“Chee-wo,” the little girl informs me.
I smile at her. Why are kids so cute? Denise doesn’t find children cute. She could look at a little girl like this one, shrug her shoulders, and go right back to texting on her phone.
“Chee-wo!” the girl says again, and this time she holds out a Cheerio to me with a chubby little hand dripping with saliva. She’s sharing her food. What a kind, generous baby. The mother is so lucky. She’s so lucky and she has no idea. She’s gabbing with her girlfriend, not even looking at her precious child. It’s so unfair.
Oh God. I think I have to move.
“Abby?”
I lift my eyes. The girl standing in front of me gives off a “nice girl” vibe. She has a pretty, round face, with blond hair tied back in a high ponytail at the back of her head. She’s wearing a black short-sleeved blouse, which she hastily explained is part of her waitressing uniform. She has a well-scrubbed, clean-cut, American girl vibe—she’s the sort of girl who you might hire to babysit your children.
“Chelsea?” I ask.
She nods.
Chelsea Williams is Monica’s roommate. The two of them have lived together for the last several years, and she’s the last person I’m scheduled to speak with before coming back to my husband to assure him that Monica is indeed “squeaky clean.” But from the bland, pleasant smile on Chelsea’s face, I know this meeting is going to go exactly as I thought.
“Please have a seat,” I tell Chelsea.
She slides into a chair across from me at the table. “I’m not late, am I?”
I shake my head. “I’m early.”
“Like Monica.” Chelsea laughs. “She’s always early.”
I already know this fact about my assistant. I value promptness in an employee, and this is yet another way Monica has managed to impress me.
“So how long have you been living with Monica?” I ask her.
“We met in college.” Chelsea opens up the menu in front of her. “So we lived together two years then and now for a year in the city. She’s probably my best friend.”
“So you know her very well then?”
She nods eagerly. “Absolutely. What would you like to know about her?”
I don’t have any notes from Sam this time. Really, there’s only one thing I want to know about Monica. Is it likely she’s going to change her mind and fight to keep her baby?
But I can’t straight out ask that.
“Is she responsible?” I ask.
“Well, yeah!” Chelsea giggles. “Honestly, if it weren’t for her, we would have been booted out of our place ages ago for forgetting to pay the rent.”
I hesitate. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
“Not at the moment.” She raises an eyebrow. “You think a boyfriend would be okay with something like this?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, then.”
I look down at my coffee cup. I just got a plain coffee—no cream, no sugar. When I was in college, I used to add about a quarter of a cup of cream to my coffee, but when I saw Denise drinking it black every day, I switched. Now that’s all I’ll ever drink. And like Denise, I lose respect for anyone who pours cream into their coffee.
“Does Monica take good care of herself?” I ask.
Chelsea frowns. “What do you mean? She, like, showers every day and all that.”
“I mean, does she do drugs or drink a lot or…?”
That makes her laugh. “Monica? No way. She’s a complete square. Like, the designated driver and all that shit.”
Of course. I should have guessed. Everyone I’ve spoken to without exception has verified Monica Johnson is squeaky clean. She’s one halo away from being a saint.
“Listen,” Chelsea says as she wipes some white froth from her lips, “I just want to say I think the arrangement you’ve got with Monica is really cool.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you?”
“Yeah!” She nods vigorously. “Just because you’re too old to have children of your own, that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t make great parents, right?”
Too old to have children of my own? I’m thirty-six! I’ve got quite a bit of time left before menopause. If not for my bum ovaries, I’d have no trouble at all having children at my age.
But Chelsea here is all of twenty-three. I hate to think how old she thinks I am. I’m not even going to ask—why make this meeting more depressing?
“Thank you,” I say.
She grins at me. “So are you going to go through with it?”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “I think we might.”
Chapter 9
When I come home from work, Sam greets me with dinner.
He comes out of the kitchen, his face pink from the heat of the stove, red wine staining his T-shirt, and somehow there’s white flour dotting his hair. So I have absolutely no idea what he’s made. Red wine biscuits?
I glance at the kitchen, flinching at the mess inside. At least I know he’ll clean it up himself—I can always count on him to clean up his own kitchen disasters without prompting. “Can I help with anything?”
“No way,” he says. “You’ve been hard at work all day. I want you to relax and have a delicious meal. Do you want any wine?”
I look at the splotches of wine on his T-shirt and grin. “Should I squeeze it out of your clothing?”
“Ho ho, very funny.”
He does pour me a glass of red wine, which is very nice indeed, because I did have a long day at work. Sam never complains about my hours—he always says he thinks it’s cool his wife is a high-power advertising exec. (I’m not exactly an exec, but I don’t correct him.) I’ve overheard him bragging about me, so I guess he means it.
A few minutes later, he emerges from the kitchen with two plates of food. He places one of them in front of me. “Ta da!” he says. “It’s chicken marsala with rice.”
I look down at the chicken on my plate. I chew on my lip. “Is the chicken supposed to be red?”
“Well, I used red wine.”
“It’s just… it’s awfully red.”
