Following her bestselling debut novel Come Away with Me, Karma Brown returns with an unforgettable story that explores the intricate dynamics of friendship and parenthood

Hannah and Kate became friends in the fifth grade, when Hannah hit a boy for looking up Kate’s skirt with a mirror. While they’ve been close as sisters ever since, Hannah can’t help but feel envious of the little family Kate and her husband, David, have created—complete with two perfect little girls.

She and Ben have been trying for years to have a baby, so when they receive the news that she will likely never get pregnant, Hannah’s heartbreak is overwhelming. But just as they begin to tentatively explore the other options, it’s Kate’s turn to do the rescuing. Not only does she offer to be Hannah’s surrogate, but Kate is willing to use her own eggs to do so.

Full of renewed hope, excitement and gratitude, these two families embark on an incredible journey toward parenthood…until a devastating tragedy puts everything these women have worked toward at risk of falling apart. Poignant and refreshingly honest, The Choices We Make is a powerful tale of an incredible friendship and the risks we take to make our dreams come true.

Praise for the novels of Karma Brown

“With effortless and beautiful writing, Karma Brown twists heartache and hope together in The Choices We Make, taking you on each character’s complicated emotional journey and exploring how the worst-case scenario can still bring joy.”

—Amy E. Reichert, author of Luck, Love & Lemon Pie and

The Coincidence of Coconut Cake

“Laughing one minute, then fiercely blinking back tears the next, we tore through this novel—so gripping that we were both excited and scared out of our minds to turn the page. Karma Brown has proven herself to be a master at writing about the many facets of love in this stunning page-turner.”

—Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of The Status of All Things

“The Choices We Make describes one woman’s desperate longing for a baby and her best friend’s desire to help.… [A] story about friendship, and love, and sacrifice.”

—Julie Lawson Timmer, author of Five Days Left and Untethered

“I was already emotionally invested in this beautifully written story of love and loss when an unexpected turn of events knocked the wind right out of me. Heart-wrenching yet hopeful, Come Away with Me had me smiling through my tears.”

—Tracey Garvis Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island

“Come Away with Me tells the heartbreaking yet hopeful tale of a life lost and a life reclaimed. Fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love will flock to this novel…. Karma Brown is a talented new voice in women’s fiction.”

—Lori Nelson Spielman, author of The Life List

“Come Away with Me is full of lush locations, memorable characters, and a turn of events that is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Brown’s work is as smart as it is effortless to read.”

—Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Forever, Interrupted and After I Do

“[A]dventurous, heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful… This emotional love story will stick with you long after you’ve turned the final page.”

—Colleen Oakley, author of Before I Go, on Come Away with Me

“Brown’s debut knocks it out of the park…. An impressive study of loss, reconciliation, and brave choices with a stunning, three-hanky ending. A strong ensemble of supporting characters fills out this impressive story that carries away the reader’s heart and imagination.”

—Publishers Weekly on Come Away with Me

“Brown’s novel is cathartic and heartbreaking…will leave you in tears, so definitely have a box of tissues handy.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4 stars, on Come Away with Me

“A warmly compelling love story… Have tissues at hand for Brown’s deeply moving debut.”

—Booklist on Come Away with Me

The Choices
We Make
Karma Brown

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For my sister, Jenna, because she made me a mother.

Author’s Note

I am often told my daughter has my eyes and looks exactly like me. I love hearing this because it’s a beautiful reminder to be grateful for how she came to be.

The first time my husband and I talked about having kids was the day I sat in my oncologist’s office, raw and reeling from my shocking cancer diagnosis at the age of thirty. Along with words like chemotherapy and radiation, I was also told the lifesaving treatment would bring with it more than debilitating nausea, fatigue and hair loss. It also could cost me my fertility. So the first time my husband and I talked about kids was also the moment I learned I might never become a mother.

Luckily my oncologist was forward thinking and determined I would know motherhood. What followed were exhausting and rushed fertility procedures that left us with twenty-one embryos on ice, all set for when I was cancer-free and ready to start a family.

Despite our plentiful embryos and a boatload of determination, my body was too damaged from treatment, and pregnancy was impossible. However, my sister, Jenna, had promised she’d carry a baby for me if I ever needed her to, and so without hesitation that was exactly what she did. With this promise and one of our perfect embryos, Jenna made us parents in June 2008 through the incredible gift of gestational surrogacy.

