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Astrid stopped crying, then threw her hand around the random stranger’s—to her anyway—neck.
Izzy sighed and started toward them.
“I swear, she gets her gracefulness from me,” Izzy exclaimed as she made it to Harleigh.
“This was totally a power move,” Harleigh teased. “She tackled that hammock so hard that it never stood a chance. She’s fierce.”
Izzy chuckled.
Astrid lifted her head up to get a look at the woman holding her.
“Hello,” Harleigh said to Astrid.
Astrid blinked back large tears. “Hi.”
“You okay?” Harleigh asked.
Astrid nodded, then wiped the tears, and her snot, with the back of her hand.
I grimaced when she put her hand back down on Harleigh’s shoulder.
Harleigh took it like a champ, though. She didn’t flinch once.
“Well, that’s wonderful,” she said softly. “That was a pretty big tumble you took. Do you want to get in the hammock?”
Astrid immediately shook her head.
“It’s my favorite place to take a nap,” she whispered. “You just got to go slow when you get in it. Otherwise you’ll land on your back like you just did. Want to know why I know that?”
Astrid blinked owlishly.
“Because I’ve done it. Plenty of times.” She snickered. “Sometimes things startle me, too, when I’m taking a nap. I’ve fallen in front of the UPS man, the exterminator, and the water meter reader.”
“What’s a terminantator?” Astrid asked.
“An exterminator is a man that comes by your house and kills all the bugs in it,” she explained. “Because I don’t like roaches or spiders. They scare me to death.”
“Is that why you sleep out here?” Izzy asked teasingly as she walked up to the two.
A look passed in between the two women as Harleigh handed off Astrid to her mother.
“Yes and no,” she said, surprising me. “But the reason I sleep outside doesn’t really have to do with an actual bug. More like one of the human variety.”
With that cryptic comment, she walked inside and didn’t look back.
Izzy caught up to where I’d somehow frozen in the middle of the lawn and gestured to my house.
“I brought her lunch, it’s sitting in my front seat,” she said.
I nodded my head and turned back around, but not before taking one final look over my shoulder at where the woman had disappeared.
“Good,” I said. “Because all I have is chicken, brown rice, and veggies. I need to go to the store.”
Izzy made a gagging sound. “I need to start doing that again myself. I’m having trouble getting this baby weight off.”
“What baby weight?” I paused. “Your ass was always that big.”
Izzy gasped and socked me in the gut, but not hard enough to hurt.
“I can’t believe you just said that!” she screeched, a laugh following the outraged cry.
I grinned at her. “Yeah, that was mean. You walked right into it, though.”
She snorted. “I did.”
After dropping the baby carrier holding my newest niece, Allya, sleeping peacefully inside the front door, I walked back out to Izzy’s vehicle and opened the front door, pulling out the food that she’d brought with her for Astrid.
Apparently she thought me watching her for two hours required her needing food enough to last her throughout the weekend.
Hopefully she didn’t plan on leaving them with me that long.
I’d only agreed to two hours while Izzy went to her checkup.
Or whatever.
My mind had mentally checked out when she’d said ‘vagina’ and ‘birth control’ and ‘Rome’ in the same sentence.
My eyes automatically went to my neighbor’s house, as it was wont to do lately, and I nearly grinned when I saw her sitting on her front porch, looking innocent as hell.
She lifted her gaze and our eyes briefly met.
I knew exactly what was going to happen the minute that I went inside.
She was going to go lay in my hammock.
I’d noticed how she came home every single day, whether it be the middle of the night or the middle of the day, and immediately went to the hammock.
At first, I was thinking that she just sat in it to unwind, but the more I watched her, the more I realized that she was actually using it as a bed, and not a resting place for the moment.
She slept in it for hours.
And after the first couple of days of trying to run her off, I’d decided ‘fuck it’ and let her be.
And she’d ‘be’ for hours. Hours and hours, in fact.
I knew without a doubt that as long as it didn’t rain at all today, she’d be in it until early evening as she slept.
I also wondered why.
Was there a reason that she didn’t sleep inside? Was her husband a bad man? Was their marriage on the rocks?
I’d heard fighting over there yesterday, and the two had come out on the front porch on the way to their car. He’d been berating her for something that she’d done at work, and I’d secretly agreed with him.
