those animals don’t matter. And I have a baby on the way. And I’m in love. And I have friends and family.” She smiled at her mom. “The only thing I don’t have is a nice, simple, perfectly laid out plan.”
“You seem okay with that,” Holly said, studying her face.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Jill,” her father said.
She blew out a breath. “Yeah, Dad?”
Her father pointed at the computer screen. “I think Zeke wants to talk to you.”
Confused, Jill leaned in to look at the computer screen. Zeke’s face filled the entire thing. Clearly he had taken the camera from Naomi.
“Jill, answer your phone. We need to talk.”
She swallowed. What was he talking about? She glanced around for her phone. It was in her bag. She dug for it, pulling it from the outside pocket.
“This guy is here telling me that these are his penguins,” Zeke said. “You need to call me.”
Oh. Crap.
The guy he’d been talking to in the background was one of the investors Jill had called about the penguins? What was he doing there? The guy must’ve gotten on a plane immediately and flown to Autre.
She quickly pressed the button to wake her phone. There were three missed calls from Charlie, three missed calls from Naomi, and seven calls from Zeke. There was also a missed call from Donovan, one from Griffin or at least Griffin’s phone, and three other numbers that had to be Autre numbers.
She looked at her parents. “And I’m definitely not going to be doing this alone. Probably anything alone. At all. Maybe ever again.”
Her mom looked from the phone to her face to the computer and back to Jill. “He seems really upset.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“He thinks this means you’re leaving him?”
“No, he thinks I’m getting rid of the penguins.”
“He’s attached to them?”
“He was attached to them even before he really knew them. Just because they were important to me. But now that he’s been around them, yeah, I think he really cares about them. These people are…” Jill shook her head, laughing softly. “I have never met anyone who just embraces a new idea, a new person, a new situation with open arms and minds and hearts like these people. It’s almost like they are constantly ready for an adventure.”
“That’s appealing to you? The woman who buys the same shirt in every color and eats the same food over and over, because she doesn’t want to try anything new?”
Jill looked at her mom with surprise. “I don’t do it because I don’t want to try something new. It’s because I don’t want to have to worry about all the little details that I thought were silly. But I realize that even cereal and sandwiches can actually both be special.” Ellie giving her a bowl of cereal in the middle of a restaurant that was famous for the food, the ingredients Zeke had gotten for her sandwiches, Zander trading her jellies…those had mattered.
“I think that I wasn’t ready to worry about other details because I was so focused on the penguins all this time because I knew what I was doing there.” She looked from her mother to her father. “It is a lot of work when you’re doing something all by yourself. When it matters so much to get it right, but you don’t have anyone to help you. And yes, I probably had people in Omaha who would’ve cared and would’ve supported me if I’d let them in. But I didn’t. I kept myself in this little bubble where I was the only one who could do it right.”
She understood her mother. If her mom had taken being a mom as seriously as Jill had taken her passion for the penguins, it would’ve been hard to let someone else in, to trust that they would do a good job. So, even as overwhelming as it got at times, her mom took it all on herself.
“But now that I have all of these people there helping me and supporting me and wanting to be a part of it all, I realize that I can definitely care about more than one thing. Passionately. With my whole heart. There is room in my life and my heart for multiple things.”
“What made you let them in with the penguins when you didn’t let anyone in Omaha in?” her mom asked softly.
Jill smiled. “That’s the thing. I didn’t let them in. They just barged in. They don’t really care if you don’t want them to love you. They