It took 1,825 days for us to become parents. It was not an easy road, nor one I would wish on anyone despite our fairy-tale ending. But every injection, procedure, medication, worry, challenge and dollar spent was worth it. Because I am a mom.

The Choices We Make is not our story. But my experiences are scattered throughout the pages, as is my gratitude for my sister and all the women who have helped others know parenthood—it is a gift never to be taken for granted.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Author’s Note

Epigraph

Chapter 1

14 Months Earlier

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Acknowledgments

Reader’s Guide

Questions for Discussion

A Conversation with Karma Brown

Extract

Copyright

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

Ernest Hemingway

1

HANNAH

When the phone rings at seven o’clock on Tuesday night, I think it’s odd but I don’t worry. You save that for the calls that come in the middle of the night, the ones that wake you in a panic and surely mean someone has died. Normally I don’t even answer our landline—a relic from my high school days, so basic it doesn’t even have a display screen. Ben thinks we should cancel the service, as no one calls us on it except telemarketers, my mother every so often, and my best friend, Kate, though generally by accident because she has an irrational fear of updating her contacts list.

Deciding it must be a telemarketer as Mom is at her bridge club night and I just spoke with Kate an hour ago, I continue chopping peppers for the fajitas and wait for the answering machine—circa the same year as the phone—to pick up.

“Hannah? Are you there?” The voice is strained, uncertain but familiar.

Tripping over the puppy, asleep in the middle of the kitchen floor, I wipe my hands on the thighs of my jeans and grab the phone.

“Hello? David?” The puppy, awake now, nips at my leg, her high-pitched attempt at a growl more amusing than annoying. “Get off, Clover!” I whisper, trying to sound like the leader the dog obedience instructor told me I need to be. Clover ignores me, continuing her assault on the hem of my jeans. I look over at Ben for help, but he’s reading his tablet on the couch, oblivious to it all.

“Hannah—” David says my name again, but this time in a rush. As if he’s been holding his breath and is only just allowed to let it out. I gently shake Clover off my leg and throw a treat from my back pocket toward the couch. She promptly chases it before jumping up and snuggling her tiny, fluffy white body against Ben while she crunches the biscuit. He rubs her head, murmuring, “Good girl,” and I place my hand over the mouthpiece. “Remember who feeds you,” I say to her before speaking into the phone again.

“David, hey. When are you and Kate getting here? My impatient and apparently ravenous husband has already eaten most of the guacamole.” I glance at Ben, and he smiles before leaning forward to grab his cell off the ottoman, which was buried under a few magazines and stuffed dog toys. He frowns at the display screen and when he looks back at me his face is creased with concern. A ribbon of anxiety wraps around my chest as I think of my cell phone, forgotten upstairs on the bathroom vanity. I tap my baby finger against the curved plastic of the handset, not liking how my insides feel. “Wait, how did you get this number?”

Ben stands quickly, Clover tumbling off his lap.

It’s then I realize David isn’t responding because he’s crying. Suddenly I hear a lot of other noises, too. Beeping, like an incessant alarm clock. A garbled voice over a loudspeaker. The sounds of busy people, doing important things.

“David, where are you?”

Ben is beside me now, showing me his phone’s display. A string of missed calls from David.

“Hannah... I’m at the hospital... I don’t know what happened... Everything was fine, and then she just...”

“What’s wrong?” My heart pumps furiously. “Is it one of the girls?” Kate must be panicking, which is likely why David was calling instead of her. The ribbon of anxiety winds tighter.

And with his answer, I see the moment my life changes.

14 MONTHS EARLIER

2

KATE

June

I checked my cell again, the fifteenth time in the last five minutes.

“Call me,” I told David. “I want to make sure this is working.”

“It’s working,” David said, cutting up strawberries and bananas into small pieces. Even though our girls were eleven and seven, David, a paramedic, still insisted on their food being bite-size to prevent choking.

David licked strawberry juice off his fingers and looked up at me. “Give her time, Katie. It’s barely six o’clock.”

“I know, but I had such a good feeling this time. And if it were good news, she would have called by now, right? Right?”

David scraped the fruit into the girls’ bowls, then placed them on the table beside their dinners—barbecue chicken drumsticks, with carrot and cucumber sticks. “Ava! Josie! Dinner!” he hollered up the stairs before coming back to the kitchen.

