As I brought the hammer down and smashed it into the back of his head, I thought about those mornings, and how the sun had streamed in through the window. When his skull cracked, I heard the sweet sound of our Sunday eggs breaking against the pan. Somewhere in the distance, Melody screamed, and I laughed, remembering the morning a fly had fallen into her juice and she drank it. I lifted the hammer back over my head and brought it down as hard as I could, again, and again, until his skull was nothing more than a scrambled mess of brain and blood, and tiny pieces of bone clung to my sister’s skin like broken eggshell. Then, as our Sunday mornings slowly melted away, I realized Melody was still screaming.
“What the hell!?” Her bare legs were covered in blood as she frantically inched her way back toward the headboard, her legs tucked into her chest. “What did you do, Madelyn-May? What the hell did you just do?”
The hammer dropped from my hand and landed heavily on the floor.
“Answer me!” Suddenly Melody was off the bed and up in my face. She was naked from the waist down, his blood splashed across her thighs like the lashings of an angry artist. “Why would you do that? He would have passed out any second. Jesus!” She stepped back, and started to pace. “Look at this damned mess! We can’t cover this up. Why the hell would you do that?”
“I’m….”
“You’re what?!” She gripped fistfuls of her own hair, and stared at me. “What, Madelyn-May?”
My ears were ringing like a field of crickets in summer. “I’m sorry… I don’t know what happened.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what happened?”
“No, I just blacked out.”
“Oh, you just blacked out?” She flung her arm toward his body. “Look at what the hell you did! Why would you do that, Madelyn-May?”
Before I could answer, the squeak of our trailer door caught us both off-guard.
“What’s all that yelling about?” our mother called from the kitchenette. “What’s going on up there and what are you girls doing in my room?”
We stared at each other with wild eyes, and my sister grabbed my hand. “Jesus,” was the only word that escaped her lips before my mother appeared in the doorway and started to scream.
Chapter Twenty
Sophie, 2006
On the morning I went to see Gerard, my stomach was buzzing like I had swallowed a jar of bees. I had no idea what he would say, or how he might react to the question I was about to ask.
When he saw me in the waiting room, his face broke into a wide smile. “Sophie, what a nice surprise. Come on through.”
He ushered me into his consult room, and memories immediately came rushing back. Samara holding my hand as he walked me through the egg freezing process. Signing forms, and learning how to inject myself with hormones that would stimulate ovulation.
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, Gerard,” I said. “I know you must be busy.”
“Never too busy for my wife’s best friend,” he beamed. “Have a seat. Tell me what you need.”
I placed the tote bag gently on the floor, and searched my mind for where to start. There were so many consequences for what I was about to ask, but I only had one shot at getting him to say yes, and my mother was all that mattered. I searched his face, and tried to place my words. “My mother has taken a turn for the worse. It’s her kidneys – they’re shutting down.”
“Oh, Soph….” He reached out and took my hand in his. It felt warm, reassuring. “I’m so sorry.”
“She needs dialysis, and then around-the-clock end-of-life palliative care. The doctor says it could run to $50,000.”
He nodded, and squeezed my hand. “If it’s a second opinion you’re looking for, I could recommend a colleague, but that sounds about right.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
He released my hand and sat back in is seat. “Oh, Sophie – we don’t have that kind of money. You know Samara and I would do anything we could to help, but we just don’t have it. As you know, she’s been dropping hints about getting engaged, and I can’t even afford a ring right now, not while we’re trying to buy a house.”
I hated that he thought I wanted to borrow money. It was the last thing I would ever ask. “I know, and I would never put you guys in that position,” I told him. “Not when I know I could never pay it back.”
“Then what is it, Sophie? How can I help?”
My hands felt clammy. “I have a way to pay for her care, but there’s something I need to do. Something that can’t happen without your help.”
“Well, you’ve certainly got my attention,” he smiled nervously. “What is it?”
“What if there was something you could do that would help me give my mother the care and treatment she needs?”
He stood up, and walked over to the window. “I’m not sure I like where this is going, Sophie.”
“Just hear me out, Gerard, please. I met someone, a woman. Her name is Jane, and she desperately wants to have a family with her husband. She agreed to buy my eggs. That money would be enough to pay for my mother’s care.”
“Sophie, the standard fee for egg donation is around $8,000. That won’t come anywhere close to the bill for your mother’s treatment.”
“I know, that’s why there’s a catch. He can’t know.”
Gerard’s body stiffened. “Who can’t know?”
“Her husband.”
He held his hand out, palm up, a signal to stop. “Are you saying that you want me to transfer your frozen eggs in an IVF procedure that the father doesn’t know about? Sophie, have you lost your mind?”
“He’d know about the IVF procedure, just not the egg donation.”
The muscles in his jaw tensed, and he shook his head. “Absolutely not. Sophie, how can you even ask me something like that? I’d lose my license.”
“Please, Gerard, she’s as desperate as I am. Trust me, she won’t say a word. She’s more scared of losing him than anything I’ve ever seen. Please, no one would ever know.”
