Becoming the Talbot Sisters

by Rachel Linden

Waverly narrowed her eyes and stared at Charlie for a long moment. “We’re not talking about growing carrots or cucumbers, you know,” she said tightly. “This is a person you’re talking about making. Do you have any notion what this entails?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Not really, but that’s okay. A stranger would do it for money. Why can’t I do this for my own twin sister?”

  Waverly poured more hot water onto her green tea leaves and squeezed a lemon wedge into the cup. Her brow was furrowed, a sign that she was deep in thought. She was trying to act brusque and businesslike, but Charlie could see a hint of longing beginning to soften the corners of her mouth.

  Charlie took a deep breath, trying to embed into her memory the scent of hot coffee and frying bacon and a wisp of clean, cold air when a customer opened the door. Soon she would be back to the smell of old paving stones and bus exhaust, baking apple strudel and urine, smells that had also come to be familiar. But these scents awakened memories long dormant. It smelled like her teenage years.

  “Why?” Waverly finally asked. “Why would you do this?” She searched Charlie’s face as though trying to delve past her words to the deeper meaning beneath them.

  Charlie leaned back in her chair and considered her response.

  “Do you remember the day we went to court, the day the judge assigned us to Aunt Mae?” she asked.

  After their parents’ death the girls had been thrust into the middle of a nasty family feud among their mother’s kin, used as pawns in a convoluted war involving money and power and their dead parents’ estate. Their father had no family to speak of. His parents were dead, and his only brother, Uncle Billy, was a kind but absentminded confirmed bachelor and not a suitable candidate for the girls’ guardian. Uncle Billy had watched helplessly as the twins were fought over like a scrap of meat, but he had not been able to offer any practical solution. The feud ultimately landed the participating family members in court with a judge tasked with assigning custody of the girls and sorting out the entire sordid mess.

  “I was terrified that the judge wouldn’t like us and that we’d end up in foster care. I was so afraid they’d separate us.” Waverly looked pained at the recollection. “What made you think of that?”

  “I was just remembering something Aunt Mae said to us that day. We still thought we might have to go live with Aunt Audrey and Uncle Stephen.” Charlie frowned, remembering the terrible uncertainty of that time. No one on their mother’s side had been particularly warm or engaging, but their mother’s sister, the human icicle, was the worst. She had only wanted custody of the girls as a way to access their property holding and inheritance, which was sizable. “It was right before we went into the courtroom. Aunt Mae told us, ‘You girls stick close together, you hear? Family’s the only tie that don’t break.’”

  “Sounds like something she would say,” Waverly agreed. She was ignoring the remainder of her breakfast, focusing all of her attention on Charlie.

  Aunt Mae had shown up at the trial unexpectedly, alerted to the situation by Uncle Billy. She had no interest in the family squabble, but had driven from Ohio to Maryland in her dyspeptic blue Chevy Chevette just to support the girls, whom she had only met a handful of times. After interviewing all members of the family, the judge surprised everyone with his ruling. He awarded custody to Aunt Mae but left the handling of the estate to their uncle Stephen, an attorney.

  The judge had meant well, and his ruling had removed the girls from all the power plays and family drama over their parents’ money and placed them in a stable and loving, albeit completely unfamiliar home, but it had unforeseen consequences. As soon as the court case was over, Stephen refused to release any funds for the care and maintenance of the girls. He made sure to keep the beautiful house, the hefty bank account, and all the tangible assets within his control.

  Aunt Mae had neither the money nor the business savvy to fight him, and so she took the girls and raised them on her own dime. By the time the twins turned eighteen and were entitled to the estate, there was little left. Their uncle had squandered most of it on bad business decisions and underhanded dealings. The only things that remained were their trust funds, protected by law until the girls came of age.

  Charlie leaned forward. “‘Family’s the only tie that don’t break.’ Aunt Mae didn’t just say the phrase, she lived by it. She took us in and cobbled us together into a family of sorts, the three of us. And now she’s gone. That leaves only you and me. And we aren’t exactly living in the same universe.” Charlie looked down at her plate and swirled a bite of waffle around in a pool of butter. “I don’t want this to be the end of our family, of us,” she admitted. “I want her to be right.”

