Another Man's Child

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “SOMETHING TELLS ME this is more than just a friendly visit,” Beth Montague said when Lisa took a chair in Beth’s office late the next afternoon. The office was light, airy, with a white carpet and a lot of blond wood. And comfortably cool, despite the August heat.

  “I’m losing him, Beth.”

  Beth was silent for a moment, her gaze darting toward the framed picture on the corner of her desk. Lisa knew it was a picture of John, Beth’s late husband, and that her friend could fully understand the pain of losing the man you loved. “Have you tried talking to him?” Beth finally asked, her eyes unusually somber.

  Lisa shook her head. She’d been reading a pamphlet about artificial insemination when he’d come in late one night a little over a week ago, and the frozen look on his face had been haunting her ever since. “It’s a little difficult to talk to someone who’s never around.” Her throat thickened with tears. For weeks he crawled into bed at night long after she was asleep and was up before she awoke.

  “John and I couldn’t have children, either. Did I ever tell you that?”

  Lisa’s head shot up. “No! I thought you’d just been waiting until the clinic was up and running.”

  Beth shook her head, glancing again at the picture of her husband. “We were genetically incompatible. I miscarried a couple of times after we were first married, but neither one of us expected to hear the doctor tell us that I’d probably never carry a baby to term, and that if I did, chances were it would suffer severe defects.”

  Lisa was shocked. She’d never guessed. Beth and John had always been so cheerful, so obviously happy with their life together. “How did you get over it?” she asked.

  Beth shrugged. “It was hard at first, of course. But we’d both come from big families, and neither one of us had ever had a burning need to produce a child. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. We appreciated the peace we found alone together. But still, having a family was the natural course of things, so we’d decided to do it while we were still young—that way we’d have a lot of golden years afterward. Naturally, when we were first told we couldn’t have children, we suddenly wanted them a lot. But once we got used to the idea of a whole lifetime of golden years, it wasn’t so bad. We had more time for each other than our friends did—their time was taken up with feedings and diapering and pacing the floor with crying infants. As it turned out, I’m thankful for every moment of that time.”

  Lisa gaped at her friend. “You amaze me, you know that? You’ve been through so much, but you’re one of the most cheerful and optimistic people I know.”

  “Well, look at my life.” Beth waved a hand at the room around her, the walls adorned with plaques, commendations and many many baby photos—Beth’s success stories. “How can I not be happy? I have a job I love, friends enough to chase away the loneliness, enough money to do what I want to do—and I have memories of a love most people are never lucky enough to find. But then, you know all about that once-in-a-lifetime love. You and Marcus are in with the lucky few.”

  Lisa nodded.

  “And that’s why I can’t just sit back and watch you two fall apart.”

  “I can’t watch it, either, Beth. Which is why I’m here.” Lisa smoothed a wrinkle from the skirt of her pale blue suit. “I’ve got to do something. A lot of Marcus’s problem is that he knows how badly I wanted to have a child, and he thinks his inability to give me. one is cheating me out of my life’s dream. I’m sure that’s why he won’t consider adoption. He seems to think that would be shortchanging me, raising another woman’s child when I’m perfectly capable of giving birth to my own.”

  “I guess that makes some sort of sense,” Beth said. She leaned her forearms against the edge of her desk and folded her hands in front of her ample chest, just as she had the day she’d told them that Marcus was sterile.

  “He’s against artificial insemination, too, of course, but you know Marcus,” Lisa rushed on. “He’d make a wonderful father. And with insemination he wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore. He wouldn’t have to feel like I’ve been cheated.”

  Beth spread her hands wide. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along, Lis. I’ve thought artificial insemination was your answer from the first, but it’s not me you have to convince.”

  Lisa sat back hard in her chair. “I know. So how do I convince my husband that it’s a good thing to impregnate myself with another man’s seed?”

