by Sam Mariano
Emma nodded, then she sat up straight and looked at Julie across the table as if she had just decided what to do with her. "So, I'm sure that you're curious as to why I invited you out to lunch."
"A little curious," Julie admitted.
"Matt tells me that he didn't get anywhere with trying to get you to abort the pregnancy. Pro-lifer?" she assumed.
Shrugging, Julie said, "I’m not a fan of abortion as birth control, I don’t know that I would say that makes me a pro-lifer. I just don't feel it's the best option for me in my current situation."
"Right, your situation being an optimal environment to bring a child into," Emma said so calmly that Julie almost missed the sarcastic punch.
"Well, it's too late to reconsider now," Julie stated, glancing up as the waiter brought her glass of water and murmuring a thank you.
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," Emma stated. "I have a proposition for you."
Raising her eyebrows, Julie repeated, "A proposition?"
Nodding, Emma said, "I realize that these things happen—there's really no reason to be anything less than dignified in handling this situation; we are all mature adults, after all."
Julie offered a nod but nothing else, unsure of what Emma was getting at.
"I'm going to cut to the chase. You seem like a very sensible, very bright girl who could have a very promising future," she said, only the slightest emphasis on the word "could".
"I intend on having a promising future," Julie stated.
"And there's no reason you shouldn't," Emma agreed. "I think we've all concluded that your pregnancy was accidental—it wasn't a plot to get Matt or anything else for that matter. It was just a mistake. It happens. There's no reason that it should hold you back—in fact, if you're amenable, I believe that this could propel you forward in a way you wouldn't have previously thought possible."
"What's your proposition?" asked Julie, not altogether comfortable with Emma's schmoozing about her bright future.
"I want to adopt your child," Emma stated.
It was a good thing she hadn't been drinking anything, because she would have definitely choked.
"What?" she managed in disbelief.
Emma's face was impassive. "You heard me correctly. You can go to term with your pregnancy, and when you give birth Matt and I will assume the parental roles. Anna will have a little brother or sister, and you will be free to fulfill your absolute potential, your conscience completely clear."
Julie was sure that she should say something, but she couldn't formulate words.
"Of course the child will have the finest education in our care, he or she will want for nothing and most importantly he or she will have two parents and a stable home, something you cannot offer the child."
Again, her brain told her to speak, but the message didn't seem to make it to her mouth.
Emma went on, leaning forward, "Of course, this isn't all for the child. In addition to making the best choice for your child, there will be benefits to you as well. Matt tells me that you're an English major, correct?"
Julie nodded.
"I assume you're familiar with The Chicago Sun-Times?" Emma asked innocently.
Julie was immediately suspicious. "Yes, of course," she said cautiously.
"How would you like a job there?" Emma responded.
Her eyes widened slightly and her eyebrows rose just a little, but she still said nothing.
"If you accept my offer, I will see that you do get a job working there—imagine how that will look on your resume when you're finally going for your dream job, not even graduated from college and already writing for The Chicago Sun-Times."
Emma paused for a few seconds to take a sip of wine and let that part sink in, then she said, "Additionally, as a way of rewarding you further for making the right decision, I will pay whatever student loans you have accumulated at the time of the baby's birth completely off—the slate will be wiped completely clean, and I will assume all financial obligation for your education up to that point. After that, you will be on your own, but consider the thousands of dollars in debt that I'm offering to wipe clean—and that in addition to an excellent job with one of the best papers in the country and a real step up in your overall career."
Still, Julie could say nothing, and at her continued silence she saw the first hint of irritation flit across Emma's face, but Emma quickly cleared her face and pasted on a smile. "Of course there will be an interview—a mere formality, assuming you let me help you—and I'd want you to dress as any of my friends would, so we could go to Sak's and find you a nice outfit for the interview, a celebratory outfit with a nice new pair of shoes, maybe a new Chanel handbag to set it off."
"Why?" Julie finally managed to ask. "Why would you want my baby?"
"Well, technically it is my husband's baby," Emma stated, her face impressively free of any antagonism as she pointed that out. "I would love to give Anna a playmate and a sibling, someone to grow up with, but I don't want to go through that again right now—pregnancy is terribly taxing on my body, I'm very sick from week 6 to week 36, and… you're already pregnant, so... why not make the best of a bad situation?"
Emma sat back in her chair as the waiter brought the food and put it on the table in front of them, then she thanked him politely and turned her attention back to Julie once he was gone.
"I realize this is a very big decision I've just put on you, and you don't have to give me an answer right now. You've got time, think it over," Emma encouraged. "I'm positive that if you think about this and consider everything that I've offered, you will make the right decision for yourself and the child."
With that, Emma offered a confident smile and then she began eating her salad.
Julie took a bite of her own food, but she couldn't even taste it—her mind was going too fast, trying to process too many thoughts.
Emma wanted to adopt her baby, and in exchange give her the world on a silver platter. She wanted to reward Julie for having an affair with her husband and getting knocked up. An even exchange—trade in your baby for a great new job, a new outfit, and about $35,000 in student debt just completely erased.