He looks down at his own chicken thoughtfully. “Well, it’s not how it looks, right? It’s how it tastes.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
He watches me as I slice a small piece of chicken off the end. Well, it least it appears to be cooked. Although judging how long it took me to slice through it, I’m worried it’s a bit overcooked.
“It’s not pink this time,” Sam points out. “Score.”
I flash him a thin smile. “Wonderful.”
Okay, here goes nothing.
I say a quick prayer and stuff the piece of chicken in my mouth. The taste of red wine and burnt flour mixed with chicken assaults my taste buds. Sam is still watching me, an expectant look on his face. I want to swallow the damn thing down, but it’s so chewy, I can’t. I’ll be chewing this chicken for the rest of the night.
“Delicious,” I say around bites of chicken.
He frowns at me. “Then why are you making that face?”
“I’m not making a face.”
Sam regards me for a moment. Finally, he slices off a piece of chicken and pops it in his mouth. He has it in there for about two seconds before he starts coughing and spits it out into a napkin.
“Oh, Christ!” he says. “That’s awful! Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug. “I was just happy it wasn’t raw again.”
He smiles crookedly. “Thank you for pretending to like it.”
“Thank you for not making me eat it.”
He leans in to kiss me. “Thank you for being understanding that I’m still learning.”
“And thank you in advance for cleaning up the kitchen.”
He laughs and kisses me again. He probably meant it to just be another peck on the lips, but it turns into something more intense than that. He puts his hand on my back and pulls me closer to him until I start to get all tingly. He really is quite a good kisser. Back when we were dating, it
used to make my knees weak every time he kissed me. I know that’s cliché, but it really did.
Now we’ve been married a while so I don’t get weak in the knees on a daily basis, but I still think our kisses are far sexier than average. They’re still better than any kiss I’d had before Sam came along.
“I’m not that hungry anyway,” he breathes in my ear.
“Me either.”
And then he’s pulling me to my feet, and at first we’re stumbling in the direction of the bedroom, but as it turns out, we only make it as far as the couch.
That’s one nice thing about not having kids. Sex on the couch.
It’s only when it’s over and we’re lying half-naked together (okay, mostly naked), entwined on the sofa, my mind wanders to Monica’s offer. I have interviewed everyone on my list and found absolutely nothing concerning about Monica Johnson. There’s absolutely no reason not to power through with this.
Sam toys with a lock of my black hair while I snuggle into his bare chest. Sam got a membership at his university gym a few years ago because “it lowers the health insurance premiums,” but he actually started using it. He goes to the gym nearly every day to run, and I think he hits the weights twice a week. I’m proud of his determination to take better care of himself, but also, I love what lifting those weights has done for the muscles in his upper body.
“How do you get your hair so soft?” he asks me.
“Is it soft?”
“Yes. It’s freakishly soft, actually.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“I didn’t say I liked it. I was just commenting on its physical properties.”
I smack him in the arm. He laughs and hugs me closer to him. Maybe my ovaries betrayed me, but I’ve been lucky in love, at least. There’s no better guy out there.
“I love you, Abby,” he murmurs into my hair.
I grin up at him. “I love you too.”
“I was just thinking…” He toys with my hair again, his brown eyes on mine. “I think we should ask for a toddler.”
Mood: killed.
I lift my head off his chest and stare at him. “What?”
He props himself up on the couch. “Look, Abby, I said I’d think about the… surrogate thing and… I’m not comfortable with it. I want to adopt.”
I don’t know how I can go from post-coital bliss to tears in five seconds, but somehow I make it happen. I can’t stop it. All the pain I had pushed aside after that day Sam burst into my baby shower and told me Janelle had backed out on us comes rushing back to me. Even though Sam has stuffed the bassinet into the closet and shut the door to the would-be nursery, the pain is still there. The baby we almost had. We were so close.
And now it’s never seemed farther away.
“Abby?” Sam wrinkles his brow, plainly shocked by my tears. “Why are you crying?”
“Why am I crying?” Why does he ask me stupid questions? “I’m crying because…” I wipe saltwater from my face. “This is never going to happen for us, Sam. I feel it. The next adoption is going to take forever and then something will go wrong, and… and… by the time we get a kid, we’ll be fifty!”
I can’t talk anymore because I’m crying too hard. A bubble of snot blows out of my left nostril and I don’t even bother to wipe it away.
“Abby,” he says gently, “you know I want this as much as you do…”
“You obviously don’t.” I glare at him. “Because if you did, you’d be willing to take this opportunity right in front of us. Not turn it down because it makes you ‘uncomfortable.’”
He stares down at his hands. It probably wasn’t fair of me to say that. I know how badly Sam wants to be a father. He wants it badly enough that sometimes I’m surprised he hasn’t left me for a woman with two working ovaries. Yes, I know he’s not that kind of man, but he’s got to at least sometimes be tempted.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I just… I got upset. You’re allowed to veto something you don’t feel comfortable with.” I wipe my swollen eyes and put my hand on his. “We’ll try for the adoption again. It’s fine.”