  “You’re a doctor, Lis. You know that part of it is little more than a medical procedure, like getting someone else’s blood. We have blood banks. We have sperm banks. Legally, and every other way that really counts, the baby would belong to Marcus.”

  Lisa knew that. She crossed one leg over the other. “How is the donor selection actually made?”

  Beth pulled what looked like a homemade catalog from a pile in front of her and tossed it to the outside edge of her desk, just within Lisa’s reach. “You look through there and you pick one.”

  Lisa took the catalog, opening it slowly. She scanned the first couple of entries. “These listings are incredibly thorough,” she said, glancing up at Beth. She’d expected to see physical characteristics, medical history, maybe even an IQ, but the records also contained notations of schooling, of likes and dislikes, habits.

  “But remember, they only represent the final product of one particular genetic toss-up, mixed with an unknown environmental upbringing. There are no guarantees.”

  “No, of course not” Lisa continued reading. If only she could find one with eyes of Marcus’s particular shade of blue, with his rich brown hair and quick mind.

  “The one on page forty-nine is probably what you’re looking for. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Marcus was the donor.”

  Lisa shut the book. “I’m not really in the market.”

  Beth rocked back in her chair. “Fine. But if you ever decide you are, page forty-nine’s there.”

  Shaking her head, Lisa tried to make herself think clearly, to not let herself hope for—or want—something she couldn’t have. “Page forty-nine. It’s really that impersonal, is it?”

  “Yep.”

  “But what about the donors? Couldn’t one come back looking for his child?”

  Beth shook her head. “Not here they can’t. In the first place, a donor must sign a waiver before the process is ever begun. And then, as soon as all medical tests are administered and the man is cleared for donation, all records are destroyed.”

  “Destroyed? They aren’t locked in some cabinet somewhere or sent out into cyberspace?”

  “We destroy them, as is the common practice at most fertility clinics.”

  Lisa folded her hands, rubbing her thumbs together. Back and forth. Back and forth. “So what happens after a donor is chosen?” She was just curious. It was fascinating what medical science could do.

  “The mother has a physical, blood tests for HIV, rubella and so on.”

  “I just had my yearly last week, and I’ve been having that blood work done each year since Marcus and I first started trying to have a family,” Lisa said.

  Not that it mattered. She couldn’t seriously consider any of this. Not without Marcus’s support. She folded her arms across her chest.

  Beth smiled. “I thought you weren’t in the market.”

  “I’m not.” She couldn’t be.

  “Well, if you were, you’d need to get out your ovulation kit again, back to the old basil thermometer every day. And as soon as you begin ovulating, you have an ultrasound done and a blood test to show your hormone level. Then come to see me within the next twelve to thirty-six hours. But remember to give me at least an hour to thaw page forty-nine.” Beth grinned.

  “That’s really all there is to it?”

  “For you it is. The important forms have already been signed.”

  “They can’t be.” She knew Marcus had to sign a waiver, allowing her to have the procedure done. Because, legally, married to her, the baby would be his responsibility, too.
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br />   Beth pulled a thick folder from a cabinet behind her. “Remember that first time you two came in here—professionally, that is?”

  Lisa remembered back to the day she and Marcus had first come in for testing. They’d been so full of hope. Beth had asked them if they were willing to do whatever it took to have a baby. They’d both replied with an emphatic yes. And she’d given them each a stack of papers to take home, red tape that could slow down the process if they had to stop and sign for each procedure. They’d signed them all that night and Lisa had returned them the next day.

  “There wasn’t anything about…”

  “Yes, there was. I have his signed waiver right here.” Beth pulled a sheet of paper from the file.

  Frowning, Lisa leaned forward. It was Marcus’s signature all right. “But he wouldn’t have…”

  Lisa thought back to that night. Marcus had gone into the office the minute they’d arrived home. He’d come back out with the completed stack of papers in record time and tossed it on the hall table, as if it wasn’t the least bit important. He’d just wanted to be done with it, so sure that they weren’t going to need anything but the basic tests to set their minds at ease, certain they’d conceive as soon as they quit trying so hard. He hadn’t read the papers.

