Page 109 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
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Georgie
“It’s Georgiana Jensen-Marks, again. I’m calling to leave another message for my stepfather, Howard Vanderdinkle.”
Georgie paced the length of the kitchen, then caught a glimpse of the calendar tacked to the wall with a giant thirty-one written in today’s date box.
She’d been cooking a baby for thirty-one weeks, and holy Goodyear Blimp, could anyone within a five-mile radius tell. Her alien peanut blueberry turned mini pineapple turned mango, now felt like one of those giant prize-winning watermelons that took several brawny men to lug around from town fair to town fair.
Being thirty-one weeks pregnant also meant she’d spent the last several weeks trying to contact her mother and Howard.
“Mrs. Jensen-Marks, Mr. Vanderdinkle left word six weeks ago that he and your mother were entering a critical phase in their spiritual journey and would be completely off the grid until—”
“Until they discover theirSankalpa. I know. The last person I spoke with told me the same thing,” Georgie said, hating to interrupt but totally floored that Howard seemed to have jumped onto the psychic energist bandwagon with her mother.
She assumed he was there to placate her mom and figured he would have left the retreat to see to his businesses in the region months ago. But no. From what she’d gleaned from his bevy of assistants, he’d left strict orders not to be disturbed.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” the woman asked.
Georgie drummed her fingers on the kitchen island. “Do you know what theirSankalpais?”
“ASankalpais one’s innermost intention,” the woman answered with the hint of irritation in her voice, which may be warranted.
She had called the office on a Friday, one minute before five o’clock.
She stopped drumming her fingers and eyed a slice of pineapple upside-down cake. “Yeah, the last person told me that, too. Do you know how long that takes to find?”
“TheSankalpa?”
“Yeah.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“So, there’s no estimated arrival time for aSankalpa?” she asked, tearing off a piece of the cake and popping it into her mouth.
“Not that I’m aware of, Mrs. Jensen-Marks. Is there anything else you need?”
Georgie swallowed the bite and sighed.
She needed to talk to her mother. The day she and Jordan had rocked their shopping trip with baby Ollie had sent a palpable zing of excitement through her body. She’d been sure that all signs had pointed for her to contact her mother, right then and there.
Why else would the events of that day have gone down the way they did? At the time, it was like her destiny was written in the stars.
But all that excitement had fizzled.
When she’d called from the grocery store, she’d told the receptionist that she needed to speak with her stepfather, and the assistant had simply taken her message. But after hearing nothing for two days, she’d called again, and this time, a different secretary delivered theSankalpaline.
She stared at the cake and decided against breaking off another piece.
“I guess that’s it. Please pass along my messages as soon as you’reSankalpa-capable,” she said, then cringed.
Who made cheesy wordplay jokes like that?
Clearly, she did. And they weren’t even that amusing.
“All righty, then,” the umpteenth person to answer Howard’s office line said before the call ended.
“No dice?” Jordan called from their bedroom.
