I winked at her and held my hand out. “Shall we get married, then?” She took it, and I stopped. “Wait. What about a witness?”
“Someone at the courthouse will do it.”
But as we walked down the stairs and I could hear morning sounds in the kitchen that meant Tilley was having a good day, I decided a courthouse witness wasn’t enough. Amelia and her family had protested when I insisted that Aunt Tilley remain in the east wing. But it wasn’t a selfless act. Tilley wasn’t just Amelia’s nutty aunt; she was the entire town’snutty aunt. Plus, as I said to Amelia, it really added to the allure of our story. Unwed couple—surrogate to the dead wife’s babies and the boy next door—take up residence in the family home. What kind of story was that without an aunt Tilley? Not one at all, if you asked me.
Amelia and I smiled at each other. “Aunt Tilley,” she asked, “how are you at keeping secrets?”
Something I didn’t understand passed between them when she said, “Well, my dear, I think you know that, when it comes to keeping secrets, I am quite possibly the best.”
As we drove to the courthouse, where Amelia and I would become husband and wife, so we’d share a name with our babies on the day they were born, I wondered why things happened the way they did. Wouldn’t it have been easier if Amelia and I had fallen in love the summer after college and never looked back? But when I thought about erasing that entire chapter of my life, the one where Greer was the center of my world, when I thought about not having these babies that were half-her and half-me, I changed my mind.
I thought about a few minutes earlier when I’d put all her words, all her feelings, all her secrets, on a shelf in her babies’ room. And then I put my hand on Amelia’s belly.
The best part of Greer and of me was right beside me, living inside the woman I loved. They were real and would be here any day. I didn’t need my old memories, because now, finally, I was ready to make some new ones. I had spent years worrying about preserving Greer’s legacy. Now I was ready to create my own.
AmeliaUNDER THE SOUTHERN SKY
THE DAY MY BROTHER RANinto the makeshiftSouthern Coastoffice in what had once been the ballroom of Dogwood but that now held our staff of twelve—who had, in my humble opinion, made magic of a dying magazine—and handed me two newspapers, something extraordinary happened. My past and my future merged, became a seamless, undeniably right present.
The front page of theCape Carolina Chronicleboasted, “Saxton Wins Mayor in Landslide Victory.”
The Life Styles section of theNew York Timesproclaimed, “Modern Motherhood with Amelia Saxton Thaysden.”
I smiled up at my brother. “Banner day for the Saxtons, huh?”
It wasn’t lost on me that giving birth to two beautiful babieshad made the gap I had worried would form between my brother and me—after my mother told me the truth about Tilley being his biological mother—nonexistent. I understood now that it wasn’t my truth to tell. It was my mother’s and Tilley’s.
“I think it was you standing out there with one baby on your front and one on your back all day and handing out rulers to voters that put me over the edge.” He winked at me.
Yeah. My brother had received 1,274 of the total 1,709 votes because of me in an overstressed BabyBjörn with two cranky infants. But whatever. It wasn’t November if I wasn’t standing in front of Cape Carolina High’s gymnasium, our town’s polling place.
I hadn’t let Parker read the column before it had gone to print. I said I wanted it to be a surprise, but really, I didn’t want his input. I loved and cherished him, but this was my side of the story. I couldn’t think about it through his eyes. I needed part of this journey to be mine and mine alone. Almost two years after I walked into that fertility clinic for the very first time, I had finally managed to write the story I had started that day. Only, when it came time to put it on paper, it felt like a different story. Yes, I’ll use those facts one day. The interviews, too. But, for now, a column seemed like the way to go. A Modern Love column, in fact.
This time, I didn’t have to run home from work to show my husband the story I had written about him. He eagerly grabbed it from me the minute he saw it. I looked over his shoulder as he read.
When I was fourteen years old, I cheated on a test. It was wrong. I knew it then, and I know it now. I’m sure if I had gotten caught the teacher would have said I was only cheating myself, but I think we all know that isn’t true. I was cheating off Parker Thaysden, who, even though he was three years younger, was the smartest guy in my math class. I told myself I hadn’t meant to look over and see his answer, that it was simply a coincidence that the problem I was stuck on was one that happened to be right in my view. But, deep down, I knew the truth.
Eight days later, I found out I could never have children, that I had primary ovarian insufficiency syndrome.
I thought it was because I’d cheated on my math test.
Twenty-ish years later, I still can’t explain the exact laws of karma (or, as might be obvious, the laws of exponents), but what I do know is that fate very rarely delivers upon that straight of a line. Maybe I did something—or a whole string of things—right, because, despite the odds, despite the truth I had long known, I did end up with babies. A perfect, matching set of them, in fact. They came from the journalist and philanthropist Greer McCann Thaysden’s gorgeous eggs.
I was always better in science than I was in math, thank goodness. Maybe that’s what drew me to investigate what people do with their extra frozen embryos. Maybe that’s what led me uncover that Greer’s embryos had been deemed abandoned.
The day in eighth grade I told Parker Thaysden I’dcopied off his paper, I didn’t know what was going to happen. In fact, I had stayed up half the night worried and wondering. Would he tell the teacher? The principal? Would I get expelled? None of that happened. He said, “Who cares, Amelia? I had the answer, and you didn’t.”
That rings true now, as I hold this beautiful pair of babies in my arms. My ladybug and four-leaf clover. That’s what Greer had nicknamed them; that was what they looked like under a microscope. Who knew they would turn out to be my lucky charms? Who knew that what I didn’t have, Greer would end up giving me?
I would eventually pay Parker Thaysden back by writing a biology essay for him. On mitosis, in fact. The cell division that results in two child cells having the same number and kind of chromosome as the parent.
No, these babies don’t have the exact number and kind of chromosome as Parker. Only half. Half-Parker, half-Greer. But when they kicked inside of me, when the doctor laid their warm, tiny bodies on my chest, they became mine, too.
I never expected to fall in love with the boy next door, with the one whose paper I’d cheated off of. I never expected to get pregnant with his babies. And I never, ever imagined that doing each of those things would heal what was broken inside of me, what had been broken, in fact, since that day I sat on a cold doctor’s office table in a thin gown, receiving the hardest news of my life. I never expected that thirteen pounds, eight ounces of babiescould connect Parker and me to his late wife in such an inextricable way, while also giving us both permission to truly release her.
But maybe Parker did. In fact, his childhood voice rings in my ears now, as I place my babies side by side in their crib overlooking a mesmerizing stretch of sound that is always the same and yet never the same.I had the answer, and you didn’t.
It isn’t math; it most certainlyisscience. And, at first, I thought that, surely, it was modern love.