  “It’s notarized,” was all she could think of to say, still staring at the form. The other information had been typed in. Marcus had simply scrawled his signature across the bottom.

  Beth was nodding. “I had it done here, along with a stack of other things. At the time, I really didn’t think we were going to need it.”

  Lisa remembered Beth saying much the same thing that first day. She’d thought that having the tests would simply help them relax and let nature take its course. It was probably the only thing Marcus had heard that whole afternoon. The only thing he’d wanted to hear. Which was another reason it had hit him so hard when they’d finally learned the truth. Until that point he hadn’t even allowed the possibility of sterility to enter his mind.

  “He didn’t read what he was signing,” Lisa finally said.

  “Were you with him?”

  “No.” She’d been in the bathroom, drying tears she didn’t want him to see. Because she’d had a feeling, even if he hadn’t, that they had a problem. She was a doctor, and her instincts had been crying out for months. Oftentimes a couple couldn’t conceive while trying too hard because they made love strictly to have babies. She and Marcus had always made love because they couldn’t stop themselves.

  “Then you don’t know that he didn’t read it, Lis. It’s possible that he read what he was signing and, dismissing it as an impossibility, signed it, anyway, just to avoid further discussion. Marcus has always thought he could control the world, or at least his part of it.”

  Lisa smiled sadly. “He’s always been able to until now.”

  Beth’s eyes softened. “So what’s it going to be, Lis? Are you going to pull out that ovulation kit?”

  Lisa looked at the paper again. At Marcus’s scrawl across the bottom. Unable to speak through her tears, she shook her head.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OLIVER WEBSTER was worried. His thirty years as a professor of law at Yale had in no way prepared him to deal with the problems facing his daughter’s marriage. He had no idea how to help Lisa and Marcus, what to even suggest to them. But he knew someone who might have more answers than he did. Lisa’s friend, Beth Montague. He had a hunch just talking with Beth would make him feel better. It usually did.

  He stopped by her office on his way home from his volunteer shift at the hospital. He’d been taking a stint every week since Barbara had died, having found during his wife’s prolonged illness how badly the hospital was in need of volunteers. Helping other people who were suffering as she had made him feel a little closer to Barbara. But lately he’d been looking in on Beth on a fairly regular basis, as well.

  Her office door was open and she was sitting behind her desk engrossed in a textbook that looked as big as his law tomes.

  He tapped lightly on the door. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Oliver!” Her head shot up, her studious expression replaced with a welcoming grin. “I was wondering if you were going to stop by. How were things on the ward this afternoon?”

  It pleased him that she remembered his schedule. “Rosie Gardner’s back in. She’s developed an infection at her dialysis sight, but they’ve got it under control.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of the tweed jacket he wore even in the heat. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about something. Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “Of course not. Have a seat.” She came around the desk and joined him. “What’s up?”

  “I’m more than a little concerned about Lisa and Marcus. The last time we had dinner together, all three of us, was two months ago. They’re both working themselves to death.”

  Beth grimaced, her round features serious. “I know.”

  “The thing is, I know what the loss of a child, or the loss of the ability to have a child, can do to a marriage.” It chilled him even to think about that time in his life.

  “I know you do.” Her eyes brimmed with sympathy.

  “Eighty percent of the marriages that go through it fail afterward, did you know that?”

  “I didn’t, but I’m not surprised. I also don’t think Lisa and Marcus are in that eighty percent.”

  Oliver smiled, feeling better already. “Somehow I didn’t think you would. And I remember John saying that once you’d made your mind up about something, everyone involved may just as well accept it as fact.”

  Though Beth’s husband had been several years his junior, he’d enjoyed his conversations with his younger colleague. It was through Oliver’s connection with John that Beth and Lisa had first met. During one of her mother’s bad spells, Lisa had accompanied Oliver to a university function where John and Beth were in attendance. Lisa had just started her residency at Thornton Memorial Hospital at the time, and Beth had immediately taken her under her wing.

