“Thursdays,” Liddy says.
Thursdays?Once a week? Like clockwork? If Liddy were my wife, I’d be in the shower with her every morning. I’d grab her when she walked by me at the dinner table and pull her onto my lap—
“Do you time intercourse so that you might be able to get pregnant?”
“Yes—”
“Have you ever been pregnant?”
“Yes . . . several times . . . but I’ve miscarried.”
“Do you even know if youcancarry a baby to term?”
“Does anyone?” Liddy asks.
Atta girl.
“You realize that if you get these embryos and they’re transferred to you, you may still not have a live birth.”
“Or,” Liddy points out, “I could have triplets.”
“You said that, in the Bible, the point of marriage is to have children?”
“Yes.”
“So if God wanted you to have children, wouldn’t you have had them already?”
“I . . . I think He has a different plan for us,” Liddy says.
The lawyer nods. “Of course. God wants you to become a substitute mother by depriving a biological mother of the same right.”
“Objection!” Wade says.
“Let me rephrase,” Angela says. “Do you agree that what you want most in the world is to have and raise a child?”
Liddy’s eyes, which have been trained so carefully on Angela Moretti, slide toward me. My mouth feels like it’s full of broken glass. “Yes,” she says.
“Do you agree that not being able to have a biological child is devastating? Heartbreaking?”
“Yes.”
“And yet, isn’t that exactly the fate to which you consign Zoe Baxter, if you take her embryos?”
Liddy turns toward Zoe, her eyes full of tears. “I would raise these babies like they’re my own,” she whispers.
The words pull Zoe out of her seat. “They’re not yours,” she replies, quietly at first, and then more forcefully. “They’remine!”
The judge bangs his gavel. “Ms. Moretti, control your client!”
“Leave her alone!” I cry, standing up. “Can’t you see she’s upset!”
For a moment, the whole world stops spinning. Zoe turns with a ghost of a smile on her lips—grateful because she thinks that my words are meant for her.
And then she realizes they’re not.
You cannot be married to a person for nearly a decade and not be able to read the Morse code of a relationship: Eyes that meet at a dinner party, telegraphing that it’s time to make up an excuse and go home. A silent apology when you reach for her hand under the covers. AnI love yousmile, tossed at her feet.
She knows. I can tell by the way she is looking at me that she understands what I’ve done. That she’s lost me, and potentially her embryos, to a woman she detests.
