Sixteen.<\/p>\n
Brandon had been counting them too, for a very different reason.<\/p>\n
Eventually I got up, lay down on the far edge of our bed, and pulled the blanket to my chin. Later I heard him climb the stairs, brush his teeth, and slide in beside me. He reached across in the dark and found my hand.<\/p>\n
I kept my breathing slow and pretended to be asleep. It was the hardest thing I\u2019ve ever done.<\/p>\n
In the morning he kissed my forehead at the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cSleep okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBaby keeping you up? I\u2019ll grab that Thai place you like on the way home.\u201d<\/p>\n
He flipped his car keys up and caught them, the same gesture I\u2019d watched a thousand times. Suddenly it looked like a stranger doing it. I said \u201cokay,\u201d and he left.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to confront him yet. If I did, he would deny it, or cry, and somehow by the end I\u2019d be the one apologizing. I needed to understand what I had signed first.<\/p>\n
After I dropped Daisy at school, I sat in the library parking lot and called Rhonda Pace, the independent attorney who had reviewed my surrogacy agreement. I told her everything. She didn\u2019t interrupt.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarnie, I\u2019m so sorry,\u201d she said at last. \u201cI won\u2019t promise you a loophole, and I won\u2019t guess about the contract until I\u2019ve read it against the law in this state. But some things I can tell you now. Your medical decisions are yours. Not Everett\u2019s, not your husband\u2019s. And you need a family-law attorney today. Not for the surrogacy. For your marriage and your daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
By lunch I had an appointment. I spent my break at the kitchen table rereading all forty-one pages. The first time, I\u2019d skimmed the insurance and payment sections and trusted that someone would flag anything wrong. This time I read every line. Every signature looked like a decision I\u2019d made to protect a marriage Brandon had already left in his mind.<\/p>\n
My hands shook with anger. But anger can\u2019t undo a signature. Understanding it was the next best thing.<\/p>\n
I made more calls. I booked a session with Dr. Paulette Greer, the clinic counselor, for me alone. I phoned Winnie, the nurse coordinator who had been at every appointment, and asked that all information go directly to me and not through my husband. She didn\u2019t ask why. I was grateful.<\/p>\n
Then I called my sister, Jodi, a night-shift ER nurse who once punched a boy in the nose for stealing my bike when she was nine and he was twelve.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you pick Daisy up tomorrow and keep her a few hours?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course. Are you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cBut I will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
That afternoon Daisy came home talking about a classmate whose lizard had escaped during show-and-tell and run into the coat closet. I laughed in the right places. Later I heard her through the floor, talking to my stomach.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, baby, this one\u2019s really good. What do you call a bear with no teeth?\u201d A pause. \u201cA gummy bear!\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat on the stairs and put my face in my hands.<\/p>\n
At five-thirty, Brandon texted: Client dinner tonight, totally forgot to tell you. Won\u2019t be late. Love you.<\/em><\/p>\n He had forgotten the Thai food.<\/p>\n I opened our joint checking account. I\u2019d never really looked at his side of it. Why would I audit my own husband? I scrolled back month by month and found charges at an Italian place called Bellini\u2019s, over and over, every few weeks. I knew where Bellini\u2019s was. It was four blocks from Everett\u2019s house.<\/p>\n The dates matched nights he\u2019d said he was working late and weekends he\u2019d said he was covering shifts. A restaurant charge proves nothing alone. But it put dates on the lies. I kept scrolling back, and the earliest was from the previous February.<\/p>\n That was before the birthday cake, before he ever said the word surrogate<\/em> to me.<\/p>\n I thought about all those nights he\u2019d spread the mortgage statement, the car payment, and the credit card bill across the kitchen table like a hand of cards, then sat in silence until I apologized for hesitating. The bills were real. The mortgage really had gone up. But he had taken something real that frightened us both and turned it into a lever.<\/p>\n At breakfast I asked, \u201cAny news on regional director?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot yet.\u201d He didn\u2019t look up from his phone.<\/p>\n \u201cDid Everett ever actually promise you the job? Ever say your name for it to anyone?\u201d<\/p>\n He looked up, frowning. \u201cWhy are you interrogating me?\u201d<\/p>\n It was the move he\u2019d made a hundred times. Before, I would have reassured him instantly. I\u2019m not interrogating you, honey, I know how hard you work.<\/em> This time I said nothing. I didn\u2019t apologize. I just looked at him until he dropped his eyes to his phone, finished his coffee, and left.<\/p>\n The next day Jodi picked up Daisy, and I met Lorraine Okafor, a family-law attorney whose office sat above a bakery in an old brick building downtown. She had a bowl of peppermints on her desk and photos of three teenage boys on the shelf behind her.<\/p>\n I talked for an hour. She took notes, then set down her pen.<\/p>\n \u201cOkay. I\u2019m sorry. This is a terrible way to find something out. I won\u2019t tell you it\u2019s simple. You have a marriage, a seven-year-old, a house, debt, and a pregnancy with a contract attached. We\u2019ll untangle them one at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n We covered temporary finances, the mortgage, the joint account, and a fair parenting schedule. By the end I had a list of concrete steps. In the parking lot I read it three times. It was the first time in weeks I felt I had any control over anything.<\/p>\n That evening I waited at the kitchen table. Daisy was upstairs, fed and bathed. Jodi had dropped her off at seven and whispered at the door, \u201cCall me after. Any hour.\u201d<\/p>\n The SUV pulled in at 8:40. Brandon came through the side door loosening his tie.<\/p>\n \u201cHey, honey. Have you eaten?\u201d<\/p>\n He opened the refrigerator for a water.<\/p>\n \u201cHow long have you been sleeping with Everett?\u201d<\/p>\n His hand stayed on the door. The cold light lit his face. He didn\u2019t turn around.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI heard you. Two in the morning, in this kitchen. You said that once I delivered, you were leaving me.\u201d<\/p>\n For a long moment he didn\u2019t move. Then he closed the refrigerator, sat down across from me, and set the unopened bottle on the table.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want you to find out like that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOver a year.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBefore you asked me to carry his baby.\u201d<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t answer. I\u2019d seen the statements.<\/p>\n \u201cWas there ever a promotion?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere might still be.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat wasn\u2019t my question.\u201d<\/p>\n He rubbed his forehead. \u201cEverett never promised one. He never even brought it up. I thought if you believed it could help us, you\u2019d say yes.\u201d<\/p>\n I remembered his arms around my waist at the cake, his voice in the dark: I\u2019m trying to find a way to come home.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYou already knew you wanted to leave. When you asked me, you knew. And you made me think this was how I could keep you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI never said that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n I made myself ask the last question. \u201cWhat did you think would happen to Daisy?\u201d<\/p>\n He glanced at her school photo on the bookshelf, the one with the missing front tooth she\u2019d practiced smiling for in the bathroom mirror for a week. He\u2019d promised to help her on picture day and left early for a meeting instead.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d never abandon her. Everett has a room upstairs. We could paint it any color she wants. She could stay with us on weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve planned a bedroom. For my daughter. In his house.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI want to be in her life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo do I. But you don\u2019t get to plan her life on a phone call at two in the morning.\u201d He began describing weekends and holidays and who would do Monday drop-off. I stopped him. \u201cNo. Not tonight, and not like this. We\u2019ll work it out with lawyers and help, not because you and Everett decided.\u201d<\/p>\n