  “So, are we going to have dinner or do you have to hurry off?” Beth asked. Her plump cheeks had a way of dimpling when she smiled that made him feel like smiling, too.

  “Dinner, most definitely,” Oliver replied, offering her his arm. He refused to dwell on the twinge of unease he felt as he escorted Beth out to his car. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the friendship he and Beth had developed over the past year. Neither of them was looking for passion; each respected that the other had already had that once-in-a-lifetime privilege. But neither had mentioned the friendship to Lisa, either. Oliver wasn’t sure how his daughter would feel about his befriending a woman almost young enough to be his daughter.

  Almost, but not quite, Oliver reminded himself as he sat across from Beth at their favorite Chinese restaurant. At fifty-three, he still had a lot of years ahead of him. And if dinner once a week with a woman who made him smile made those years happier ones, where was the harm in that?

  “I GOT ALL THE FIGURES you needed, Mr. Cartwright. A couple of the properties look promising for Cartwright warehouses. The rest I’d leave alone.”

  Marcus glanced up from the report he’d been studying to find his long-haired executive assistant at the door to his office. “Thanks, Ron. Leave them there on the table, will you please?” He returned his attention to his report.

  “Yes, sir.” Ron Campbell did as he asked and then hesitated by the door.

  Marcus looked up again. “Was there something else?”

  “Not really, sir. It’s just that, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but you and Mrs. Cartwright aren’t planning on moving, are you, sir? That property you had me check in Chicago is residential.”

  Marcus swore silently, tired to the bone. He should have done that investigating himself. He knew how thorough Ron was, too thorough to simply call for terms as Marcus had asked him to. Which was the reason Ron had reached such an elevated position within Cartwright Enterprises at the tender age of twenty-five, in
spite of his ponytail.

  “We’re doing a lot more business in the Midwest. I thought it might be beneficial to have a home there,” he said. “Even the nicest hotels get old after a while.”

  Ron nodded and left, not looking completely satisfied, and Marcus couldn’t really blame him. He traveled to Chicago once, maybe twice, a year. Certainly not enough to warrant a home as nice as the one he’d had Ron check on. But Ron didn’t need to know that Marcus wanted the house so that he’d have a place to go when he gave Lisa her freedom. A man of action, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to exist in their current stalemate much longer. More importantly, he didn’t think Lisa could, either.

  LISA COULDN’T SLEEP. She’d been restless ever since she’d stopped by Beth’s office earlier that day, but the restlessness solidified into guilt as soon as she climbed into bed and turned out the light. Rolling over to Marcus’s empty side of the bed, she flipped on his bedside lamp and flopped back down to hug his pillow to her breasts. She kept thinking about page forty-nine, and every time she caught her mind dwelling on that anonymous specimen, she felt as if she was being unfaithful to her husband.

  Where was Marcus, anyway? It was almost one o’clock in the morning. She needed his arms around her to chase away the uneasiness of the day, to surround her with his love and convince her they weren’t falling apart.

  Beth and John had overcome childlessness quite successfully, happily, even. Surely the love she and Marcus shared was every bit as strong. Still clutching Marcus’s pillow, she rolled over and looked around their room. Elegant to the core, it could have been showcased in House & Garden magazine, and probably had been when Marcus’s parents were still alive.

  But her gaze didn’t fall on the matching Queen Anne furnishings or the professionally decorated walls and floor. She glanced, instead, at the little gold jewelry box Marcus had bought for her at an antique fair on their honeymoon, at the Norman Rockwell original she’d surprised him with for his thirtieth birthday, at the numerous photos on her dresser and his. At the his and hers rocking chairs they’d laughingly picked out together when they’d gotten engaged. They’d planned to rock their babies in those chairs—and grow old in them together.