Six weeks until we tried again.
Six weeks to get my shit together and remember that Truth Renois was my surrogate, not my woman.
Six weeks to convince myself that Alexis was enough.
Six weeks to stop thinking about a woman in the Seventh Ward who talked too much when she was nervous and cried on bathroom floors.
I pulled out my phone and stared at her name in my contacts.
Put it away.
Told myself I was doing the right thing.
But the lie still tasted bitter.
Chapter 15
TRUTH
Iwoke up to sunlight streaming through my bedroom window and my phone buzzing on the nightstand.
For a moment, I didn’t remember where I was. Didn’t remember why my eyes felt swollen and my throat felt raw. Then it all came rushing back—the negative tests, the bathroom floor, Mama holding me while I cried, the 2:00 AM phone call with Amai.
I’m not going anywhere.
I reached for my phone, squinting against the brightness of the screen.
Two text messages from Amai. Sent at 7:14 AM.
Check your account.
Rest. We try again in six weeks.
I stared at the messages, my brain still foggy with sleep and exhaustion. Check my account?
Then it hit me.
My bank account.
I sat up too fast, my head spinning. Opened my banking app with shaking hands and waited for it to load. The screen flickered. Then the numbers appeared.
Available Balance: $98,047.23
I stopped breathing.
Fifty thousand dollars.
Fifty thousand dollars that wasn’t supposed to be there. That I hadn’t earned. That the contract explicitly said I wouldn’t get unless the pregnancy was confirmed.
The transfer had failed.
I wasn’t pregnant.
And Amai had paid me anyway.
My vision blurred. I blinked hard, trying to clear it, but the tears came anyway—hot and fast and completely different from the ones I’d cried last night. These weren’t tears of despair or fear or failure.
These were something else entirely.