Looking at it from a logical standpoint, the offer Emma made was unbelievable.
But there was something else, something that wasn't logical nagging at her as her mind was filled with the dazzling picture Emma had created.
A different picture.
An image of a baby—her baby—swaddled in a blanket in her arms, just born with perfect, wrinkly little fingers poking out from the blanket, a perfect little mouth forming a little O as the baby yawned, the little hat covering his or her dark curls.
Could you really put a price to such a thing?
Julie and Emma ate the rest of their lunch in complete silence as Julie asked herself that question and tried to come up with an answer.
---
As if Aaron's general strangeness and Emma's out-of-the-blue offer hadn't been enough to stress Julie out, when she went in to work at four they were already so busy that she barely had time to tie on her apron, and Leigh wasn't even working that day.
The good news was that she had made $36 in two hours.
The bad news was that the rush was over after two hours, leaving Julie with nothing to distract her from her thoughts about her lunch with Emma.
She was probably already a terrible mother for not getting up and leaving as soon as Emma had suggested such a thing, but there were so many thoughts running around in her head—her kid wouldn't be cheated out of a family that way, and those issues she had mentioned to Aaron about the kid being ostracized and punished for Julie's mistakes would evaporate. Anna and the baby would be normal siblings, and they would both have a normal family—mother, father, sibling.
Well, if you could call Emma normal…
"What did she say?"
Julie turned away from the coffee pot, surprised that Aaron had snuck up on her again. "What?"
"Emma," he clarified. "You wen
t to lunch with her. I was going to ask earlier, but we were busy, I didn't have a chance. How'd it go?"
Julie shifted, feeling uncomfortable enough thinking about it, but she didn't feel like talking about it too—it was already occupying too much of her brain space.
"It was… weird," Julie finally said.
"Well, yeah," Aaron said as if that much was obvious. "She didn't have a hit man take you out as were walking in the door though, that's good. I figured she might go to extreme lengths if she thought there was a chance you weren't out of the way,” he said with a hint of a smile.
"I don't see why she would think I'm not out of the way," Julie said.
"You're pregnant, Julie. You have a Trump card, and you didn't allow her or Matt to bully you into getting rid of it. And seeing as he was just giving you a booty call last night, I somehow don't think you're completely out of the way," he added, not looking at her, but not sounding hostile either.
Hearing that made her feel strangely guilty, and she said, "I didn't answer them! I didn't even read them. That's totally not true—I'm out of the way. I'm not… I'm done with him."
"Well, good, I hope that's true, but as long as you have his kid… she isn't going to rest easy."
Frowning, Julie heard Emma offering to adopt her child run through her mind.
Was that what it was?
"For one thing, not only do you have a 'bond' with him," he said with air quotes, "but you also have a ticket for child support for the next 18 years—and that's a Prada handbag that she could have bought every single month. Think about it, Julie, you can fuck up their lives for years to come just because he slipped up once. I'm sure she assumed you wouldn't be so difficult—don't take this the wrong way, but you seem like a pretty malleable person. I'm sure she thought you would be easily bullied, and Emma is ruthless, so it there's one person in the world who could have figured out how to take that from you, my money would have been on Emma. She's brilliant in a maniacal kind of way—she would stop at nothing to get what she wants."
"Like what?" Julie asked, feeling newly cautious of Emma's world-on-a-platter offer.
"Anything," he said simply. "She would say anything, do anything… she's very manipulative, if you haven't noticed. In Emma's eyes, you fucked with her—now you either cooperate or she'll take you down."
"How do you know these things?" Julie asked him.
That seemed to be the magic question. Aaron simply shrugged and said, "I just do."
Then he mysteriously had something he needed to do, and he walked away from her.
Sighing, Julie wiped the counter down, thinking that Aaron surely hadn't helped ease her mind—instead it was even more apprehensive, and instead of the guilty thoughts of what she was depriving her child of, she thought about what she could offer her child without Emma.
Julie had no intention of just giving up her dreams because she got pregnant. She was a grown woman, for heaven's sake, and she could handle having a kid. Yes, technically she would be a single mother, but… that was okay. Once she made her way through school she would be able to get a better paying job, and if she absolutely had to she could probably move back home…
She really didn't want to do that. Not only were there no good jobs in that damn small town, but she didn't want to go back.
Chicago may not be her absolute favorite place in the world, but it still beat her small-town hell by a long shot, that much she knew. And if she could get a good job—maybe not at the Times, like Emma offered—then she would be able to afford housing for herself and her little poppy seed. They might struggle a little bit in the beginning, but if Julie could establish some sort of support system to help her through the rough patch, once the baby was old enough to go to school Julie was sure everything would be fine.
Even if she couldn't establish a trustworthy support system, she could rely on daycare like other single parents, and she would still manage to pull through—it would just be a little more of an uphill climb. If she got a good enough job, she could even get her own nanny. Considering her general lack of friends or family in Chicago, she should probably look into how much childcare would cost.
Emma's offer was certainly easier—hand over the baby and step into a new life.
But life wasn't about doing whatever was easy.
