On Thanksgiving, My Husband Left Me 7 Months Pregnant at a Highway Rest Stop novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Rest Stop
On Thanksgiving Garrett pulls into a turnpike rest stop and tells his seven-months-pregnant wife to wait while he drives back for his first love; Piper tells him to go, and her water breaks.
On Thanksgiving, my husband pulled off the turnpike and told me to get out of the car.
I was seven months pregnant, and it was sleeting.
The rest stop was packed with strangers carrying paper cups and turkey sandwiches wrapped in foil.
Ten minutes earlier, we had been doing seventy in the left lane.
That morning my doctor had told me no long drives, no stress, and no being left alone.
Garrett had held my hand in her parking lot and said, "I'm not going anywhere, Piper. This trip will be different."
The last three holidays, he had left early to help Delaney with something.
I wanted so badly to believe him that I got into the car.
Then her name lit up the dashboard screen.
Delaney. His high school girlfriend. The one his mother still set a place for at Christmas.
Garrett answered before I could say a word.
"Garrett?" Her voice shook through all four speakers. "The rental died on the shoulder. I'm by myself. I can't breathe. I keep hearing it again, the crash."
In the back seat, his father stopped talking.
Dennis had talked since Columbus, about tires and the Browns and the price of a turkey.
Now he stared out his window and pressed his palm flat against his knee.
I noticed it and didn't think anything of it.
Garrett's hand tightened on the wheel.
"Delaney, lock the doors. Send me your pin. I'm coming."
I looked down at my stomach.
My daughter rolled under my hand.
I'd had two contractions that day, and the second one had scared me enough that I had called the doctor's nurse line from a gas station restroom.
"Garrett," I said. "She's forty miles back. We just left that exit."
"I know where she is."
His mother leaned forward between our seats.
Marjorie was the warm one. She had handed me a thermos of ginger tea at the first gas stop and tucked a blanket over my knees.
"Sweetheart, the car is full," she said gently. "Garrett, you, me, your father, your sister and Piper. There's no seat left for Delaney."
"I'll squeeze into the middle," I said. "Put her by the window."
I pressed both hands against my stomach. Something low in me pulled tight, and I made myself breathe through it.
"Piper, you can't be squashed back there in your condition," Marjorie said. "And Delaney is having a panic attack. She can't be crowded."
Garrett looked at his mother in the rearview mirror.
"There's a travel plaza right here," he said. "It's warm. You wait inside, and I'll be back in two hours."
"You're going to leave me at a rest stop."
"I'm going to get her and come right back."
"With your whole family in the car."
"They're not letting her ride alone, Pip. You know how she gets."
He pulled up under the plaza awning and put the car in park.
His sister kept her eyes on her phone.
Dennis kept his eyes on the sleet.
I opened my door and swung my feet out, and Marjorie reached over and caught my sleeve.
"Take my scarf," she said, and wound it around my neck herself.
I went to the back of the car for my bag.
My wallet was in it, and my insurance card, and the pills the doctor had told me to carry.
Marjorie rolled her window down an inch.
"Leave it, honey. You won't need it for two hours, and the trunk is stacked with pies."
Garrett was already pulling the lever to pop the latch back shut.
I stood in the sleet with my phone, at eleven percent.
A woman loading a stroller into the next car had stopped to look at us.
Garrett leaned toward the open door.
"Stay put," he said. "You always do."
He said it kindly.
Behind him, Marjorie sighed, and his sister finally looked up.
I thought about the doctor's three rules.
I thought about him holding my hand and promising me.
"Go," I told him. "Go get her."
"Piper."
"Go. And don't come back looking for me here."
He laughed, a small, tired laugh.
"You'll be right here when I get back."
So I stepped away from the car and shut the door myself.
The SUV pulled out into the sleet, and nobody in it turned around.
I walked toward the plaza doors with my hand under my belly.
I got as far as the food court, past a line of people holding trays, before the next pain came.
It was not the other two.
It took hold of my whole body and held on.
I grabbed the back of a plastic chair.
Then something warm ran down my leg onto the floor.
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