  Waverly dabbed at her mouth with a thin paper napkin and met Charlie’s eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Her tone was sharp and serious. “I don’t know anyone else who would even dream of doing such a thing for me.”

  Charlie was not sure, but she knew she was going to do it anyway. She felt a sick jolt in her stomach as though she were about to take a swan dive off a cliff. She’d felt that way before, but she’d been standing on the Victoria Falls Bridge above the Zambezi River on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, about to bungee jump straight down to where crocodiles circled in the river more than 350 feet below. She was not a particularly impetuous person, but she could be bold when she knew something was right. She had that feeling now.

  Still, she hesitated for a long moment. She was signing a blank check with no way to know the outcome, how it might change her life or Waverly’s. She thought of Aunt Mae, lying newly buried in the Oakview Cemetery. She imagined her sitting at the table with them, chewing a slice of maple bacon and listening in to the conversation. What would she say about this rash promise? Charlie couldn’t decide if she’d think her niece was crazy or if she’d be proud.

  “I’m sure,” Charlie said finally, diving headfirst into thin air.

  CHAPTER 5

  How’s your puzzle going, darling?” Waverly asked, peering over at Andrew as he methodically worked through the New York Times crossword. She settled beside him in their sagging queen-size bed, trying to avoid the dip in the middle of the mattress. Andrew hmmed absently but didn’t look up, his forehead creased as he tried to decipher a clue. Waverly and Andrew were spending a quiet evening in their junior suite at the Hide-a-Way Inn. Misnomers abounded at this particular establishment; the Double Comfort bed was anything but comfortable, and the only nod to a suite were the two chairs and small pine table in one corner of the room with a Mr. Coffee and two white diner mugs perched on top.

  Outside the sliding glass doors all was dark and quiet. Their room was lit by lamps attached to the wall on either side of the bed, casting pools of yellow light onto the shiny red-and-black tartan comforter. On the opposite wall, mounted on a wooden shield, hung a taxidermied deer head sporting an impressive rack of antlers. Waverly tried to ignore the glassy eyes that seemed to follow her wherever she went in the room. It was decidedly creepy.

  She tucked her legs under the comforter on her side of the bed and peeled the foil from a snack-size pudding cup, scooping up a cold, sweet spoonful of pudding with the little silver teaspoon she always carried in her purse. It was one of the set from her parents’ wedding silver. The entire set had been gone by the time the twins reached adulthood, sold by Uncle Stephen to pay off some debt, but Waverly had the single teaspoon left. She’d been eating a bowl of the nanny’s homemade rice pudding in her bedroom the day before her parents died, and when she hastily packed up a suitcase with her favorite things before leaving with Aunt Mae for Cooksville, she’d taken the spoon with her. It was her favorite keepsake, a memento of a happier time. She savored the spoonful of pudding, letting it roll over her tongue. Butterscotch, her favorite.

  “Hmm . . . a three-letter word for heat,” Andrew murmured absently. He usually did the crossword over breakfast, finishing it most days before he’d drained his second cup of coffee, but they’d spent most of the day sor
ting out matters of Aunt Mae’s estate.

  Waverly didn’t bother to guess the answer. Andrew and Charlie were the linguists in the family. She could never beat either of them when it came to word games, and she didn’t really want to try. Her husband and her sister had a long-running Scrabble war between them, playing a game or two on the rare occasions Charlie returned from Europe, complete with gourmet prizes for the winner. Waverly never joined in, preferring to flip through cookbooks or research new show ideas rather than be soundly beaten by both of them.

  Besides, Waverly had other things on her mind at the moment. Her sister’s offer was tantalizing. She could feel the stirring of hope in her breast, and it made her nervous. Hope was a dangerous emotion. She had learned that the hard way.

  Looking for distraction, she clicked on the television and searched through the channels until she found the Food Network, her home turf. Cupcake Wars was just finishing. She settled back against the headboard, setting the now empty plastic carton of butterscotch to the side, and carefully peeled the foil from the top of a vanilla. She scooped up a heaping spoonful, enjoying its bland creaminess.