“If it’s good news, maybe she and Ben are celebrating by themselves first,” he said. “And if it’s bad news? Maybe she’s not ready to talk about it.”

The girls came bounding into the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?” Ava, our eldest, asked.

“Chicken and veggies,” I said, pouring two glasses of milk and handing them to Ava. I topped up my glass of wine and handed David a beer. He wasn’t back on shift until the morning, which meant we could have a relaxed dinner after the girls went to bed and binge watch Netflix.

“I don’t like chicken,” Josie said, scrunching up her nose.

“Yes, you do,” David replied, pushing her chair closer to the table after she sat down. She protested by shoving the plate farther away.

“I don’t!” Josie crossed her arms over her chest, and I tried to hide my smile behind my wineglass. She looked just like David when she was mad, her dirty-blond eyebrows knitting together in a stern V shape.

“Since when, jelly bean?” I sat across from her at the table and nudged her plate back, taking a sip of my wine. Josie was my sweet and spicy kid—one moment snuggling contentedly, the next slamming doors and declaring life unfair and utterly disappointing. She was named after my grandmother Josephine, who had been a midwife during the war and who, according to family legend, was not a woman to mess with. I had only vague memories of Grandma Josephine, her death coming a day after my sixth birthday. But I do remember she always carried those red-and-white-swirled peppermints in the bottom of her purse, usually stuck to old pieces of tissue, that she drank a shot of whiskey every morning in her tea and that she suffered from frequent migraine headaches—something I had unfortunately inherited.

“Ever since she watched Chicken Run at Gram’s,” Ava said, biting into her drumstick with enthusiasm. While Josie was my loud and emotional child, Ava had always been more even-keeled, like David, and usually had her nose in a book. But she had a wicked sense of humor—which I liked to take credit for—and was quite skilled at pushing her sister’s buttons.

Sensing an opportunity to do just that, Ava ripped her teeth through a large chunk of skin and meat and chewed loudly as she leaned closer to Josie, making smacking noises with her lips. I shot Ava a warning glance, then got up and made Josie a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich, cutting the crusts off—which I knew I had to stop doing one day soon. Placing it on her plate and taking the drumstick for myself, I avoided David’s stare. We had argued just last night about how quick I was to offer options if the girls didn’t eat what was put in front of them.

Nibbling the drumstick, I looked back at my phone.

“Kate, she’s okay.” David swallowed the last dregs in his beer bottle. He got up to grab another and stopped to kiss the top of my head before sitting back at the table with me.

But I knew she wasn’t. Hannah had been my best friend for twenty-five years, and I knew her better than anyone else.

3

HANNAH

Ben and I had been married for 2,190 days, and we’d been trying to get pregnant for nearly every one of those.

We met in Jamaica, at the wedding of my college friend Jasmine, who also turned out to be Ben’s first cousin. He was tall and funny and had a thing for useless party tricks, like balancing a salt shaker on its edge and folding a dollar bill into a tiny collared T-shirt, which I found irresistibly charming—especially after a few rum punches. With skin the color of steeped tea with a long pour of cream thanks to his Jamaican mother, and deep blue eyes he’d inherited from his American father, Ben regaled me with stories of his childhood in Jamaica, where his mom had been a chef and his dad the lead architect for a string of luxury resorts on the island.

Over too many drinks we laughed, and danced, then stumbled back to my hotel room after a late-night ocean swim. It was one of those perfect nights, the kind that you think back to when life is getting you down. I’d been thinking about that night a lot lately.

Now, six years later, I should have been used to seeing that single line or the words Not Pregnant, but every time it caught me by surprise. We’d moved on long ago from the bottle of wine and legs up in the air while we giggled at the prospect of having just made a baby thing. Even though we were actively trying to get pregnant, we rarely had sex anymore. I missed having sex.

I had become an expert at answering the blistering and insensitive, though well-intentioned, “So when are you two going to have a baby?” question. No longer did I answer with the enthusiastic “We’re working on it!” response I used to give early on—now I simply offered, “Soon, we hope.” The assumption that Ben and I didn’t have a baby because we weren’t trying to have one really pissed me off.

God, we were trying so hard.

The knock on the bathroom door startled me, and the plastic test stick dropped from my hand.

“Hannah? Everything okay in there?”

