The Surrogate Mother

by Freida McFadden

  When she sees me, a weary look comes over her face. She peers at me over her half-moon spectacles. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Abigail Adler,” I say. “Monica works for me at an advertising agency.”

  She thrusts out her hand in my direction. Her handshake is firm. “Louise Johnson.”

  Just as I had suspected—Jean Johnson was another piece of fiction.

  “So,” Mrs. Johnson sighs, “what has Monica done this time?”

  Her words catch me off-guard. Somehow I thought she’d be more defensive about Monica. “Um, could I come in?” I ask.

  Mrs. Johnson lets out another sigh and waves me into the small apartment. It’s modest—the living room is smaller than our own, and the furniture looks worn. I settle down on a threadbare sofa, and Mrs. Johnson sits about two feet from me. She doesn’t offer me a beverage.

  “Things had been going so well.” Mrs. Johnson pulls off her glasses and rubs her eyes. “I hadn’t heard anything about Monica in over a year. I thought…well, maybe the bad period was over.” Bad period? “But I knew in my heart it was just a matter of time. People don’t change.”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  “So tell me,” Mrs. Johnson says, “what has she done? What do you need?”

  I hesitate, debating how much to say. It’s very clear from speaking to Monica’s mother that she has no idea about the arrangement we have together. “When is the last time you spoke to Monica?”

  “Like I said, over a year.” She shakes her head. “These days, my husband and I only intervene when it’s required. Not like when she was younger.”

  “There have been some thefts at work,” I say. Better not to mention the murder. I don’t want to put this woman on high alert. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Monica’s always at the bottom of it,” she sighs. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But it gets to the point where you just get exhausted by it all. Ever since she was a teenager…”

  Mrs. Johnson stops, clearly realizing it would be in her daughter’s best interest not to go on.

  “Mrs. Johnson,” I say, in my most professional voice. “I like Monica very much. She’s an excellent employee. I want to help her. And it would help me to know what she’s going through, because… well, it’s all going to come out soon anyway.”

  I hold my breath, waiting to see if the woman will believe my lies. She narrows her eyes.

  “An excellent employee?” Mrs. Johnson snorts. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. She’s very skilled and organized and—”

  “Yes, but she’s crazy!” The woman’s brown eyes are wide, and for a moment, she looks a bit crazy herself. “I’m sorry if this hurts Monica, but it’s probably in your best interest to let her go. Before she does even more damage. Take it from someone who knows.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask carefully.

  “It’s not entirely her fault, you understand.” Mrs. Johnson’s shoulders sag. “I think she tries to do the right thing. Well, sometimes, at least. But she’s… well, the psychiatrists have disagreed on the diagnosis a bit…” Psychiatrists? “Most of them agree she has severe borderline personality disorder.”

  My mouth falls open. We checked out Monica’s medical records so thoroughly. How did we miss a major psychiatric disorder?

  “Borderline personality disorder?”

  She nods. “Like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? That movie where she murdered the rabbit?”

  Oh great. I picked a rabbit-murdering psychopath to be the mother of my child.

  “The doctors have tried so many medications to try to help her,” she goes on. Medications? Like, plural? “But none of them have worked. Sometimes they help a little, but not enough to matter.”

  I flash back to Dr. Wong’s office, when she asked Monica if she was on any medications. Monica said no. Of course she wouldn’t be. She’s pregnant.

  “What makes her dangerous though,” Mrs. Johnson says, “is her intelligence. She has a genius-level IQ on testing. Did you know that?”

  “I… I’m not surprised.”

  “A math genius.” I see a twinge of pride for the first time. “If she could focus, I bet she could win a Nobel Prize. But… well, that’s out of the question now.”

  There’s no Nobel Prize in math—a fact I know thanks to Sam. Instead, there’s a Field’s Medal, which is only given every four years and rarely given to mathematicians over the age of forty. Sam is realistic about his chances of winning one, especially now that he’s thirty-eight, although he admits he was never a true contender. I think my Field’s Medal is out the window, he sometimes jokes.