Sam is still looking down at his hands, his brows working together.
“Sam?” I say.
He doesn’t answer me right away. I don’t know what that means. He sometimes gets quiet like this, and I usually assume it’s because he’s thinking about something math-related. That’s not what he’s thinking about now. Well, I suppose he could be. But probably not.
“I think we should use Monica as our surrogate,” he finally says.
I suck in a breath. “Sam, you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t.” He lifts his eyes. “But you’re right. We’ve wanted this for so long. I hate that we can’t open up the door to the second bedroom because it’s too goddamn painful. I can’t even watch a diaper commercial anymore without feeling like shit—I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to have to pitch them.” He sighs. “Maybe it’s not ideal, but I want to be a dad. And I want you to be a mom. We’re ready now.”
He reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze. As he smiles at me and my chest swells with happiness, it hits me:
Mrs. Johnson lives in Indiana. Her phone number was an Indiana area code, and she told me she was “born and raised” in Indianapolis.
I grew up a Red Sox fan—I went to all their games when I was a kid. I could never put on a Yankees cap. They’d never let me come home!
That’s what Monica said at the baby shower when I tried to give her that baby Yankees cap. But the Red Sox is a Boston team. Every Yankees fan knows that. In Indiana, the team is the Braves. And I’d suspect nobody in Indiana is going to give you that a hard time for being a Yankees fan. But maybe they would. It’s not like I’ve ever been there before.
So why is Monica a hardcore Red Sox fan if she’s from Indiana?
It doesn’t make sense.
I turn to Sam, about to tell him what I just realized, but then I shut my mouth. He’s already having reservations. If I tell him I’m worried Monica was lying to me, that will shut everything down for good. And maybe I’m remembering wrong. Maybe someone else made that comment about the Red Sox. Could it have been Lily, from accounting?
It’s such a small thing. It can’t be important.
Chapter 10
Three Months Later
There are five plastic containers of baby food laid out on my desk: apple, pear, peach cobbler, sweet potato, and autumn vegetable turkey.
Recently, Cuddles has decided to branch out into the baby food market. I’m supposed to be writing copy for the website they’re developing to display and sell their baby foods. Specifically, they want a catchy slogan. Considering I have little experience with baby food, I thought I would buy a few containers of them and hopefully it would inspire me.
I have learned one important thing about baby food:
It tastes awful.
I can’t believe people feed this crap to helpless infants. Well, the apple and pear were okay. Tolerable. The peach cobbler sounded good, but tasted too sweet. The sweet potato made me gag, but I successfully got down a bite of it. But the autumn vegetable turkey… I don’t use the word “sickening” too often, but wow. That could have been the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.
Oh, and I learned one other important thing about baby food:
It’s a very powerful laxative.
And I didn’t even try the prune baby food.
Maybe there’s a slogan in there somewhere. Cuddles Baby Food—as good for the bowels as it is for the soul.
Maybe not.
A fist raps on the door to my office. Monica is standing at the doorway, in her modest outfit of black slacks and a crisp white blouse buttoned up to her throat. She smiles when she sees me.
One month ago, we finalized our contract for Monica to serve as our surrogate. Sam spent forever going through it with our lawyer, and the terms are very strict. We will pay for Monica’s entire graduate school tuition, but she gives up all rig
hts to the baby at the moment of conception. There is no option for her to change her mind at any point after that. I worried the terms might scare her, but it didn’t. She signed with a flourish.
Then a few weeks ago, Sam went to the doctor’s office and gave a sample of his sperm. Since I know Monica so well, we certainly didn’t have to go through the doctor—we could have gotten a sample on our own and given it to her. But he insisted on doing it this way.
And now… we’re waiting. Obviously, this is only our first try so the chances of pregnancy aren’t huge, but I’m still excited. If it doesn’t work this month, then it will next month or the month after that. Monica is only twenty-three and her doctor declared her to be in excellent health, so there’s no reason this shouldn’t work.
“Have you ever tried baby food?” I ask Monica.
She makes a face. “No, should I have?”
“No. You definitely shouldn’t.” I notice Monica is clutching her purse under her arm. “Is everything okay?”
“Well,” she says thoughtfully, “sort of.”
“Sort of?”
She reaches her hand into her purse and digs around a bit. When she pulls her hand back out, she’s holding a white plastic stick in a clear Ziploc bag. She lies it down on my desk so I can see it clearly.
There are two blue lines on the stick.
“You’re pregnant?” I breathe.
Monica nods, her eyes shining. “There are no false positives.”
Monica’s pregnant.
Sam’s sperm knocked up my assistant on the very first try. We tried for so many years without any success. It’s not like I ever doubted that I was the one responsible for our infertility, but I’ve never seen the evidence smacking me in the face like this.
First try. Pregnant.
After a second of silent self-deprecation, the impact of the news hits me. Monica is pregnant. Which means in less than nine months, she will give birth. I’m going to be a mother. After all this time of waiting and trying and wishing, this is finally going to happen for me.
The Surrogate Mother Page 6