  It was a dirty little secret that Simply Perfect’s Waverly Talbot loved grocery store pudding. She kept a stash on hand at home, hiding the little plastic tubs in the back of her dry goods cabinet as though they were pornography, shameful and yet titillating somehow. It was pure comfort food. When the girls were in high school, if there was a coupon in the weekly flier and Kroger was having a sale, Aunt Mae would buy the pudding cups as a treat, tucking a cup into their school lunches as a surprise. So little had been happy in those early years that the little plastic cups had been a bright spot for Waverly. Vanilla, double chocolate, or pistachio—they all tasted like nostalgia to her now.

  “Ire!” Andrew exclaimed, looking over the top of his reading glasses at the TV and then penciling in the answer. Waverly scooped another spoonful of pudding, letting it slide off the spoon onto her tongue little by little, savoring it as she watched a contestant frantically frost a seemingly endless supply of cupcakes while her teammate tossed edible glitter on dozens of already frosted ones.

  Waverly turned her attention from the show and gave her husband a sidelong glance. She wanted to tell him about Charlie’s proposal. But what was the best way to go about it? She should wait until he finished his puzzle and she had his attention. She was afraid to speak the idea aloud, nervous that the tiny flutter of hope would be extinguished by Andrew’s clinical practicality.

  She took another spoonful of pudding. With his crisp, pin-striped blue cotton pajamas, his close-cropped hair, and clean profile, Andrew reminded Waverly of a man from another era, the fifties perhaps, an investment banker for the Rat Pack.

  He was the CEO for the New York branch of a large and venerable investment firm, seven years older than Waverly, with hair a distinguished gray at the temples and a lean physique he toned playing golf and tennis. Born and raised in London, he had finished university at Cambridge and chosen a job in international banking. After working for a few years in London, he’d been transferred to New York. He’d never returned to the UK. He was bicultural now, with a smooth, plummy Oxbridge accent and a penchant for a pint of Old Hooky bitter, but with a love for the Yankees and the New York Times. They’d met at a charity gala for lung cancer research. Waverly was a guest host for one of the tables, and Andrew had sat at her right, his manner sweet and a little shy. By the end of the night, he’d asked her to go sailing, and she had accepted immediately, sensing a kind, intelligent soul under his reserved exterior.

  Waverly knew what people had thought of them at first. That Andrew was getting a trophy wife and in return Waverly had snagged a sugar daddy to support her dreams of stardom. Her entertaining empire was still just a struggling local access show back then, and Andrew was a recently divorced man. But the skeptics were wrong. Theirs was a love match, not a marriage of convenience. Andrew was steady, thorough, a good man with a dry sense of humor and a quiet confidence that was unshaken by his wife’s rising career. Waverly leaned on him for support and strength. He was her rock, and she needed him in a way she did not let herself need anyone else. In turn, Waverly added the sparkle and glamour to Andrew’s predictable and often high-stress life, coddling and prodding him to enjoy a world outside of his job and routine. There had been ups and downs in the past eight years, but overall they shared a happy marriage. They were partners, equals, each other’s closest ally.

  “Here’s one for you,” Andrew remarked. “Slow-cooked Italian dish. Two words. Four letters each.”

  “Hmm, I have no idea,” Waverly demurred, reaching for another pudding cup, this one double chocolate. She was going to have to eat plain salad tomorrow to make up for three pudding cups in one evening, but they were helping to calm her nerves.

  Andrew paused, considering the clue. “Maybe Charlie will know. I’ll ask her in the morning.”

  Cupcake Wars ended and a rerun of The Pioneer Woman came on. Waverly frowned but didn’t change the channel as Ree Drummond promised to show viewers how to make a simple and filling hamburger soup fit for ranchers and hungry teenagers. Waverly made a humph sound. Ree Drummond, the warm and down-to-earth star, was Waverly’s personal nemesis. She thought the redhead’s flat midwestern vowels and slow-talking, aw shucks demeanor seemed a little rehearsed. Waverly had sat beside her at a charity event once and could have sworn that Ree’s accent was actually that of a regular New Yorker. What’s worse, The Pioneer Woman had snagged the weekly Food Network spot Waverly had been hoping for.

