even emotional abuse could knock him down.

That was the difference between Mom and Dad. Dad didn’t want me to embarrass him. He wanted to be able to brag about me and my accomplishments at dinner parties. Mom wanted me to be effective. She wanted to help people. And you know what? So did I.

That always annoyed me, that the white men got the stately paintings. Even at Royaume, the hallways were lined with them.

Then I sighed. “Why is everything so hard?” “Because you have too many fucks to give.” “Ha-ha.” “No, I’m serious. Give up some of your fucks and see how much easier things are. You’re just spending all your time trying to please everyone else, and it’s making you miserable.”

I shook my head. “How am I supposed to not care if my parents ever speak to me again? Or if my dad thinks I’m a complete waste of his DNA? I’m already the weakest link in Montgomery history. I have to give a fuck. I have no choice.” She shook her head. “Imagine being a whole-ass doctor and having your family be like, ‘why are you so disappointing?’” I blew out a tight breath. “I mean, it’s not like Daniel was going to work out anyway. Everything you said earlier was true. I can’t move, he can’t move. My dad is just the icing on the cake. Ending it was inevitable. I just don’t understand why ending something that hopeless feels so shitty.” “Because it’s not on your terms. None of this is.” I wiped under my eyes.

But my father didn’t measure people that way. It was funny that someone as horrible as Neil could have Dad’s respect, and someone as good as Daniel never would. All because Daniel didn’t have the right education or job or family.

The Grants were groundskeepers, I realized. Humble royalty. They tended to Wakan and its people with the same care that Daniel tended his garden and his house. It was bred into him, like medicine was bred into me. His kingdom was smaller and his legacy was different, but he was tied to his birthright just like I was tied to mine. It was funny to think that for the last hundred and twenty-five years our two families had existed at the same time, doing the same things they were doing now. The Grants gave their lives to Wakan and the Montgomerys gave theirs to Royaume.

licked my lips. “Liz, I want to tell you something. Something I wish people would have told me once.” She looked over at me, waiting. I held her eyes. “I believe you. I can handle anything you need to tell me. You don’t need to protect me from the truth and I’m here to help you in any way I can. It’s not your fault. And you don’t deserve it.”

I saw the words crash over her. Her chin quivered. There was so much power in those words, I realized. I wondered how much sooner I would have found the strength to leave if someone had been saying those things to me when I needed to hear it—and I’d believed them.

I scoffed. As if smart has anything to do with it. I dragged a loose hair on my cheek with a finger and stared out into the street. “I saw this documentary on a tsunami once,” I said. “When it’s coming, it pulls the water away from the beach. Pulls it lower than sea level so the ocean floor is exposed. You can see all the sand and shells and coral, so people go in to look at it. And then the tidal wave comes, and it’s too late to run. It already has you.”

He peered out over the river. “Grandpa had a heart attack, and Grandma went later that day.” “The same day?” “Yeah. It didn’t really surprise anyone. I always knew it would happen that way. They were inseparable.” He looked at me. “Neither one could live without the other.” I looked away from him, back at the slowly passing shoreline. “You know, you really can die of a broken heart,” I said somewhat absently. “I see it all the time. Stress-induced cardiomyopathy. It’s a real thing.”

while it would have hurt me, it didn’t have the power yet to kill me. Now it did. I was in love with her. I couldn’t even breathe thinking about this being over. It woke me up at night, made me feel for her next to me to be sure she was still there. I wanted her to stay so badly, I didn’t know what to do. I felt desperate. I wished I had a genie in a bottle or a fairy godmother, someone to grant just one wish. Just one.

“I love you,” he whispered. “We are together. This isn’t over. And even if you leave, it won’t be over because you’ll take the love with you and it’ll bring you back.”

Love follows you. It goes where you go. It doesn’t know about social divides or distance or common sense. It doesn’t even stop when the person you love dies. It does what it wants.

I should have been looking forward to it. Not the party or the schmoozing part, but the beginning of my ability to make a difference. And I couldn’t even muster the energy to care about it. It felt completely meaningless to me. Everything did. This is what depression felt like. I thought it had been bad back when I was with Neil. But this was a darkness I’d never experienced before. My body felt atrophied, like the simple act of getting up was a feat. Nothing made me smile. None of the things I typically loved appealed to me. And it occurred to me that I had drowned. I didn’t save myself. And now I was just floating, weightless, dead inside.