Part of Your World(49)

The way she breathed the last word made me move the phone away from my mouth to laugh.

“Pull the emergency release,” I said, smiling.

“There’s an emergency release?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying not to crack up. “There is. Go in there, and I’ll tell you how to open it.”

“This is how you die in the zombie apocalypse,” she said with wonder. “I always thought it would be an infected zombie bite or exposure or something, but it’s this. You get a caffeine headache on the first day and you lose your will to live and you just lie down and they eat you.”

I laughed. “In the event of a zombie apocalypse, I promise I will not let you get eaten.”

“How? You’re not here.”

“I’d come get you. I’d put together a recovery team. You’re a doctor. You’re a high-value acquisition. Doug bet me a hundred bucks I couldn’t get the best Zompac squad, I need you.”

She laughed weakly.

I heard a door open. “Okay, I’m in here.”

“All right. You might need a ladder. Look for the motor. It’s a small box on the ceiling in the middle of the garage. It’s attached to a metal runner that pulls the door up. There’s a little string hanging down from it. You see it?”

“Yeah.”

“You pull that and then you can lift the door from the bottom and open it.”

There was a quiet pause. “Daniel, you’re my hero.”

“Well, thank you. But I think the standard’s a little low.”

She paused. “I hate that I don’t know things.”

“How many bones are there in the human body?”

“Two hundred and six,” she said without skipping a beat.

“Which one’s your favorite?”

“I like the hyoid bone. It’s basically free floating and no one talks about it.” She sniffed. “It’s very underrated.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I think you’re doing okay.”

She laughed, and I heard the garage door open.

“Why is the power out?” I asked, nodding at Popeye shuffling in.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it the whole block?”

“Gabby and Jessica aren’t home, so I don’t know.”

“Did you check the breaker?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

I shook my head with a smile. God, this was so her. She was this conundrum of a woman. Completely remarkable in every way, doesn’t know about breaker boxes or how to wash a load of whites or make a bed. I think I’d been cleaning since I was old enough to walk. One of Grandma’s favorite pictures of me was me, three years old, holding a toilet bowl scrubber.

“There’s probably an electrical panel in the garage,” I said. “Go look for it.”

“Okay, hold on.”

“It’s metal,” I said, putting my coffee cup to my lips. “Probably gray. It’ll have switches on it.”

“Like a light switch thingy?”

“Did you find a light switch thingy?” I asked, amused.

“Yeah.”

“Send me a picture of it.”

I heard shuffling. Then a picture message came through. I zoomed in. “Your main breaker is flipped off.”

She went silent on the other end for a long moment. “How does that happen?”

“It doesn’t. If you overload one circuit a breaker might flip. But that would be one part of the house, not the whole thing.”

“Soooo…”

“So someone probably switched it off. Did you have someone there working on the electrical or something?”

She went quiet again. “Yeah. It must have been them.”

“Just flip it back. The power will come back on,” I said.

I heard her flip the switch, and she made an excited little sound of relief. I smiled.

“So do I get to see you this week?” I asked.

I heard a car door slam. “I don’t know.”

My smile fell. I was about to push the subject, but I heard the restaurant door jingle. Brian and Doug were coming in.

“The guys just got here. I’ll let you get your coffee and call you later.”

We hung up right as they slid into the booth. “Hey.”

Liz swung by and set menus in front of us. “Hey, guys. Coffee?”

They both nodded, and Brian smiled at her, a touch too brightly.

The way he looked at her made me look away from him, like I was intruding on a private moment.

Brian had been in love with Liz since we were kids. She didn’t live here growing up. She only came for the summers. Brian looked forward to her visits the whole year. He’d be at my house so much in the summer that Grandma used to joke he was one of her honorary grandkids.

Then one summer we got a new sheriff—and Liz met Jake.

I watched Liz pour Brian a coffee. She had a brace on her little finger. My jaw tightened.

Jake was putting hands on her. Again.

He never did it in front of anyone. Whenever they were in public, he always put on some fucking show so everyone thought he was this doting husband. Such bullshit.

I almost knocked him out once after she came into the VFW with a split lip on St. Patrick’s Day a few years back. He denied touching her, and I almost got myself arrested—and she was mad at me afterward. Didn’t talk to me for weeks.