Page 121 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
“Ignore him. Now, who here is a grandparent?” her mother asked, again turning to the audience like a talk show host.
Hands shot up throughout the ballroom.
“And how did you find out you were going to become a grandparent?” her mother pressed.
“My daughter told me over brunch at the country club,” a voice called from the back of the room.
“My son and daughter-in-law broke the news by putting a message in a specially made fortune cookie,” offered another woman.
“A fortune cookie, Georgiana!” her mother repeated theatrically.
Somebody needed to get this drama llama a microphone.
“And my daughter and son-in-law invited the whole family to Hawaii and told us at a pineapple farm,” a man offered.
“Pineapple,” her mother repeated, then gasped and stared at the can that had come to rest near the edge of the stage. “The day that I snuck away to call you—the day I felt the need to see my baby’s face. That wasn’t urine in the glass that you drank. It was pineapple juice. You can’t stand the stuff. I watched you projectile vomit an entire pineapple fruit cup onto a row of pageant judges.”
Georgie looked on, her heart in her throat, as a bitter realization swept over her mother.
“It’s a pregnancy craving,” she offered, but her mother shook her head.
“On the day that we arrived in India. We called to find you in the bathroom. That box in your hand, it was…” she trailed off as it all came together.
“A pregnancy test,” Georgie finished, but she didn’t have to. The betrayed look in her mother’s eyes said it all.
“You knew that day and didn’t say anything?” her mother asked, losing the talk show host vibe and now just looked like…a mom. A crestfallen mom.
Georgie’s chest tightened as she felt a tiny shift in her abdomen—her baby—and stared at her mother. She didn’t know what to say or where to start as the complicated dance she and her mom had been doing for so long played out in her mind.
Why hadn’t she explicitly left the message that she was pregnant?
Did she want to break the news in person, or was there something deep within her that didn’t want to tell—didn’t want to open themother-daughter-crazy-trainfloodgates?
She parted her lips to say, say what? I’m sorry, or even, when you caught me on the toilet, I was too freaked out at the moment to manage your reaction as well as my own? But her husband’s hand clasped around hers, and the man cleared his throat before she could work out what to say.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, then gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’re taking this family discussion out of the spotlight. I’m sure my friends and CityBeat founders, Bobby Chen and Hector Garcia, wouldn’t mind taking over our auction duties.”
“We’d be happy to,” Bobby replied as he and Hector hurried toward the stairs leading up to the stage.
Jordan led her away from the spotlight, and they met the men halfway.
“Good luck, honey,” Hector said with a wince, then handed Faby over.
“We’ll take it from here,” Bobby added as Jordan gave him the folder.
“And you two,” Lorraine called, pointing an unmanicured finger at the CityBeat duo.
“Yes, Lorraine,” Hector answered, jolting upright like a soldier addressing a general.
“You own the internet! I cannot believe you didn’t send a flying robot to my location to tell me that my daughter was pregnant.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Bobby murmured, but her mother seemed to have passed rational thought and moseyed on into full-fledged gala spectacle.
“And last but not least, Muffy Bradford,” she called out in socialite meltdown mode. “I know you’re here because you made the awful choice of serving spiced meatballs and goat cheese croquettes at the gala last year. And I see that, despite my firm warning, you’ve made the same perilous choice again this time around.”
A shimmer of red sequins skulked toward the back of the room.
“And, Muffy Bradford, if I hear you’ve been trying to get Gustavo to give you our table at the club, we will have words!” she roared, then stomped out of the ballroom.