“No, Sophie. I will not do that. And honestly, I’m surprised you’d even ask.”
“Here, look….” I pulled a pile of cash out of the tote. “$10,000 for you. You could buy Samara’s ring.”
“For Christ’s sake, put that away,” he hissed. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Please, Gerard, I’m begging you.”
“No, Sophie! I won’t. Now, I’m sorry, but you need to go. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I wish you hadn’t come here. You’ve put me in a very difficult situation.”
I slipped the money back into the tote, but when I tried to stand my legs wouldn’t hold me. It had been a year of pain and worry and guilt and fear and it was all about to come crashing down.
“Sophie, did you hear me? You need to leave.”
I tried to tell him I was leaving, but no words came out. My knees buckled, and I fell to the floor, my body wracking with uncontrollable sobs.
“Sophie, Jesus….”
Whatever he said after that was a blur. My fingers clawed at the linoleum floor, my cheeks wet, and Gerard’s leather shoes shuffled across my field of vision. Then came a sharp jab to my upper arm.
When I next opened my eyes, I was lying on a gurney in one of the consult rooms. On the ground was my tote, the money still bulging from inside. I had just managed to pull myself up onto one elbow when Gerard peeked his head around the corner.
“You’re awake.”
“I am.”
“I gave you a mild sedative. You’ve been out for a couple of hours.” He came in, and closed the door behind him. “You had me worried there for a minute.”
I sank back down onto the gurney, embarrassed he had seen me in such a state.
“Sophie, what you asked me to do….”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” I offered. “I shouldn’t have come here. Please don’t tell Samara.”
“Where did you meet this woman?”
“Jane?” I paused, and
thought back to the day we met. “In Love Park, of all places. I know how crazy it sounds, and when she first mentioned the idea, I said no. But then Mom’s kidneys failed, and it all just spiraled out of control. I didn’t know what else to do.”
He sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck. “You really have no other way to pay for your mother’s care? A second mortgage perhaps?”
“We’ve exhausted every option. We’ve hounded and harassed the VA, Dad already took a second mortgage back when she started chemo, and we’ve exhausted all our savings.”
He paused, an agonizing frown clouding his face. “And you’re certain we can trust this woman?”
“Wait, you’re actually considering this? But you said—”
“How can I sleep at night, knowing I’m the only reason your mother is not getting the care she needs? I couldn’t live with myself, Sophie, and I doubt Samara would forgive me either, if she ever found out.”
“I didn’t know if I should tell her, if you’d want her to know?”
He rubbed his chin, and I could see his mind ticking over. “I’ve never kept a secret from her. To do so would be very difficult for me. But at the same time, it wouldn’t be fair to burden her with this. The ethics alone are… No, this has to stay between us, and – what did you say the woman’s name was?”
“Jane. Her name is Jane.” He was going to do it. He was going to help me. “Gerard, this is incredible. I can’t believe you’re really going to help me.”
“Well, I don’t see what choice I have,” he sighed. “But Sophie, this goes to the grave. Both our graves. Do you understand? If anyone ever found out, then everything I’ve worked for, the life Samara and I have together, it’s all gone.”
“Yes, of course,” I promised. “Gerard, I don’t know what to say.”
“You say nothing. Not ever. And you better figure out a way to explain where that money came from to your father and brother.”
“I will. And here….” I sat up quickly and took the two stacks of cash from the tote. “This is for you.”
“I don’t want that. Put it away.”
“Please, take it, Gerard. I allowed for this. I want you to buy Samara the ring she wants so badly. It’s the least I can do, for you, and for her. She’s my best friend, and I know what it would mean to her. Please take it.”
His cheeks reddened, and he refused to meet my eye, but he took the money and retreated behind his desk. My mother was going to get the care she needed. And Jane… Jane was going to have a baby.
The plan: Jane and her husband Ian would attend an initial appointment with Gerard to find out why they were not falling pregnant. After that, things would start getting a little tricky. When the initial bloods and other tests came back, Gerard would immediately rule out oligospermia, meaning Ian’s sperm count was not the culprit. He would suggest a further ultrasound for Jane, conduct a pelvic exam, run more tests, and inevitably diagnose her with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, also known as PCOS, a condition that caused ovarian cysts. It was a leading cause of infertility in woman, and one that had no specific cause. In other words, it was an act of God, and no one could get angry at their wife for that.
Gerard would create a twenty-two-day preparation plan that required Jane to self-administer a daily injection of Lupron. She would then move into FSH injections to stimulate ovulation, and HCG injections to mature her eggs. According to the plan, on the tenth day Gerard would carry out the egg retrieval procedure. The clinic would fertilize the eggs with Ian’s sperm, and wait twenty-four hours to see how many became embryos. Viable specimens would be housed in special incubators until the magical morning of transfer. But of course, Jane and Ian’s journey would really begin on day seven, when Gerard began the careful process of thawing some of my frozen eggs and fertilizing them with Ian’s semen, each in a separate culture dish. It would take between three and five days before they knew how many viable embryos were available for transfer.
