I drive to Seraphine’s cottage immediately and stand outside banging on her door.
“Open up, Seraphine. Let me in and tell me what the hell this is all about,” I shout. Fortunately, I don’t need to worry about disrupting the peace out here because our two houses are the only ones within miles. There are no other neighbors to hear me shouting and banging on her door. At most, I might scare off a few birds and squirrels and the occasional deer.
There is no answer, and the door remains closed, but I know that she is in there because her van is parked out front.
“Seraphine, open this door! I know you’re in there. I can see your van. I know you quit, and I want to know why.”
Still no answer.
“I am not leaving until you open the door and talk to me. I can stay out here all day and all night if that’s what you want. I’m not leaving until I know what is going on.”
I knew that she wouldn’t leave me standing out here hollering in the cold all day. She cares about Lilly too much for me to get pneumonia trying to get her to open the door.
Eventually, after several more minutes of banging and shouting at the closed slab of wood, Seraphine opens the door.
It opens slowly and the thoughts that pour into my head are almost in slow-motion like water seeping in through several leaks at once.
It’s cold out and there is snow on the ground, which is why I’ve got on my thick leather jacket. That wouldn’t seem important at all, except that it makes me notice the stark difference between the warm air wafting out of her cottage as she opens the door,andthe fact that she isn’t wearing the big, bulky winter sweaters that she has been wearing for the past few weeks ever since the temperature cooled.
Instead, as I stand there staring at her through the open doorway, I see that she is wearing a pair of comfortable-looking sweatpants and a loose-fitting white T-shirt, both of which are framing averybulging stomach.
For a second, it doesn’t even register with me. It’simpossible. But after that single second of shocked denial passes, I can see that Seraphine is very clearlypregnant.
A million things cloud my brain. How did I not notice this before now? How could I not have known? How could I have ignored the possibility that this was a risk? How could I have been so careless and stupid?
I open my mouth to say something, but no words come out as Seraphine just stands there silently staring at me through regretful eyes. Finally, I muster a single question.
“Can I come in?”
She opens the door wider and steps to the side to let me inside the cottage. I head straight for the kitchen table and sit down in one of the chairs so that we can talk. I am nervous, confused, upset, and surprised, all at once. I have so many questions to ask her about this but am afraid to start with the wrong one.
“I am sorry that I kept this from you,” she says as she starts the conversation. “You’re the father. I haven’t had sex with anyone else since long before my arrival here in Asheville. I was on the pill—kind of—but didn’t take it religiously because I honestly didn’t think this would happen.”
“It’s not your fault,” I interrupt before she can continue. “I had as much a part in this as you did. I should have been more careful. I was reckless.”
I want to ask her why she didn’t tell me, but then I realize that I haven’t always been the most approachable. I think back to when she ran out of my house the other night and realize now that it was because as I was asking her to be my “date,” she was keeping this big secret from me.
“You have every reason to be mad at me for keeping this a secret from you,” she says as she looks down at the table between us.
“Iammad about that,” I say honestly. “And about you quitting your job without even coming to talk to me about it. Why would you do that? Why haven’t you told me about this until now?”
Seraphine’s eyes start to tear up and I balance between being angry at her while also trying not to upset her.
“I didn’t plan on this either, Chad,” she says. “And I know now that I was wrong to keep it hidden from you. But I knew that this isn’t what you would want, and I was just trying to let you off the hook and not ruin the life that you have created here for Lilly. The two of you have already been through so much and I didn’t want to add to that.”
I am stunned. I don’t know whether to think that she is being selfish orselflesswith how she has handled this. Either way, I had the right to know. I don’t want to prove her doubts about me true by getting angry. So, I try to stay calm and levelheaded. It takes everything I have though because I am completely sideswiped. Not only by the fact that she is pregnant, but also by the fact that sheliedto me about it.
“There’s something else,” she says as I sit still trying to wrap my mind around it. “I’m carryingtwins.”
I feel as if the floor bottomed out beneath my feet. All of the shock that I am feeling has now doubled.Twobabies? How is this even happening?
I have no idea what the look on my face is doing right now but I can tell that it must be something pretty horrible by the way that Seraphine is looking at me. The muscles in her jaw are tight, as if she is physically trying to clench them to keep herself from crying.
I know deep down in my heart that I am, and have been for a while now, completelyin lovewith Seraphine. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her, and wanting her, and I can’t even imagine my life without her in it anymore. But I amfuriousthat she kept this from me, and I am having a tough time dealing with all of my mixed emotions right now. I didn’t want more kids, and I didn’t want Seraphine to quit, and right now I feel as if everything that is happening is spiraling out of my control. Ihatenot being able to be in control of things. It gives me that same sense of helplessness that I felt after Bella’s accident. I don’t even know how to handle these feelings that I am having in this moment.
Part of me wants to reach out and hold Seraphine and tell her that everything will be okay. I want to tell her that I love her and that somehow, we will figure all of this out together.
But another part of me wants to scream and shout and flip this table over. This isn’t what I had planned for my life, and for Lilly, and for my career.