Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“You might be right,” I said with a sigh.
When Hannah leaned back, her eyes drifted open slowly, and they were warm as she gazed at him. Of course Jake took that opportunity to see if the pin, that had clearly been a source of discomfort for Hannah, was, in fact, sharp. He pricked the end of his finger with it, and there was a trace of blood.
“It’s lucky he’s pretty,” Aaron said drolly before he walked away.
Walking into the kitchen, Kola came in to grab a bottle of water. “We’re headin’ out.”
“Okay,” I replied softly.
After a moment, he said, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
He chuckled. “Try again.”
I leaned back against the counter. “How come you never told me about your idea to gallivant all over the world to save people?”
Moving over next to me, he turned his head and smiled. “Until I have concrete plans, I don’t tell you. That way lies madness.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re better with dates and times, not pie-in-the-sky dreams.”
“I am not.”
“You’re a write-it-in-your-planner guy, not a something-down-the-road guy.”
“That makes me sound ridiculously intolerant.”
“No. You’re the person who executes. You’re not the person to say, ‘Hey, maybe next March let’s go to Savannah.’ You don’t work like that. I could say, ‘Next March I want to go to Savannah,’ and you would go down your checklist––”
“I don’t have a––”
“––of what day, what time, what did I want to do while I was there, who did I want to take with me, and what was my reasoning for choosing a haunted city.”
“You make me sound really terrible.”
“No, I like it. I count on it,” he soothed me, putting an arm around my shoulders. “You have taught me to always keep my word, because someone else could be making plans based on what you’ve said or committed to.”
“So if you’re sure that you’re going to go off and––”
“There’s a lot to figure out,” he said, squeezing me tight. “And I have to, you know, go to medical school.”
“Which you are.”
“But that takes time and is already getting harder by the day, and all my relationships are about to get really strained.”
I looked up at his face. “You’re worried about you and Finn?”
“He says he’s ready, so we’ll see. But I was going to tell you what I was thinking about but not have you plan on it until I was ready. That’s not how you and I work, because that’s not how you and Dad work.”
I nodded.
“He tells you when he’s ready, and again, you execute. I was raised that way, so I’m used to it.”
“Okay.”
“I can tell something to Uncle Aaron, like, ‘This is what I would like. This is the best-case scenario.’ But you would automatically worry, and Uncle Dane…holy crap.” His eyes widened and made me smile. “Telling Uncle Dane any plan that you haven’t worked out an itemized profit-and-loss statement for is insane.”
“Yes,” I agreed, chuckling.
“Where will you live, how will you pay for groceries, do you know what kind of access to drinking water you’ll have? What is your plan in case of emergency?”
“He doesn’t like plans without what-if scenarios.”
“Yeah, I know,” he assured me. “I would never bring up this idea to Uncle Dane. But Uncle Aaron is more like, ‘Yeah, great, I’ll get the plane ready.’”
I started laughing.
“Dad is all, have you talked to your father about this? Because he knows, if I have, then if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, as Grandpa says, which, off topic, makes no sense. What even is that? How can hell be in a handbasket, and why would it be?”
“I have no––”
“But Dad knows, if I’ve told you, then you have every contingency worked out. That’s how you guys work. You’re ready for emergencies, and he’s great at taking care of them.”
I turned into him and hugged him tight.
“If I go to Bengal and take care of kids, I will FaceTime you every day. Cross my heart.”
I nodded into his shoulder.
“Awww, hugging,” Hannah said, joining us and embracing us both. “What happened?”
“Uncle Aaron told him I’m going off to outer Mongolia to open clinics and that you’re going to run Sutter. I don’t know about that last part, but I can only assume.”
“Pa,” she said, extracting me from Kola to turn me around to face her. “I’ve always told you exactly what I’m going to do when I graduate. This should come as no surprise. And I know you’re worried about me growing up and having all the experiences you had, but you didn’t have parents to take care of you, so a lot of the things you went through and did won’t be the things I necessarily want to do.”
“She likes all her frou-frou crap too much to go through all the things you did, Pa.”
“I just have a better support system than you had when you were my age,” she reminded me, shooting a scowl over at her brother. “But I promise you, I will still turn out all right.”