Wide Spaces (A Wide Awake Novella, Book 2) by The 12 NAs of Christmas, Shelly Crane Page B

crossed my arms and pushed through Emma's door open for him to follow me. "I thought you said no one would come out on Christmas to check on people?"
    "Well," he twisted his mustached lips, "my girls understand that Daddy has to go help people sometimes. They think I'm a superhero for it."
    "You came up here just to see if Emma was OK?"
    "Yeah." He handed me a cup of coffee I hadn't even seen him holding because I'd been so surprised as he looked at her. "She doing all right?"
    I told him everything that happened after I'd left him. He kept whistling and hissing in sympathy. I thanked him for the coffee and he said for us to take it for what it was—a Christmas miracle. He also said he'd look around and find out who the snowplow driver was on that road, find out why he left the scene, and if he got the make and model of the truck who ran Emma off the road. He said it was a long shot. Since the plow hadn't stopped, he probably hadn't seen or heard anything in the cab of that big truck with the piles of snow flying up. I agreed, hating it but accepting that he was going to look into it, and shook his hand before he left.
    I gave him Adeline's phone number, but he said the line had been disconnected. He said he didn't think any criminal charges would be brought up on her. She hadn't officially been harassing us. Keeping photos isn't a crime, he said. The texts were annoying, but since the ph one had been disconnected, no criminal charges were possible unless she called again from another line. Her apartment was almost empty when they went there. I doubted that we'd ever hear from her again. It looked like she had skipped town, and that was just fine by me.
    I knew it wasn't Adeline's fault directly, any of it, but I couldn't help but hold a piece of blame in my gut for her. They were my actions though. I had left my phone that day and I had chosen not to tell Emma about Adeline and the one date we'd had. So, I shouldered that and decided it was way past time to move on.
    When I heard Isabella call through the door that they were there , I reached over to rub Emma's cheek. "Wake up, baby."
    She did, almost immediately moving her fingers to press the buttons on her bed to sit up. She looked up and smiled. "Mrs. Wright."
    I turned, confused, to see my mom in her wheelchair, Emma's dad with his hands on the handles, and the nurse beside them. They had brought my mom for me? He smiled and shrugged over her shoulder. "It's Christmas."
    Before I could look back, Isabella was engulfing Emma and then apologizing for squeezing too hard. They brought a couple of presents and hot apple cider. Or what was once hot. Now it was lukewarm, but it didn't matter. We were all toget her and that was all that did matter.
    When Emma asked about her brother and sister, her mother said the airports were closed. She was sure they weren't able to fly in, but couldn't get a hold of them. So they wouldn’t be there for Christmas, and with the way things looked, maybe not the wedding either. Emma was bummed, I knew, because she felt the need to get to know them, to have them there, being their sister, remembering how to be.
    W hen Isabella pulled a few small gifts from her bag and laid them on Emma's lap, I recognized them immediately. And so did Emma. They were the Christmas presents her parents had brought to the hospice for her the year before, the ones that sat in the window. She refused to open the presents before. She said that her parents had bought those for the "other" Emma and it didn't feel right to open them. But Isabella had gone up into her room and gotten them on purpose.
    Emma looked at them and up at Isabella. She shoo k her head. Isabella touched her hand. "We bought them for you. Old you, new you, doesn't matter. We bought these for our daughter. It's time you see what we gave you, Emmie."
    It was the first time they called Emma Emmie and she didn't flinch or make a face. I thought she was going to refuse, politely, but she surprised me.