  “You said she’s dangerous.” My heart speeds up in my chest. “Dangerous in what way? She seems perfectly normal.”

  “Oh, she’s good at playing the part.” She lets out a joyless laugh. “But don’t be fooled. My husband and I started locking our doors at night, if you know what I mean.”

  I stare at her. “You did?”

  “Oh yes.” She stares off into the distance. “I knew she had problems but I never thought she was dangerous until her sophomore year of high school. She and her best friend Sandy were fighting over the same boy. Silly stuff, you know? But girls are so emotional at that age, and they had a falling out, and then…”

  I get a horrible sinking feeling in my chest. I don’t know if I want to hear the end of this story, but how can I not hear it? “Then what?”

  She shuts her eyes for a moment. “Sandy went missing.”

  I squeeze my knees so tightly, my fingers hurt. I can’t believe I invited this crazy person into my life. How could I have been so stupid? “Maybe she just ran away? Girls do that.”

  “No, she didn’t run away.” Mrs. Johnson’s eyes grow distant, staring off into nothing. “They found her floating in the Charles River a week later.”

  I clasp my hand over my mouth. I think I’m going to be ill. I really do. “Mrs. Johnson, can you… can you tell me where the bathroom is?”

  She points a long, skeletal finger down the hallway, and I grab my purse and run. I make it to the toilet in time, but all I can manage is a dry heave. I skipped lunch because I was so anxious about my appointment with Frisch, so there’s nothing in my stomach.

  My head spins as I straighten up and look in the mirror. My face is deathly pale and my black hair is disheveled. I run my fingers through my hair and splash water on my face, but none of it helps. I consider freshening up my makeup, but what’s the point?

  When I come out of the bathroom, Mrs. Johnson is fiddling with her phone. She looks up when she sees me, her expression flat. “I brought up an article about Sandy if you’d like to see it.”

  I hold up a hand. “No, uh… that’s fine.”

  She raises her eyebrows at me. “Are you all right, Ms. Adler?”

  I nod, attempting a weak smile as I sit back down on the sofa. “Yes. Of course.”

  She shrugs and puts her phone down on the table. “The murder was quite a big deal, as you’d imagine. And most everyone believed Monica had something to do with it, even though they could never prove it. That’s why we left Boston and moved here.”

  A chill goes through me. Monica killed someone as a teenager and got away with it. Not only is Monica a killer, but she’s apparently good at it. She was good at it when she was a teenager, so she must be great at it by now.

  Mrs. Johnson leans back against the couch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you all this. I should be advocating for Monica—I know. I used to see a therapist myself, and all we’d talk about would be Monica. Monica, Monica, Monica…”

  Sounds like what I’d be talking about if I had a therapist.

  “Can I ask you a question, Mrs. Johnson?” I say.

  She nods. “Of course.”

  “How did you lose touch with Monica?”

  “Oh.” She shakes her head. “We started fighting over the affair. That was about three years ago. An
d things just deteriorated from there.”

  “Affair?”

  She rolls her eyes. “She started having what I thought was a quite ill-advised affair with her math professor in college. I told her so, but she didn’t want to hear it.”

  Her words make me freeze up. “Math professor?”

  “Oh, yes.” She nods. “Well, you should have seen the guy. He was very attractive—I almost couldn’t blame her. But of course, he was quite a bit older than her. And married, of course.”

  “Married…?” I swallow a lump in my throat. “Where did Monica go to college again?”

  When Mrs. Johnson names the university where my husband teaches, it’s like a punch in the gut. No. No. It couldn’t be.

  It couldn’t be.

  “The professor was clearly taking advantage of a very young girl,” she goes on. “But Monica didn’t see it that way. She was absolutely in love, and she took all my criticisms of him as a personal attack.”