She needed to do what was right, and even if Emma was the dignified person she seemed to be, Aaron's warning still set off little red flags in the back of her mind.
Was Emma really to be trusted? And did it really matter? If all she wanted was to adopt Julie's baby, maybe that was why she was offering such a sweet deal in exchange.
It was all so confusing.
And yet… she couldn't imagine actually taking Emma's deal. Sure, it would virtually clear the way for Julie, free her from responsibility of any mistakes she had made and as Emma pointed out, it wasn't as if the baby would be doing without.
But what if she was meant to make that mistake? Sleeping with Matt could be categorized as a mistake, sure, but her baby had never once fallen into that category in her mind, not even when she first found out.
Was Emma really the better choice just because she had money?
Was Julie only even considering the idea anything less than a farce because somewhere deep down she wanted an easy out?
Julie had no idea—she had too many thoughts filling up her head, she couldn't even be sure which thoughts were hers, which were Aaron's, and which were Emma's.
And where were Matt's ideas? She hadn't realized that she hadn't talked to him since she ignored his texts the night before, so she made a mental note to give him a phone call at some point and see if he even knew what his wife was offering.
She didn't know why, but part of her thought maybe he didn't and he would be mad at Emma if he found out she was trying to take Julie's baby from her.
Aaron's words flashed to the forefront of Julie's mind, and for just a second, she wondered if she could honestly guarantee she was out of the way.
Honestly, she couldn't.
She did want to be done with Matt, but deep down it seemed that there was still a small part of her that wanted someone on her side.
Why she thought Matt would ever fit that profile was beyond her, but it seemed that there was a small part of her that hoped he would. Julie didn't like having Emma's offer there in her mind all the time—she was half-tempted to hope that when Matt found out he would be mad and he would overrule Emma, taking the offer off the table so Julie didn't even have to think about it again.
Smiling a little as she thought about the chances of that happening and how incredibly slim they were, she went out to clear the table for a family that had just left.
Still, she was going to have to remember to give him a call.
Chapter Sixteen-
The next day Julie had to work 11 to 3—another completely ridiculous shift, but she got to work with Leigh, and it was the first time since the party, so she wanted to make sure Leigh wasn't mad at her for dipping out in the middle of the party.
She didn't get a chance at first, because a couple of people came in with her, so she had a table to take care of as soon as she clocked in.
But she didn't even mind, because for the first time ever, she got to witness Aaron smile when he saw her walk in the door, and she was reeling from the joy of it.
Maybe she would have to give Leigh a hug.
When she first got to speak to Leigh, nothing was even said about the party—it was as if Leigh actually avoided the topic, but in a totally nice and guileless way—and they skipped straight to small talk.
It wasn't until close to 2:30 when Aaron left the restaurant to go somewhere—Julie never actually knew where Aaron was going when he left—that Leigh watched him disappear from sight, and then she instantly made her way over to Julie.
"Hey," she greeted brightly.
Julie smiled at her strangely. "Hi."
"So, I wanted to ask how you enjoyed the party but I didn't want to do it while
Aaron was around. How did it go? You guys seemed to be getting along."
Nodding, Julie said, "Oh yeah, Aaron has no problem with me when he's drunk off his ass—thanks for that," she said, smiling.
Leigh chuckled. "He's so funny when he's drunk. Did you guys say goodbye? I didn't realize you guys were even gone, but then I couldn't remember if you said goodbye or not."
"Oh, no, sorry, we didn't. We kind of had a…misunderstanding, and I went to leave, then he came too…"
Leigh nodded. "I know how it goes. I figured you probably wouldn't want to stay too long—too many drunken people in one room."
Smiling, Julie said, "I'm actually kind of used to it. My ex was a heavy drinker, and I've never really been into it, so…"
"Well, regardless, I'm glad you came."
"I'm glad I did, too. Thank you for inviting me," Julie said.
Leigh nodded, but it looked like she wanted to say something else.
Julie waited patiently, aware of the gap of silence that they had fallen into.
"So… did you ever ask him what you wanted to ask him?" Leigh finally asked.
Frowning slightly, Julie said, "About what?"
"I thought you wanted to ask him about Shannon. Remember, you asked me, but I couldn't tell you…"
"Oh! Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about that," Julie said, rolling her eyes at her own faulty memory. "Yes, I did ask him about that on the way home."
"And did he tell you the story?"
"Yes," Julie said, shaking her head. "She sounds… like a whore. I mean, I understand some people are ambitious, but come on."
"I know!" Leigh agreed vehemently, seeming to cling to having someone to talk to about it. "And he was so good to her, Julie. You don't see the difference in him because you've only ever met the post-Shannon Aaron, but before she ruined him…" Leigh sighed, trailing off.
"Yeah, it definitely seemed like she hurt him pretty bad."
"He was devastated," Leigh stated. "I will never forgive her for doing that to him. I mean, he loved her so much, you know? She just didn't even see how lucky she was. And the nerve of her to come back in here and think she can talk to him now…" Leigh shook her head. "He'll never have anything to do with her again."