  Waverly licked her spoon slowly, tuning out Ree rhapsodizing about the homey hamburger soup, and tried to calculate how best to broach the topic at hand with Andrew. It was a touchy subject for both of them after so many years and so many failed attempts. They had weathered the storm year after year, but every miscarriage, every failed try, had taken a toll on their relationship.

  In truth, Waverly suspected that Andrew wanted to lay the idea of a baby to rest and set about enjoying their childless lives. He had never said it, and she had never asked him. She was afraid to face his honest answer, afraid that it would compel her to give up her dearest dream. She could not let it go. She was supposed to be a mother, longed to be a mother with an ache that sometimes felt overwhelming. It was a basic and instinctual desire, this visceral hunger to hold a child to her breast and breathe in the innocent smell of that little warm head, knowing that the baby was hers to love and care for. Sometimes she felt that the longing for a baby was so strong it might pull her heart from her chest.

  She scraped out the last bit of pudding from the cup and tapped the spoon against her teeth. On the television Ree was stirring oregano and cayenne pepper into the soup, delivering instructions with her typical slow smile. Waverly frowned at the screen.

  “Waverly, what is on your mind?” Andrew asked without looking up from his paper, penciling in another word.

  Waverly turned to him, startled. “What do you mean?”

  He turned, peering at her over the top of his reading glasses, and raised an eyebrow, his mouth quirking with the hint of a smile. “You’ve eaten three pudding cups in the last twenty minutes and you’re sitting over there fidgeting and boring a hole in my head instead of watching that gingery woman make soup.” He put his paper down and regarded her patiently. “So what is going on in that lovely head of yours, my dear?”

  Waverly clicked off the TV and turned to her husband, her heart in her throat. What if he said no? She had to find the words to show him that this could be the answer to their many years of loss, the key to her heart’s deepest desire.

  “Charlie made an incredibly generous offer to us today at breakfast,” she said slowly, watching Andrew’s face carefully. “She wants to be our surrogate.”

  Andrew looked puzzled. “Our what?”

  “She’s willing to carry a baby for us, since I can’t attempt another pregnancy.” Waverly looked at Andrew, her eyes shining. “This could be our chance to have a c
hild, darling. It could actually work this time.”

  Andrew slowly laid down his pencil and the newspaper and met her eyes, his own grave. “I thought we were done with this,” he said quietly.

  She felt the tension rise up instantly between them—all the frustration and sadness and fatigue of the past eight years. So many tries and so many failures. She folded her arms across her rose silk robe, across her empty belly. “We never said we were finished,” she countered, a touch belligerently.

  Andrew sighed, a tired sound that frightened her more than if he’d been angry. “But your doctors said we had to be. They said it was the end, that this last time was the last try.”

  “And now Charlie’s given us another chance,” Waverly said. “Just think about it, Andrew,” she urged. “Doesn’t it seem right?”

  He took off his glasses and folded them up, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Are you actually considering this?”

  Waverly hesitated. “Yes, I am.” Her voice caught and she stopped, swallowing hard. She struggled to keep her tone steady. She wanted to discuss this calmly, to help Andrew see all the reasons it could work. But in the end she just spoke the words that bubbled up from her heart.

  “I can’t give up, Andrew. I can’t let this be the end. I need a baby. I’m supposed to be a mother. I know it. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” She reached over and took his hand, touching the heavy platinum wedding ring, lacing her fingers through his. “Please,” she pleaded quietly. “Promise me you’ll at least consider it? For me?”

  He didn’t meet her eyes, but finally he nodded, his mouth set in a stoic line. “If it really means that much to you . . . I’ll consider it,” he said. “I’m not saying yes, but we can explore the possibility.”

  “Thank you,” Waverly whispered fervently, on impulse planting a kiss on his knuckles. “This could be the best thing we’ve ever done.”

  Andrew reached over and rested his hand on her head for a moment, stroking her soft curls. “I hope you’re right,” he said quietly, his tone weighty with resignation. “I hope you’re right.”