I had to put my napkin to my face to keep from spitting my wine across the table. “I mean, really? Parker is the annoying kid brother I never wanted. No. I am not and have not ever been anything resembling in love with him.”
I looked out at the sun streaming on the bald head of Mac Montgomery, Mrs. Judy Lanham’s paramour. Yes. Her paramour. Her husband was in a nursing home, and she had made no bones about moving on, whether her husband wasalive or not. He was no longer available for the season’s activities, so he might as well have been dead.
I handed Martin the folder. “Just look at this. He can’t hire these women. They’re strangers.”
He flipped through the pages and said, “It’s Greer McCann’s beautiful, brilliant egg. Who cares about the surrogate?”
“But don’t you think it has to matter? I mean, don’t you think that somehow the woman who is growing the babies has to get mixed in there a little?”
He looked at me like I was deranged and held up the photocopy of Greer’s words. “May I?”
I gestured,Be my guest.
A few seconds later, he dabbed his eyes and gasped. “You have to be her oven. You could be the hero that brings this great, dear, departed woman’s dreams to fruition. You could give her the life she never got to have. You can give Parker the life he never got to have.”
I rolled my eyes. “You change your tune really quickly. You know that, right?”
“Honey, you’re just lucky you get to hear me sing my song.”
If ever there was a time to mull, to consider, to make pro-and-con lists, this was the one. I was considering becoming pregnant, for heaven’s sake, growing a baby inside of me and becoming attached to it and then not getting to take it home from the hospital. I was considering trading my taut belly and stretch-mark-free breasts to make someone else happy.
But, if I was honest, I couldn’t remember the last time Ifelt so sure, in my heart, in the depths of my soul, in all the places that really mattered.
So I didn’t overthink it. I dumped out all the papers in Parker’s folder, took a beautiful picture of me Thad had taken out of a frame in my bedroom, and put it in the folder. Who needs a picture of herself, anyway? I got in the car and drove toward Parker’s feeling certain. Sure, my mother was going to have a stroke. But I was thirty-five years old, jobless, and untethered for the moment. What did I have to lose?
ParkerA SCENE
I LEFT THE OFFICE EARLYthat day. I was exhausted, a little hungover, and, even though I knew it could never be, thinking about Amelia. I had planned to work from home, but when I got there, readingFlappers and Philosophersseemed more appealing.
When I heard a knock at the door, I assumed it was the yardman and called, “Come in!” I sat up, smiled, and said, “We have got to get better security at this place.”
Amelia laughed. “Yes, this is a very dicey neighborhood.”
My heart thudded. She had felt what I had felt last night. She was here to tell me. She handed me a folder. “I’ve decided for you.”
I almost asked what she had decided, but I recognized the folder. The surrogates. The babies.I’m sorry, Greer. How could I even think about another woman?
I loosened the knot in the tie I had worn to work. I opened the folder. “This is a picture of you.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a really nice picture?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Amelia sat down in a chair across from me, her forearms on her thighs, leaning in close to me. I ignored how her hair fell over her eye. I ignored how beautiful she looked. “I want to be your surrogate.”
I laughed. She did not laugh. Neither of us moved. “Oh God. Amelia, you’re not serious.”
“I am serious.”
“You can’t. I can’t. I mean, Cape Carolina. And our mothers. And paying you. And it’s all too weird.”
Hurt registered on her face, and I wished I could take it back. My instant response was that she couldn’t be my surrogate. But why?Because it’s too complicated and then you could never be with her.
“Oh God. No. Don’t take this the wrong way.” I paused. But I couldn’t be with her anyway, right? I glanced at Greer’s picture on the end table, rubbed my eyes, and got myself together. I would never move on from Greer. That much was clear. So why waste the chance to have someone I really knew and trusted carry my child? “I mean, let’s back up. In your mind, how would this work? With the girls in the folder, it was just a straight business transaction. They give me a uterus, I give them money. That’s it. With you, it’d be a totally different thing.”
I saw the tears spring to Amelia’s eyes, and I felt like a heel.
“I get it,” she said. “It’s all too much for you. I feel so stupid.” She stood up and turned toward the row of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the terrace.
