“Have you and your husband tried to conceive?” Wade asks.
“Yes. For years.” She looks down at her lap. “We were just going to look into Snowflakes Adoption. But then Max . . . Max came to us with another idea.”
“Do you have a strong relationship with your brother-in-law?”
Liddy’s face drains of color. “Yes.”
“How did you react when he told you he wanted to give his pre-born children to you and your husband?”
“I thought that God had answered my prayers.”
“Did you ask him why he didn’t want to raise the children himself? Maybe at a later date?”
“Reid did,” she admits. “Max told us that he didn’t think he’d be good at it. He had made too many mistakes. He wanted his children to grow up with a mother and a father who . . . who loved each other.”
“Have you had much interaction with children?”
For the first time since she’s gotten into that chair, she brightens. “I run the Sunday School program at our church. And I organize a youth ministry camp during the summers. I love kids.”
“If the court saw fit to give you these pre-born children,” Wade asks, “how would you raise them?”
“To be good Christians,” Liddy says. “To do the right thing.” As soon as she says it, her face crumples. “I’m sorry,” she sobs.
Across from me, Zoe shifts. Today she is dressed in black, like she’s in mourning. She stares at Liddy as if she’s the Antichrist.
Wade pulls a crimson silk handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and hands it to Liddy to wipe her eyes. “Your witness,” he says, and he turns to Zoe’s lawyer.
Angela Moretti stands and tugs on the hem of her suit jacket to straighten it. “What can you give these embryos that their biological mother can’t?”
“Opportunities,” Liddy says. “A stable Christian home.”
“So you think that money is all it takes to raise children?”
“Of course not. They would live in a loving household.”
“When was the last time you spent a few hours with Zoe and Vanessa?”
“I . . . I haven’t . . .”
“So you don’t really know what kind of love their household is filled with, do you?”
“I know it’s immoral,” Liddy says.
“So it’s Zoe’s sexual orientation that makes her an unfit mother? Is that your testimony?”
Liddy hesitates. “I didn’t say that. I just think that Reid and I—we’re the better option for these children.”
“What kind of contraception do you use?” Angela asks.
Liddy blushes. “I don’t use any.”
I have a sudden flash of last night, her head turned so that her throat was exposed, her back arched beneath me. “How often do you and your husband have sex?”
“Objection!”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge says.Dirty old man.
“Answer the question, Mrs. Baxter.”
