Page 119 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
Now, Georgie was the one gasping. Her venture capitalist, all-about-the-numbers, worth-a-boatload-of-money, pragmatic stepfather looked like a cross between a monk and a shaman. For all the years she’d known him, the clean-shaven, pressed businessman only deviated from tailored suits to don tennis whites at the country club. She figured the guy slept in some version of a business outfit.
“I go by Wandering River now. But, yes, Howard Vanderdinkle is my former, unenlightened name.”
Georgie turned to her mother. “What happened to him?”
Lorraine raised her hand and waved away the kindly shaman, aka, her husband. “I cannot even get into that right now,” she huffed.
It was jarring to see such depth of emotion on her mother’s face. Botox had kept her Stepford-smooth for the last decade.
“Okay,” Georgie uttered, stranded between shock and unmitigated awe at the sight of these two.
“Would you like to know why I’ve spent the last multitude of hours in a chair labeled twenty-six C?” her mother asked, throwing it out to the audience as a shockwave—presumably from the idea that Lorraine Vanderdinkle had been seated at the rear of a plane—rippled through the ballroom with another round of gasps and profound astonishment.
“Because my daughter is pregnant, and she didn’t even think to inform her mother,” she said amid a sea of shaking heads as a bevy of disapproving eyeballs ping-ponged from her mother to the stage.
Georgie stepped forward. “I’m sorry you didn’t hear it from me, but Jordan and I have been trying to get in touch with you. I called Howard’s office, and they said you were in a—”
“Critical phase of spiritual transformation,” the woman supplied.
“Yes.”
Her mother had to know how hard it was to get a message to them.
“You didn’t think to mention that you were pregnant?” her mother threw back. But the slight shake in her voice revealed more grief than anger.
Georgie took another step forward. “We were ready to go all out tomorrow, doing whatever we had to do to get in touch with you. Nicolette was going to be my first call.”
Her mother released a frustrated sigh. “That would have done no good.”
“Why?”
“She chartered a private flight—on our account—and has been living large at our bungalow in Fiji. That was another fun surprise we learned today.”
“That’s terrible!”
“That’s a Libra!” her mother shot back.
Georgie shared a glance with Jordan. “How did you even know I was pregnant?”
Her mother crossed her arms. “A Belgian duchess.”
This debacle was turning into a soap opera.
“Where did you find a Belgian duchess at a spiritual retreat in India?” she asked.
“She joined our party a few days ago and had smuggled in a cell phone. She was there to appease her daughter and wasn’t at all interested in finding herSankalpa. She and I bonded instantly, thanks to my knowledge of fashion and time spent on the French Riviera,” her mother added, throwing that tidbit to their audience, who nodded approvingly.
“Mom, that still doesn’t answer how a Belgian duchess knew I was pregnant!”
Her mother lifted her chin. “Yes, that part. Well, she and I would look through her pictures from her shopping trips in Milan as well as her favorite food blog images.”
“Wait…weren’t you supposed to be discovering your innermost desire and honing your chi?” Georgie threw back.
“Your mother veered slightly from the enlightened path,” Howard, Wandering River, whoever chimed.
Lorraine ran her hands through her disheveled hair. “You can only chant and look inside yourself for so long before all you want is Gustavo, delivering a dry martini after a day of shopping and three sets on the tennis court.”
“The path is long and winds near the deer and the caterpillar,” her stepfather offered with a sage nod.