I cleared my throat. “I’ll be right out.” I picked up the white plastic stick with its one dark blue line, and threw it harder than necessary into the trash can beside the toilet, jamming a balled-up handful of tissues on top of it. I had promised Ben I wouldn’t do a pregnancy test this time, would wait for the call from the doctor’s office with the official blood test results. But I was having a tough time kicking the habit.

A moment later I unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall, disappointed Ben wasn’t still standing there waiting for me even though I knew I would have been irritated if he had been. I found him in the kitchen, sitting at the island with a six-pack of Anchor Brewery beer and a bouquet of yellow tulips—two of my favorite things. My cell phone vibrated in my hand, and I glanced at the screen. “West Coast Fertility & Associates.” There was no point in answering it.

I started crying. Damn it.

“Hey, babe.” Ben jumped off his stool and wrapped his arms around me.

“Stupid hormones,” I blubbered, my face pressed into his chest. When I pulled back I saw a wet spot on the blue-and-white gingham-patterned cotton of his shirt, which I uselessly tried to blot with the sleeve of my cardigan.

Ben, his arms linked around my waist, leaned back and looked into my eyes. “Everything is going to be fine. You’ll see.”

I nodded.

“We’ll do in vitro next month, and I have a really good feeling about it,” he said.

I nodded again. “Thanks for the flowers,” I said, craning my head around him to look at the tulips on the counter. I didn’t want to talk about next month. Or IVF. “And the beer. I take it at least three of those are for me?”

Ben laughed. “Well, I figured you might need it,” he said. “And if not, I was prepared to drink the lot.” He winked and I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him.

“I love you, Ben Matthews.”

“I love you, too, Hannah Matthews.”

I extricated myself from his embrace. “Listen, I just need to go call Kate. You know how she frets.”

“I’m sure she can wait for one beer,” Ben said, cracking the lids on two bottles. “Here.”

“Thanks.” I took it from him, then picked up my phone. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Ben nodded and took a sip from his bottle, settling in on the couch. I headed to the bedroom upstairs and shut the door, then put my phone and beer on the nightstand and picked up a pillow from the bed.

Covering my face with it, pressing so hard my knuckles dug into my cheekbones, I screamed into the four-hundred thread count Egyptian cotton pillowcase until my throat hurt and I had no air left.

4

KATE

“Don’t talk about the girls, or babies, or anything to do with eggs or sperm.” I grabbed the taco shells out of the pantry and arranged them on the cookie sheet before sliding it into the prewarmed oven. David stirred the simmering beef on the stove top, shaking in some extra chili flakes.

“How would I even bring eggs or sperm up?” he asked before blowing on a spoonful of beef and popping it into his mouth. He swore under his breath, then grabbed his glass beside the stove and took a large gulp of water.

“Is it spicy? Did you put in too many pepper flakes?” I asked, even though I had no business commenting on his cooking. I was—had always been—a horrific cook, something I blamed on my upbringing. My mom could make exactly five dishes—scalloped potatoes with ham, spinach frittata, pasta with red sauce, chicken enchiladas and turkey potpie. I had since learned, thanks to David, how to make from-scratch pancakes, roast chicken with potatoes and beans, and a decent Mediterranean bread salad, but all of us were happy he shouldered most of the cooking. “It’s temperature hot,” he said. “Spice is perfect.”

“I feel so guilty every time,” I said, sighing. I whirled the margarita mix in the blender with two cups of ice, yelling over the blender noise. “It was so easy. Like, you barely touched me easy. Why can’t it just work for them? One time.”

The doorbell rang just as I finished rimming the glasses with rock salt.

“Remember, it’s like nothing is different,” I said as I headed out of the kitchen.

“Got it. No eggs. No sperm. Nothing is different.” David scraped the beef into a large bowl and set it on the island beside the lazy Susan filled with tomato, onion, hot peppers, lettuce, salsa and cheese.

I opened the door, took one look at Hannah and immediately welled up.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I furiously wiped away the tears. While I was definitely the crier of the two of us, I had been determined not to shed a tear tonight. “I’m sorry. I suck.”

Hannah gave me a tissue from her pocket. “Thanks a lot. Now I owe Ben twenty bucks.”

“What?” I took the tissue. “You made a bet I’d cry?”

“I knew you’d cry,” Ben said, leaning in to kiss my cheek.

