Stunning

by Sara Shepard

Page 11

 

  “Oh. ” Emily looked startled. “That’s nice of you. ”

  “I’m just doing what’s best for the baby,” Gayle said, her gaze squarely on Emily, a sweet smile on her face.

  “I appreciate it. ” Emily took a bite of the pancakes and smiled. “They’re really good. ”

  Gayle cleared her throat awkwardly. “Pardon me if you think this is a little forward, but I assume you are putting your baby up for adoption. Can I ask if you’ve found a family yet?”

  A muscle in Emily’s cheek twitched. Aria reached under the table and took Emily’s hand as if to say, If you want to run out of here right now, I’m right behind you. But instead, Emily had taken a breath. “Uh, yes. I found a nice couple who lives in the suburbs, not that far from me. ”

  Gayle looked crestfallen. “I figured as much. I recently lost a child, and it was devastating. My husband and I want a baby, and I’ve gone through countless fertility treatments, spent tens of thousands of dollars, but we haven’t had any luck. ”

  “That must be so rough for you,” Emily said, her features softening.

  Gayle’s eyes welled with tears. “I want a baby of my own so badly. You seem like a beautiful, smart, well-rounded girl. I would be honored to raise your child, but I guess that’s not meant to be. ” She hung her head.

  “Gosh, if I’d have known,” Emily murmured, fiddling with her fork. “I’m really sorry. ”

  “Are you sure you couldn’t change your mind?” Gayle’s voice rose. “I could make it worth your while. My husband and I do very well for ourselves, and we would reward you handsomely. ”

  A zillion alarms blared in Aria’s head. Did this woman seriously mean she was going to pay Emily for her kid?

  But Emily didn’t appear fazed. She reached for her water glass and took a long sip, nodding for Gayle to go on.

  “The baby would have every privilege in the world,” Gayle said. “Private schools. Lessons of all kinds. Amazing trips around the world. You name it. ”

  Aria glanced around at the other patrons in the café, amazed no one had overheard what had just transpired. Wasn’t this illegal? Then Gayle dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table and stood. “Think about it, Heather. I’ll call you in a few days, or you call me. ” She passed Emily a business card. A second later, she was gliding out of the café, waving good-bye to the balding owner in suspenders behind the counter as though she hadn’t just offered to buy a stranger’s baby.

  As soon as Gayle disappeared down the sidewalk, Aria let out a breath. “Do you want to call the police, or shall I?”

  Emily looked surprised. “What?”

  Aria stared at her. “Are you high? She just offered you money for your baby. ”

  Emily picked at the pancakes. “I feel terrible for her. It’s obvious she really wants a baby. She seems so sad. ”

  “You bought that sob story?” Aria shook her head. Emily always was the most sensitive of the group, the one who saved baby birds when the mother pushed them out of the nest too early, or who tried to stop Ali when she teased someone too nastily. “Em, normal people don’t walk into cafés and offer to buy teenagers’ unborn children. Even people who are desperate to have kids. There’s something seriously wrong with her. ”

  But Emily was staring wistfully at her belly, appearing not to hear a word of what Aria said. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have everything you wanted in the world? Exotic trips? Fantastic summer camps? The baby’s life would be incredible. ”

  “Money isn’t everything, you know,” Aria pointed out. “Look at Spencer. She had every privilege in the world, and her family’s a mess. Can you honestly tell me that woman would be a caring, nurturing mother?”

  “It’s possible,” Emily said, an empathetic look on her face. “We don’t even know her. ”

  “Exactly!” Aria pounded her fork on the table for emphasis. “I loved the sound of the first family you chose, Em. You got to know them. You picked them for a reason. ”

  “But they’re both teachers,” Emily protested. “Neither of them make that much money. ”

  “Since when do you care about that?”

  “Since I got pregnant!” Emily’s cheeks flushed. She said it so loudly a couple of patrons looked up, startled, then sheepishly went back to their meals.

  Aria talked on and on, listing reason after reason why Emily shouldn’t pay any attention to Gayle, but Emily still had that torn, faraway look on her face. It wasn’t surprising when Emily told her a few days later that she’d accepted Gayle’s offer. It also wasn’t that surprising that, only a few weeks later, Emily called Aria back in a panic, saying she’d changed her mind and that Aria had to help her get out of the Gayle mess.

  “Your risotto has gone gelatinous!”

  Madame Richeau was standing over Aria, peering into her pot with a look of abhorrence on her face. Sure enough, the rice had congealed into a thick paste. She tried to rake the wooden spoon through it, but the slop wouldn’t budge.

  Madame Richeau shook her head and strode away, muttering. The whole class looked at Aria with tiny smirks on their faces. Noel stared at Aria curiously. “Are you sure everything is okay?” he asked.

  Heavy pressure settled behind Aria’s eyes. She considered telling Noel about what was going on with Emily’s pregnancy . . . maybe even with A. Couples told each other everything, after all. They were supposed to trust each other, right?

