“Did you continue to pursue IVF?”
I nod. “We used the two frozen embryos for another cycle. One was transferred, and one didn’t survive the thaw. I didn’t get pregnant.”
“How old were you at the time?”
“I was thirty-nine. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time left, so we scrambled to squeeze in one last fresh cycle. When I was forty, I had ten eggs harvested. Seven were fertilized. Of those seven, three were transferred, three were frozen, and one was discarded.” I look up. “I got pregnant.”
“And?”
“I was the happiest woman in the world,” I say softly.
“Did you know the gender of the baby?”
“No. We wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Did you feel the baby moving inside you?”
Even now, her words evoke that slow roll, that lazy aquatic somersault. “Yes.”
“Can you describe how you felt, being pregnant?”
“I loved every minute of it,” I say. “I’d waited my whole life for it.”
“How did Max react to the pregnancy?”
She has told me not to look at him, but magnetically, my gaze is pulled toward Max, who is sitting with his hands folded. Beside him, Wade Preston sporadically writes notes with a Montblanc fountain pen.
How did we get here?I wonder, looking at Max.
How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?
How could I have not known that one day I would love someone else?
How could you have not known that, one day, you would hate me for who I’ve become?
“He was excited, too,” I say. “He used to stick the earphones of my iPod into my belly button so that the baby could hear the music he liked the most.”
“Zoe, did you carry that baby to term?” Angela asks.
“No. At twenty-eight weeks, something went wrong.” I look up at her. “I was at my baby shower when I started having really bad cramps, and bleeding. A lot. I was rushed to the hospital and put on a monitor. The doctors couldn’t find a fetal heartbeat. They brought in an ultrasound machine and tried for five minutes—but it felt like five hours. Finally they told me that the placenta had sheared away from the uterus. The baby . . .” I swallow. “The baby was dead.”
“And then what?”
“I had to deliver it. They gave me drugs to start labor.”
“Was Max there?”
“Yes.”
“What was going through your mind at the time?”
“That this was a mistake,” I say, looking right at Max. “That I would have the baby and they’d see how wrong they were, when it came out kicking and crying.”
“What happened when the baby was delivered?”
“He wasn’t kicking. He wasn’t crying.” Max looks down at the table. “He was so tiny. He didn’t have any fat on him yet, not like you see on other newborns. And he didn’t have fingernails yet, or eyelashes, but he was perfect. He was so incredibly perfect, and so . . . so still.” I find that I am leaning forward on the witness chair, perched with my hands held in front of me, as if I’m waiting for something. I force myself to sit back. “We named him Daniel. We scattered his ashes into the ocean.”
Angela takes a step toward me. “What happened after your son died?”