“I told him you would at least hold it together until after the first pitcher of margaritas.” Hannah handed me the bowl of her famous guacamole along with a large Tupperware container. “I’ve been stress baking,” she said, with a shrug. “Chocolate peanut-butter cupcakes.”

“Well, now that Katie has completely ruined the evening,” David said, wincing slightly when I smacked him in the arm. “Let me just say I’m really sorry, guys.” He shook Ben’s hand, clasping his other hand against Ben’s arm.

“Thanks, man,” Ben said. Hannah looked down, her long, blond ponytail falling to the side, and I could tell she was just holding it together.

“The margaritas are ready, and I’m putting an extra shot in yours tonight,” I said, grabbing her hands and pulling her with me to the kitchen. “Come on. It’s time to get drunk.” David walked behind Hannah and put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing them gently as we all moved into the kitchen. With their blond hair and similar height—David only a couple of inches taller than Hannah—we often joked I had married the male equivalent of my best friend.

“I think I need two extra shots,” Hannah said, taking a seat at the island and letting out a shaky breath.

“Done!” I freehand poured the tequila and we laughed.

Three pitchers of margaritas, a bottle of red wine, a mess of tacos and two rounds of Cards Against Humanity later, Hannah was drunk and snoring beside me on the couch. Watching her sleep, I brushed strands of hair out of her face and lay my hand against her cheek. “I’m going to help you, Hannah. I don’t know how yet, but I’m going to fix this.”

5

HANNAH

Though my hangover was mostly gone by Monday morning, I still felt like crap. My period was coming and, though I was ready for it, the thought of it still gutted me. One more month and a thousand dollars down the drain—quite literally. I sighed as I pulled out the box of tampons I’d hoped to tuck away with the pregnancy tests.

After throwing my hair into a ponytail—being a recipe developer meant I never wore my hair down at work—I quickly brushed my teeth, already feeling dull cramps in my abdomen. Ben was in the kitchen, downing a quick cup of coffee before he had to leave for the office.

“You all right?” he asked, swirling the mug in his hand, then drinking the last mouthful, his eyes still on me.

“All good.”

He watched me for a few seconds more, then put his mug into the sink. “I’m going to be late tonight,” he said. “Dad and I have to work on the proposal.” As a junior partner at his dad’s firm, he was currently involved in trying to secure a major project—the redesign of a chain of boutique hotels that stretched along Southern California’s coastline—and they were only two weeks away from presenting to the client.

“Dishwasher’s clean,” he added, seeing me eye his mug—which he had placed unrinsed in the sink—with irritation. “I’ll unload it when I get home, okay?” He was using his cautious, soothing tone; the one reserved for days like this. I think he figured if he stayed calm, I would, as well.

I longed to explode with anger, with sorrow, to yell at Ben if for no other reason than to expunge the sadness out of me. But Ben’s tone said, let’s be gentle and quiet and polite with each other. Like not looking an angry, aggressive dog directly in the eye—if we averted our gazes from our failure to become parents, we might be able to walk away unscathed. I wondered sometimes if Ben believed that being nice enough would smooth the disappointment out, like a hot iron over wrinkled cotton.

So, as always, I took the same tone with him, because this was the dance we danced—the steps well rehearsed, the cadence predictable. “Sure, sounds good.” I opened the fridge and grabbed a yogurt, then scowled and put it back. The thought of eating something creamy and cold made my stomach turn. Pouring a large mug of coffee, I popped the lid on the acetaminophen bottle and shook out two—three—pills.

Ben raised his eyebrow, leaning back against the counter. “Headache? Or gearing up for your meeting today?”

“Something like that,” I said. There was no point in telling him about the cramps. He’d run out of ways to say, “Sorry about your period” ages ago. I envied his ability to drink his coffee and go to work and to not analyze and obsess over every twinge in his abdomen.

He pushed off the counter’s edge and kissed me, tasting like coffee with a hint of mint toothpaste, and was gone a moment later. Sipping my coffee, I replied to my sister Claire’s text about Mom’s birthday party, then saw the voice-mail icon flash on the screen. With a deep breath I put the phone on speaker and listened to the message from West Coast Fertility I’d been avoiding.

“Hi, Hannah, it’s Rosey from Dr. Horwarth’s office. We got your blood test results back and I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you but—”

I hit the end call button, then placed the three acetaminophen tablets on my tongue and chased them down with coffee.