  But then the image of Mr. Kahn in that dress rushed to the forefront of her mind again. She straightened up and gave Noel a self-deprecating smile. “Sorry. I was thinking about what I was going to wear to Hanna’s dad’s benefit on Sunday. Do you think I should go vintage or buy something new?”

  Noel studied her for a moment, looking puzzled, then shrugged and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “You’ll look fantastic in anything. ”

  Aria snuggled into him, her insides feeling as sludgy and unappetizing as the risotto she’d just botched. So much for the honesty pact. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of white at the window. Was that . . . a flash of blond hair? But when she broke away from Noel and looked closer, the flicker had already vanished.

  11

  WORK IT

  Later that night, Hanna walked through the steamed-up double doors of The Pump, a musclehead gym at the King James Mall. The gym smelled like sweat, spilled Gatorade, and that unidentifiable but utterly boy smell of burgeoning testosterone that always made Hanna gag. A slick-haired guy straight out of Jersey Shore central casting sat behind the check-in desk, drinking a protein shake and reading a bodybuilding magazine. Across from him was a giant mural of a gorilla lifting weights, his ab muscles well defined, his biceps bulging. She supposed it was meant to inspire people to work out more, but who wanted to look like a gorilla?

  Hanna paid for a day pass and walked into the main exercise room, which consisted of racks of free weights, lines of bench-press machines, and a long bank of mirrors. There was the ear-splitting clang of metal weights hitting steel bars. When Hanna looked in the corner by the windows, her heart began to pound. James Freed and Mason Byers were doing pull-ups on side-by-side machines. Standing next to them, dressed in an old Phillies T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, staring dreamily at something across the room, was Mike.

  Hanna swiveled around and followed Mike’s gaze to a large exercise classroom. On the front of the door was a sign that said POLE DANCING, 6:30. A bunch of metal poles had been spaced evenly in front of the mirrors. A few middle-aged women dressed in tight-fitting leotards, flirty miniskirts, and wobbly high heels stood around the room. Positioned in the very center, balanced perfectly in pointy stripper heels, was Colleen.

  Mike’s new girlfriend raked her fingers through her hair. It didn’t seem quite so mousy brown today, and her body looked both curvy and lithe at the same time in tight spandex shorts and a yellow bra top. When Colleen noticed Mike’s reflection, she turned around, waved, and blew him a kiss. Mike blew one back.
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  Hanna balled up her fists, thinking of the two of them in bed together.

  She stormed to the dressing room, dropped her duffel on the floor, and stepped into a tiger-printed, stripper-style crop top she’d found at the mall earlier that afternoon. After pouring herself into it—she’d bought a size smaller than normal for maximum cleavage—she checked herself out in the mirror. Her hair was full and wild, thanks to tons of hairspray. She had on triple the amount of makeup she normally wore, though she’d stopped before applying false eyelashes. And then there was the pièce de résistance: a pair of incredibly high, incredibly spiky, silver Jimmy Choo sandals. She’d only worn them once before, to last year’s prom; Mike had thought they were so sexy he even made her wear them to the after-party with her jeans. Hanna slipped them on her feet and pivoted back and forth. They looked perfect. She just hoped she could pole dance in them.

  Her cell phone buzzed, and she eyed it nervously. One new text message. Luckily, it was only from Kate, asking if she’d be willing to help her hand out fliers at a 10k race around Rosewood Saturday morning. Sure, Hanna wrote back, trying to ignore her shaking hands as she typed. Now that Spencer and Emily had received new notes from A, she’d been waiting all day for hers.

  Could Gayle be A? Hanna hadn’t met the woman over the summer—she only heard about her when Emily reached out shortly before her C-section—but the phone messages Gayle had left the night they sneaked Emily and the baby out of the hospital had stayed with her. They weren’t the desperate, sobbing voicemails most people would leave if they thought they might not get the child they’d hoped and prayed for—they were steely and enraged. Gayle was not the kind of person you crossed, and now she was knee-deep in Mr. Marin’s campaign.

  That morning at breakfast, Hanna had sat down next to her dad at the table. “How do you know Gayle? Are you old friends?”

  Mr. Marin continued to butter his toast. “I actually didn’t know her until about a week ago. She called me up to say she’d recently moved to Pennsylvania and really liked my platform. The amount of money she’s promised is astounding. ”

  “You didn’t do a background check on her? What if she’s, I don’t know, a Satan worshipper?” Hanna’s face had felt hot. Or a crazy person who’s stalking your daughter?

  Her father gave her a curious look. “Gayle’s husband just gave a substantial donation to Princeton to build a new cancer research lab. I don’t know too many Satan worshippers who would do that. ”

  Discouraged, Hanna had gone upstairs and Googled Gayle’s name, but nothing damning came up. She was influential in countless charities in New Jersey, and she’d participated in a dressage competition at the Devon Horse Show ten years ago. Then again, what would come up? It wasn’t as if Gayle would keep a blog about how she was systematically torturing four high-school girls and calling herself A.