  I bunch up my skirt with my sweaty fists. “You don’t… do you remember his name?”

  “Steve,” she says thoughtfully. She frowns. “No, that’s not right. Simon? No…”

  “Sam?” I squeak.

  She snaps her fingers. “Right. Sam. That was it. I’d never seen her so infatuated with a man before. Apparently, they were in love. Can you imagine?”

  I can’t even pretend she’s not talking about my husband. A math professor named Sam? There’s no way this is a coincidence.

  “Do… do you know what happened with them?”

  She shakes her head. “As I said, our relationship deteriorated after that. I have no idea what she’s been up to. I imagine she moved on when she couldn’t get him to leave his wife. Or else maybe she got him fired. It would serve him right.”

  Or maybe…

  Maybe the two of them figured out a way to finally be together.

  Chapter 35

  Sam and Monica are having an affair.

  The timeline Monica’s mother gave me means the affair has been going on for at least three years. Three years of him sneaking around behind my back—easy enough to do with his flexible schedule and my long hours. That ratty couch he has in his office at the university was probably a great place for him to hook up with her.

  It seems impossible in some ways. Sam has been my rock for the last ten years. But at the same time, some parts of it make so much sense. After all, he’s had attractive undergrads throwing themselves at him for years—he’s not made of stone. It’s understandable he would have cracked at some point. Well, not understandable. But conceivable. This thing he had with Monica was surely not his first dalliance.

  My mother was right—he’s much too good-looking. What a mistake.

  Sam always seemed like he loved me for me. If anything, he always seemed to resent the fact that I had so much money—he never let me spring for things we could afford, like a spot in the parking garage. Then again, he loved the condo that we could never have afforded without my money. So in summary, he clearly didn’t just love me for me.

  And if he really wanted a child, it must have been frustrating as hell for him to look at all those young, fertile girls in his classes and know any one of them could give him the baby I couldn’t. I’m sure that’s what Monica pointed out to him when they were first together. When they were hatching this diabolical plot.

  Janelle—the girl who had promised us her baby—never seemed like she would back out. She was gung-ho on giving us the baby. But now that I think of it, I never spoke with her. Sam told me she had backed out, and that was that. I trusted him.

  And of course, Sam was the one who did the background check on Monica, which I’m sure he never actually did. He was the one who gave me the numbers for “Chelsea” and Monica’s “mother.” He claimed to have checked everything out. Yeah, right.

  I’m sure Sam and Monica had a lot of fun plotting to keep me from her OB/GYN appointments. Messing with the times in my calendar—either one of them could have been responsible for that. Or spiking my food with drugs—that could have been a joint effort as well. Oh, and the crystals of meth that Sam “found” in my drawer—that solves that mystery.

  That letter opener that killed Denise… that was a present from Sam. I thought it was a sweet and thoughtful anniversary gift. But as it turns out, he was providing me with a murder weapon.

  And now Sam is pushing to get me to plea bargain. Who knows what he told Frisch to get him to advise me in that direction. All he wants is to get me out of the way with as little cost as possible. And then he can finally be with Monica.

  There’s only one problem.

  If Sam did all that, he’s not just a jerk. He’s not just a cheating husband. He would be an outright psychopath. I mean, he could have divorced me if he wanted. It would have been rough and he would have lost out on my money, but it’s not like he’s some unemployed loser—he could have supported himself post-divorce. Even if he didn’t personally kill Denise, setting me up on murder charges is the work of someone seriously disturbed.

  I’ve known Sam for over a decade. Yesterday I would have told you I know him better than anyone else in the world. I don’t think he’s like that. I’d never think he’d be capable of something like that.

  Then again, you can’t underestimate the influence of an evil woman. And my big bank account.

  And sex. That’s a pretty big influence too.