As I ran over the plan, Jane scratched quick notes on a pad. She never looked up, and simply nodded every now and then to let me know she was listening.
“You’ll have to become one hell of an actress if you’re going to pull this off,” I told her. “Are you sure you can do it? Faking injections and pretending to have egg retrieval appointments?”
She slipped the notepad back into her handbag, and smiled. “Of course I can. Ian is at work most of the time, and I’ll tell him I want to do the injections myself in case I need one and for some reason he’s not there. I read they have to be done at the same time every day, so that will make sense.”
I pushed out a breath, and looked at her closely. “You don’t seem very nervous. Aren’t you worried he’ll find out?”
“I am,” she nodded. “But at this point I’ve already gone too far to worry about lying. We’ll just have to be extra careful, and make sure it’s all done right.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he won’t know the truth about his own child?”
She sighed, and twisted her wedding band around in circles. “The truth is a funny thing, Sophie. Sometimes telling it can be very selfish.”
“Selfish?” I raised my brows. “You might have a hard time selling that to the person being lied to.”
“What I mean is, the truth can be very powerful. It can set you free, or put you in a cage,” she said. “Have you ever noticed that people telling the truth are usually the ones who find freedom on the other side of it? Freedom from guilt, from burden. The guilty tell the truth, but the innocent receive it. Sometimes it’s possible to measure our love by the secrets we keep.”
Loving someone by lying to them. On face value it sounded selfish, convenient. I was about to protest, but then considered my own situation. Would I tell my mother how I got the money, or would I spare her the burden of knowing the truth? “I guess I never thought about it that way.”
“It’s the same for both you and me, Sophie,” she continued. “What are you going to tell yourself about what we did here today? Will you let yourself off the hook and move on with your life, thinking of this as a mutually beneficial business arrangement, or will you dwell on it, poring over the truth and morality of what we’ve done? Will you walk away, or will you become the architect of your own cage?”
I wondered if I would ever be able to see this as a simple business transaction. “Is that what you’re going to do? Just move on with your life, like this never happened?”
“I’m going to do what I have to. That’s how I see it. Sometimes the things we must do are not the things we want to do. But they’re often the things that matter most.”
“You must really love him.”
“I never knew how love could feel until I met my husband, but I guess that’s the same for everyone.” She thought for a moment, and then smiled. “What about you? I never asked. Do you have someone special?”
“Me? No. What you’re doing is something I could never imagine. I’ve never met anyone I would go to these lengths for.”
She picked up another tote and placed it on the bench beside me. “The rest of the money is inside. The appointment for Ian and me is next Thursday?”
“That’s right. 10am.”
She stood up and turned to leave. “Thank you, Sophie. I mean it. I know you must think badly of Ian, the way he’s so adamant about the whole baby situation, but please don’t. You can’t imagine how he’s changed my life.”
“You’ve saved me as much as I’ve saved you,” I told her. “Whatever Ian thinks is none of my business. We all do what we have to, sometimes.”
She began to walk away, but stopped and looked back at me. “You’re wrong, you know. You do have someone in your life who is special enough to go to these lengths for.”
“I do?”
“Course you do,” she smiled. “Give your mom a kiss and a hug for me.”
And then she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sophie
As a mother, what lengths would you go to if i
t meant finding the missing piece of your heart? That is the question posed by Bastian’s new author, Geraldine Jackson. When he gave me her manuscript, it was because he thought the story would resonate with me. A mother longing for her lost son, desperate to see him again, at any cost. What he didn’t know was how dangerous it could be in my hands. If he knew the truth, he would never have brought it anywhere near me.
I run my hand over the paper and stare down at the words on the page. Just like the woman in the story, my son is gone. But what if…
Jackson’s story is as brilliant as it is haunting. In the book, the main character is a dying mother searching desperately for the son she gave up for adoption when she was sixteen. The primal need to tell him that she’s sorry, to explain her absence, relentlessly drives her toward both insanity and the hope of redemption. Bastian was right to think it would strike a chord with me. Reading it, I experienced again the pain of losing my mother and the tragedy of Josh’s death, but he had no idea how deep the story would cut. Since I first read the manuscript, a thought has been hovering in my periphery, flickering in and out, like the wayward reception of a broken television set. There have been glimpses, bursts of color, and pieces of broken words. What if….
I tuck a stray strand of hair back behind my ear, and glance at Miss Molly lying at my feet. “What do you think?” I ask her nervously. “I can’t, right? It’s too risky.” But she just stares at me, her eyes reflecting my own confusion.
When she suddenly barks, it crosses my mind that even she knows I’m being stupid, but when she leaps to her feet and dashes from the room, I know Bastian is downstairs before I even hear the knock.
“What are you doing here at this hour?” I ask, when I find him standing on the stoop. “It’s after eight.”
“Can I come in?”
I step aside, and he brushes by me without so much as a kiss on the cheek. “Sure…,” I murmur under my breath, “…come on in.”
He flops onto the couch, one hand draped over the edge to scratch Miss Molly’s ear.
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