“Don’t say it. We will not be speaking the name of my former favorite snack,” she replied, giving him a warning glance. “It’s one thing for me to be able to wear my bracelet with the cookie charm. It’s another tube of cookie dough to bring it up in conversation.”
He chuckled, remembering the moment he happened upon her on this very bench, squeezing the raw vegan cookie dough straight into her mouth like a modern-day female cookie monster.
“Hello, there! You must be Georgie and Jordan,” a woman said, waving as she walked toward them.
Ollie clapped his hands and reached for the woman.
“You must be Brice and Briana’s mom,” Georgie said, handing the boy over.
“I’m Louise Casey. It’s so nice to meet you both. Thank you for taking care of our little Ollie. You two were in the right place at the right time when Ollie and Briana needed you.”
Georgie parted her lips to speak, but nothing came out.
“We’re glad we could help,” he said, handing Louise the diaper bag, then wrapping his arm around his wife.
“Here’s Ollie’s formula,” Georgie said, finding her voice as she removed the can from their grocery bag and slid it into Ollie’s diaper bag.
“Say goodbye to the nice people, Oliver,” the woman said to her grandson.
The child made a raspberry sound as Louise turned and headed toward a sedan parked a few rows over.
“That was amazing,” Georgie said with tears in her eyes.
“It appears that we’re not half-bad at caring for real babies,” he replied, then glanced down at Faby, sitting on top of one of the grocery bags. “No offense, little buddy,” he added.
His wife sank onto the bench. “Had that spider not freaked me out and tried to kill Faby, we would probably still be at the farm.”
“You’re right,” he answered, taking a seat beside her.
“Briana said she was grateful that the universe put us in her path,” Georgie continued.
His wife wasn’t wrong. They were supposed to be at that grocery store at that exact time.
Georgie reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She held the phone to her ear and met his gaze. “Listening to the universe.”
He watched the worry and stress caused by the spider melee melt from his wife’s expression.
With one hand on her belly and the other holding the phone, she grinned at him.
“Hello, this is Georgiana Jensen-Marks, Howard Vanderdinkle’s stepdaughter. I need to get a message to him and my mother.”
16
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 their Sankalpa. 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 their Sankalpa is?”
“A Sankalpa is 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?”
“The Sankalpa?”
“Yeah.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“So, there’s no estimated arrival time for a Sankalpa?” 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 the Sankalpa line.
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’re Sankalpa-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.
She shook her head. “Howard has a zillion assistants and secretaries. I’m not even sure who I’m talking to from one week to the next. But they’ve all been telling me the same thing.”
“The whole Sankalpa response?”
“Yep,” she said, then changed her mind and broke off another bite of the cake.
“Just cut a piece of cake and eat it, Georgie,” her husband called.
She looked around the kitchen. Her only company was a snoozing Mr. Tuesday and Faby, who had no qualms with her scarfing down a cake, piece by broken-off piece.
“How do you know I’m eating the pineapple upside-down cake?” she called.
“Are you?” he shot back, and she could hear the cocky smile in his voice.
She wiped the crumbs from her lips. “No,” she answered with the giant bite still in her mouth.
“The email said they’re going to serve dinner and dessert tonight. You don’t want to ruin your appetite,” he chided playfully.
“When in the last month has eating before a meal ruined my appetite?” she tossed back about to break off another hunk of cake when a sexy hunk of a cowboy entered the kitchen. And all thoughts of pineapple-sweetened carbohydrates evaporated.