Jordan bent down and pressed a sweet kiss to her lips. “You probably do. You drink, and I’ll read over the auction items. We can’t have you running on empty while we’re on stage.”
He wasn’t wrong. The other day, she hadn’t hit her pineapple quota and had flipped out when he’d unloaded the groceries and placed the yogurt in the crisper drawer.
Who does that, right? Still, he didn’t deserve the pineapple-depleted epic tongue lashing she’d doled out.
She listened to the buzz of voices on the other side of the curtain making chitchat, then opened her purse and spied her can of salvation. She popped the top and grinned down at the liquid that used to make her hurl. The first sip never disappointed, but she didn’t have time to savor the pineapple goodness. She needed to pound those six ounces like nobody’s business.
Tipping the can, she channeled her inner frat boy and started gulping. She was nearly done when a gust of air and the whooshing slap of fabric, followed by blinding bright lights, left her frozen in place. With her head tilted back and the can pressed to her lips, she must have looked like a pregnant pineapple pinup girl.
Specks of dust and bits of lint hovered in the thick beam of light as she lowered the can and shielded her eyes. A shiver spider-crawled down her spine, accompanied by the crushing suspicion that something was off when a woman’s shriek caught her attention and proved her premonition was correct.
“I knew it! I knew it, Howard!” came the voice she’d recognize anywhere.
17
Georgie
Clang! Clang-clang-clang!
Out of shock or some strange pregnant spasm, Georgie dropped the empty can of pineapple juice. And, as if swallowed by silence, everyone in the room watched the little cylinder roll to a stop at the edge of the stage.
Jordan lowered his voice. “Georgie, I think it’s—”
“I know,” she whispered back, feeling the color drain from her cheeks.
Her mother was here. Had the messages made it to her? Perhaps, this was a surprise?
Georgie took a few steps forward, trying to find a way to see into the ballroom without frying her retinas.
“Mom, is that you?”
“Of course, it’s me,” came the moneyed huff of a woman who did not sound like she was there for a pleasant surprise.
The glare of the spotlight dialed back a bit, and Georgie blinked once, then twice as she took in the scene. Hector and Bobby sat at the center table, slack-jawed and eyes as wide as saucers with Faby seated on the table.
Her gaze slid from the men and landed on her mother, standing in the center of the room.
Georgie did a double take, hardly able to believe her eyes.
There was one thing about Lorraine Vanderdinkle that remained the same no matter if she were shopping the couture racks at Chanel or reading the psychic energy of a piece of toast.
The woman was always put together. Be it jewelry from Tiffany’s or crystals from some high-end hipster spiritual shop in Boulder; the woman never looked less than perfect in her chosen persona du jour.
But that wasn’t who glared up at her. No, this woman sported a wild mane of hair with glints of gray—like her natural hair color gray—which hadn’t been seen since the beauty disaster of 2012 when her stylist came down with the flu, and she had to wait a whole week before getting her roots done. One would have thought the world was about to implode. To ease the pain, she’d checked herself into the Ritz and gone into hiding between room service and spa treatments.
But there was more!
Her mother’s usually chemically smooth face wrinkled—like, muscles actually moved—as she frowned without even the hint of makeup. And her outfit, a dull pale green tunic and flowing pants, was crumpled and—God forbid—probably not dry-clean only.
Georgie pressed her hand to her rounded belly and did her best to compose herself as the ballroom, filled to the gills with rich people in Western garb, sat stupefied.
“You look different, Mom,” she stammered, then realized, a second too late, that spectacularly inarticulate utterance was probably the worst thing she could have said under the circumstances.
A few better choices…
How was your trip?
Did you nail down that Sankalpa?
If you haven’t noticed, I’m super pregnant.
Any of these would have sufficed as a more appropriate greeting when coming face-to-face with an angry socialite who needed to have her roots done ASAP.
Her mother lifted her chin and tucked a mostly blond and partly gray strand of hair behind her ear. “This, Georgiana, is what one looks like after flying commercial for twenty-three hours straight in…” she paused, taking a moment. “Coach,” she finished with a pained twist to her lips.
The ballroom flooded with gasps as women fanned themselves, and men shook their Stetson-clad heads.
Georgie glanced at her husband in an attempt to flash oh-shit eyes, only to find the man flashing the same expression when a bearded gentleman in a white flowing robe walked through the ballroom and stopped next to her mother.
“Namaste, Georgie and Jordan,” he said with a deep bow.
“Howard?” Jordan asked, squinting into the dim ballroom.
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.”