  I walk home from the Johnsons’ apartment to clear my head. When I get back to the apartment, the first thing I do is go through Sam’s dresser drawers and his closet. I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. Lipstick stains that don’t belong to me? Love notes from Monica? Monica’s lavender-scented perfume clinging to his boxers? I have no idea. Whatever I’m looking for, I don’t find it. All I find are shirts and pants and underwear, all of which smell like our laundry detergent and a little like his aftershave.

  After I complete my exhaustive search of our bedroom, I collapse onto our sofa and sob. Yes, I’m crying yet again. I can’t believe my husband would do this to me. I love him. I thought he loved me. When he held my hand that day in front of the judge, looked into my eyes, and told me he would love me till death did us part, was that all a lie?

  I remember the way he said it. So seriously. The way he was so serious about everything in our relationship. Like once he said those words, he meant them with his very soul.

  Shit.

  I reach for my phone. I bring up my list of Favorites and see Sam’s name topping the list. I put him there after our third date. But I can’t call him now. I’m not ready to confront him yet. Instead, I press Shelley’s name.

  It rings three times and I’m certain she’s not going to pick up. She’s been avoiding me since Denise’s murder, which can only mean she thinks I did it. But then I hear her voice on the other line. She sounds subdued, but at least she answered.

  “Hi, Abby.” Her voice is wary. “How are you doing?”

  Against my will, my eyes fill with tears again. “Shelley, can you please stop acting like I’m a murderer?”

  There’s silence on the other line. My stomach twists as I wait to hear what she’s going to say. I don’t think I can take being rejected by one more person I care about.

  Finally, she lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Abby. It’s just… well, you have to admit, it looks bad.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “And you hated Denise more than anyone…”

  “I didn’t hate her,” I say honestly. “We just… we had a falling out. But I didn’t hate her.” I pause. “And anyway, there’s a difference between hating someone and stabbing them with a letter opener.”

  Shelley lets out a strangled laugh. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

  “Listen,” I say, “is there any chance you could meet me for coffee? I really need to talk to you.”

  “Sure, Abby. Just tell me when and where.”

  _____

  It takes about half an hour to fill Shelley
in on the entire story from beginning to end. By the time I finish, culminating in my visit to Cynthia’s apartment, her mouth is hanging open. I don’t know if she’s shocked or if she thinks I’m nuts. The former, I hope.

  “Wow,” she breathes. “That’s…”

  I hang my head, staring into the depths of my mug of coffee. “I know. You always used to say Sam was a little too perfect. Guess you were right.”

  “Well,” she says thoughtfully, “he wasn’t that perfect. He was nice. But…”

  I frown. “But what?”

  “Well, he was boring sometimes, wasn’t he?” She takes a sip of her foamy drink. “I mean, sometimes he was fine, but other times, you’d ask him some innocent question, and he’d turn it into some big mathematical problem. Like that time we were getting soft serve ice cream and I told him to be careful not to fill it too high because it would fall, and he started trying to calculate to what height you’d have to fill the cone before it would tip over.”

  I smile to myself. Shelley got so pissed off when he got out his pen and started making calculations on a napkin at the yogurt place. “Monica would probably love that.”

  “And the math jokes? Ugh.”

  “She likes those too.” I squeeze my coffee cup so hard, it burns my hand. Monica is so perfect for Sam in so many ways—I can’t even blame him for falling for her.

  No, that’s not true. I can blame him. Cheating asshole.

  I stir the coffee listlessly with my spoon. “So you think it’s really true? About Sam and Monica?”

  Shelley hesitates. “Honestly?”

  “Of course honestly!”

  “Yes. I do.”

  My heart sinks. Shelley knows Sam very well, and if she believes it could be true, it’s a bad sign. “Really?”

  “Well,” she sighs, “I don’t know. There was always something about him I couldn’t put my finger on…”

  “You never said that before!”

  “I don’t know. I thought it was all in my head.”

  My phone buzzes within my purse. I pull it out and see a text message from Sam:

  Where are you? I think we should talk.