I try my best to tell her my location, but I wasn’t really paying attention to the last road signs that I passed. I was too busy thinking about Chad and Asheville and everything I was going to miss about being there. In between contractions, I manage to get out enough details that thankfully Lorna is able to piece together my location.
“All right honey, I’m sending help right now, Tom is calling an ambulance to come and get you. You just hang tight, and they will be there as fast as they can,” she says. I can tell that she’s trying to calm me down but even she sounds worried. “Do you want to stay on the phone and talk until they get there?”
I do, but of course, as if things aren’t dire enough, my phone battery dies before I can answer her. I really blew it as far as paying attention to what I was doing when I was pulling out of town. I was so busy being emotional that I forgot to charge my phone, and I didn’t even pack the charger up here in the front seat with me. I get ready to stand up and go to the back of the van to get the charger, but I can’t. As soon as I go to move another contraction comes.
They’re coming too fast. I’m not going to make it until the ambulance gets here. The only thing that I can do now is brace myself to give birth all alone on the side of the highway in my van. When the contraction lets up, I gingerly make my way back to the bed. Thank goodness I at least have a converted van to lay down in, although I am terrified that it isn’t going to do me a damn bit of good.
I lay down on the bed and try to remember all the things that Dr Gideon had told me about childbirth, but my mind keeps going blank with fear. I work on the breathing she showed me and try to concentrate on slowing everything down. I have no idea if that will even work or not, but there isn’t anything else that I can do.
For what seems likehours, I breathe and ride the contractions, feeling as if any second one of the babies is going to decide that enough is enough and that they are sick of waiting. I know it hasn’t actually been hours, and that an ambulancemustbe almost here, but I feel as if I have been left out here to survive this on my own.
But then, just as I am about to start sobbing uncontrollably, the door of the van bursts open and someone rushes inside.
Chad.
Chapter Sixteen
Chad
The past several weeks have been absolutehell.
I miss Seraphine, and even though I haven’t allowed myself to pick up the phone and call her even once this whole time, my heartachesfor her and for the chance to know my two babies that will grow up without me. I didn’t plan on them, and if anyone had asked me if I wanted to have another kid, my answerwouldhave been no. But that was before.
I am still so torn over what to do, and with each passing day I have convinced myself that it is better for all of us if I leave Seraphine alone. Besides, she didn’t seem to be waiting around to let me figure anything out. She could have picked up the phone to call me too but instead she has been busy tying up all her loose ends here in Asheville and selling her cottage—her little dream cottage that we both poured so much work into—that damn dilapidated house.
It was as if she had already decided to move on and leave me and Lilly and that brief moment when we all sort of felt like a family together, in her past. She has decided to go back to her family and not be burdened by an emotionally broken billionaire that is still haunted by his own past. And as she prepares to leave, she is carrying a part of me with her.
Forweeks, Lilly gave me shit about it. Every single day she poked at me to go after Seraphine, to beg her not to leave and to move into our house with us again. It is a ridiculous notion, and I hold fast and don’t give in. But what is even more ridiculous is how much Iwantto give in and to follow the instincts of my twelve-year-old daughter and chase after the woman that Ishouldhave told that I love her. Now it is simply too late.
Maybe it is all for the best. Maybe it’s better that she leaves now, and we all move on from thinking that this delusional fairytale ever actually had a chance of working out. I tell myself, and everyone else who questions me about my inaction, like Tori and Lilly have been doing incessantly, that letting Seraphine go is the right thing to do, even though I know that I don’t really believe it myself.
I was able to keep myself convinced that letting her go, and letting my two unborn children go, was the right thing to dountilher cottage sold and she packed up her van and began to actually leave. As soon as I heard that she was getting ready to pull out of town, something came over me and I knew that I had been a fool.
I can’t even look at Lilly over breakfast before work without realizing that she had been right all along and I hadn’t been listening—not to her, and not to myself.
“When did she leave?” I ask Tori as if a fire has suddenly been lit inside my chest.
“Within the hour I think,” she answers. “She might not be gone yet. Last I heard was that she was getting ready to hit the road. Are you okay?”
“No, no I am not. I can’t let her go, Tori. I shouldn’t have let her go at all.”
She rolls her eyes at me, this time bigger and more dramatically than I think I have ever seen her do. For the first time ever, I actually think that it is warranted.
“Then why the hell are you still standing here? Go after her! Bring her back to Asheville!” she shouts as she hurries me out the office door.
I fumble around looking for my keys and then rush out the door to the car. I’ll run by the cottage first, just to make sure that she isn’t still there packing anything up. Seraphine would always forget her purse or something when she was working at the office for me, and maybe this time is no exception. Maybe she is still there taking a minute to say goodbye to the cottage and the life that shealmoststarted to live here.
On my short drive, everything erupts, and I can’t deny it any longer. I just wish it had happened sooner. I realize that I don’t want to live without her no matter what. I think I’ve known it all along and I’ve just been too afraid to let her in.
When I get to the cottage, I practically jump out the door before the car has even stopped moving. I run into the house, calling her name as if it is a desperate prayer. But she isn’t there. The only thing that is left inside the empty cottage is my blank check sitting on the top of the kitchen table. I stop for a moment to hold it up and look at the word “void” scrawled across the check in red ink.
She didn’t cash it. She didn’t even take it with her. We made an arrangement, and she didn’t even take her share of it. All she took with her were thebabies…all she took with her was everything.
Okay, what am I going to do now? She isn’t here. Her cottage is empty, and her van is gone, so that means that she has already left. It doesn’t necessarily mean that she has leftAshevilleyet though. Knowing Seraphine, she probably stopped downtown to say goodbye to all of her artist friends. Maybe I can still catch her.
I jump back in my car again and head to the village. There’s no sign of her van parked anywhere in front of the galleries or shops. I ask around, hoping that someone has seen her and can tell me where she is. I realize that I don’t even know where exactly she was headed or what route she was planning to take. Even if she has already gone, I don’t know how to track her down and find her. But I am betting that there is someone here that does. This little artist village is a tight community, and some of its more prominent fixtures like Lorna and Tom will likely have an idea of how I can find her. The only problem is that I’m not so sure all these artist folks are too fond of the billionaire tech exec who knocked up their friend and then did what looks like the equivalent of paying her off in exchange for being let off the responsibility hook.
I head toward Lorna’s shop, knowing that if there is anyone with a pulse on what is going on it is probably her. Lorna is the matriarch of the village, and nothing here happens without her knowing about it.