By the time I hang up the phone, I am feeling surprisingly numb. I guess that’s my self-defense mechanism kicking in so that I can actually handle this without having a nervous breakdown.
My phone dings again and I look down to see several missed messages from Chad. I open the last one, just to make sure everything is okay and that he is probably checking in with me to see how I feel and if I will be at work tomorrow.
But since his last message sounds worried and hints at him coming to check on me “in person” I go ahead and answer him right away. I let him know that everything is fine, and that I have a bit of a GI infection. It isn’t a very believable lie—it’s intentionally vague and broad but I can’t think of anything else on the spot. I tell him that I will be at work tomorrow and am taking some meds and going to bed early so there is no need for him to come check on me.
For almost a solid minute there are typing bubbles in the chat window. But then just a simple reply of “okay” appears as if he deleted whatever he was going to say and opted for the singleword answer instead.
Lying about this is going to be hard. And once I start to show, then I’m going to have to come up with something else to say. Maybe I can lie about having been with someone else before Chad so that I never have to break the news to him. Really, it’s for him and for Lilly that I am lying at all. They’ve already gone through so much and they finally seem happy. There is no way that I am going to completely ruin their lives by springing an unplanned and likely unwanted pregnancy on them.
A part of me knows it’s wrong to keep this a secret. I mean, it ishisbaby, after all. I’ve seen firsthand what a great dad he is, and what a great girl Lilly is. If feels wrong to deny them the truth. Chad is already such a good dad that not telling him he may haveanotherchild, and that Lilly will have a half-sibling, feels terribly not right. But I can’t handle any of that right now. I need time to think.
I need time to figure out what I am going to do, and how this will affectmylife before I tell anyone else. It’s not as if we are living in the same house together anymore, and the last thing that I want Chad doing is swooping in with all his money and influence out of sheer guilt and responsibility in order to take care of things for me.
For now, I will keep it all a secret until I can prepare myself for what Chad’s reaction would beifI decide to tell him.
I instinctually reach for a glass of wine to relax and then remember that I can’t have one, which stresses me out even more. So, as an alternative, I resort to my bathtub for a hot soak with my mandarin bubble bath. It still seems all so surreal.
I’m pregnant.
I’ve just gotten my cottage restored, just gotten into the swing of my job, and just gotten to a place where I feel at home. I don’t even know what I want to do with the rest of my life, and already I am having to think for two.
But as I submerge myself in the warm, sweetly smelling bathwater, I can’t help but feel as though maybe this isn’t all so terrible. I’ve been spending years traveling rather aimlessly, and then I landed here in Asheville, and I can’t remember being happier anywhere else. Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me that this is where I belong and rooting me here.
Or maybe I am fantasizing about this in an overly glorified way to make myself feel less scared. Either way, I need to put on my poker face because in the morning, I will be back at work and sitting right back beside Chad in his office as his assistant. I might be a terrible liar over the phone and by text, but I am an evenworseliar in person.
Chapter Twelve
Chad
“What kind of GI infection?”
“Oh, I don’t really remember what the doctor called it exactly,” Seraphine says as her eyes dart away from mine. “Something to do with my stomach and the reason that I keep throwing up. Anyways, he gave me some medicine and told me it would pass in a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” Something about her diagnosis definitely doesn’t sound right. Either the doctor she saw was a quack or she isn’t relaying the information correctly.
A third potential scenario pops into my head too—that she might belyingabout her diagnosis from the walk-in clinic, but I have no idea why she would do that. Still, it doesn’t quite sound right to me. I can tell that it isn’t sounding right to Tori either because she is doing one of her subtle eye rolls again. She does this either when she is annoyed or when she is in disbelief. This time I think it’s the latter.
Seraphine comes into work steadily over the course of the next few weeks but still has bouts of being sick off and on. She sticks to her story though, saying that she’s on prescription meds and that the doc told her it would clear up soon.
Eventually, it does. Whatever it was, seems to have passed and I fall right back into thinking that all is well. I pretty much forget that she was sick at all, and we move into winter with everyone bundling up in bulky, warm clothes and enjoying extra hot lattes as the snow dusts the top of the mountains and the temperature dips. One of the beautiful things about Asheville is that even in the dead of winter it doesn’t getbittercold. DC would get so frigid that Lilly and I couldn’t feel our fingers and toes when we went on long walks in the city. Asheville is much more temperate. It’s the perfect balance of changing seasons and cold, blustery air without feeling as if you’re getting frostbite.
Since Seraphine has already moved back into her cottage, and all of the renovations and repairs seem to be holding up well, I can’t think of any reason to drag her over to my house even though I really do want to see her outside of work and so does Lilly. The house seems much too quiet now without her here.
As much as I try to stay with the positive momentum that I had been feeling before, the cold, gray weather along with my gloominess about not really getting to spend any social time with Seraphine, causes me to go back into “grumpy mode” at work. I can feel myself doing it and I don’t mean to. It’s just that I don’t know what to do with all these feelings that I still have for Seraphine that I can’t act upon. And aside from a few meaningful glances when I happen to catch her eye in the office, neither of us talks about what happened between us. It’s as if it never happened and there is no trace that we had even been together, if only for a brief moment.
I’m so tired of good things disappearing.
Lilly is finally able to go back to dance now, which is the best thing that could have happened. She also now has a newfound love for art, which I thank Seraphine for. I wish that she would still come to the house to give Lilly lessons. I’m sure that she would if I asked her, but I have been trying to leave things alone. It doesn’t seem like Seraphine wants much to do with me outside of work now, and I guess I can’t blame her. I haven’t really been the most approachable.
“Your daughter is on the phone,” Tori calls into my office in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. “She says it’s important.”
Instantly I take the call, hoping it’s not an accident report from the school again. Seraphine is sitting at her desk beside me and looks up. She looks concerned too, and it makes me think that she does really still care about Lilly.
“Dad!”
“Lilly, what is it? What’s wrong? Is everything okay? Are you still at school?”
“Dad, calm down,” she laughs. “Everything is fine, geez. I’m just super excited to tell you something and it couldn’t wait until you got home.”