6

HANNAH

July

Once we got home from the clinic I read through the IVF information sheets while Ben made dinner, writing down the injection schedule on our fertility calendar in the kitchen drawer. Then we ate in silence—Ben had made me his mom’s jerk chicken, but even the spicy dish, my favorite, couldn’t lift my spirits.

“Hannah,” he began, his voice unsure. I was in the middle of scrubbing the marinade dish and stopped briefly when he said my name, clenching my teeth. He had to know I didn’t want to talk about it. The dance, Ben, I wanted to say. Stick to the steps we know.

“What’s up?” I asked, keeping my tone light, back to scrubbing. As though I was only thinking about the dish in my hands.

“I know we’re going to try IVF, but there are...other options, too. What about adoption? We haven’t talked about it in a while.”

I slowly counted to five, scrubbing so hard I splashed water onto the countertop. “I can’t talk about this tonight. I can’t, okay?” Reluctantly I drew my eyes to his face, willing him to see this wasn’t the time.

“Okay.” Ben nodded, but I saw the shift in his face. The way his jaw tightened as he took a deep breath in through his nose. “So when?”

“When what?” I knew I was being unfairly evasive. After all, this wasn’t only my disappointment. Ben wanted to be a father more than anything.

“When will you be able to talk about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hannah, I—”

“I don’t know!” I shouted, my rubber-glove-covered hands flying out of the sudsy sink, dripping soapy water all over the mat under my feet. “I have no fucking idea, actually. But if you don’t mind, I’d rather just do these dishes in peace and not think about babies or getting pregnant or IVF or any of it, okay?” My voice rose, unsteady and breathless. “Or at the very least, I’d like twenty-four hours to be pissed off about my still-shitty uterus before I even consider taking someone else’s castoff.” As soon as I said it I wanted to take it back. Stuff the words back into my mouth and swish them around until I could change their meaning. Because it had nothing to do with adopting anyone’s “castoff”—a truly horrible way to phrase it, and I had no idea where those words came from—and everything to do with me being terrified of adoption.

I had this sick fear we’d adopt a baby, I’d fall deeply in love with it and then the birth mother would change her mind in the eleventh hour and I’d be left with empty arms and a broken heart. All I needed to do was tell Ben that, to explain myself so he could at least understand my hesitation. But instead I said those ugly words, which pulled us further away from each other.

Ben started pacing, his bare feet leaving damp footprints on our kitchen floor thanks to the spilled dishwater. Back and forth, back and forth he walked in front of me, his hands pressed deep into his hips. “This is not just about you, Hannah. I know you have to deal with all these injections and hormones, and poking and prodding, but you are not alone in this. I’m right here, going through it, too, feeling shitty and angry about all the same things you are.”

I blinked away tears and tried to focus on his footprints so I didn’t have to look at his face.

“At some point we, you and me, have to decide when it’s enough. It’s been six years, Hannah, and I...” He paused, head bent to the ground, voice dropping. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

“Tomorrow,” I whispered. “We can talk about it tomorrow night, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “Tomorrow.” Then he turned and walked upstairs, and a moment later I heard our bedroom door click shut. I tried not to think about what might be happening behind that closed door. So I stayed where I was, my gloved hands hanging by my sides, only small droplets of water dripping from them now. My abdomen cramped, and I knew that by morning the pain, and my defeat, would be worse. Then I’d sit on the toilet behind a locked bathroom door and cry so hard I’d get the hiccups.

Ben was wrong—in some ways, I really was alone with this.

7

KATE

September

I heard the door creak open and then Hannah’s voice. “Kate?”

“Up here,” I shouted back, leaning against the window frame, my body tucked up so my toes just touched the other side of the sill. My pedicure was nearly grown out, the half-moon of each toenail peeking out from under the chipping polish. “It’s called Chinchilla,” the manicurist had announced—almost proudly, as if the name had been her idea—rolling the bottle of boring beige polish between her hands to warm it. “Our most popular neutral for fall.” I didn’t care about how trendy my toes were, only that they complemented the black skirt and jacket I wore to the funeral and didn’t shout wedding or date night, like my go-to coral color would have done.

It had been a month since my mom died, and I still felt strangely abandoned. My father had left when I was a baby, and despite the monthly letters he sent that I rarely opened—typed on impersonal white paper yet awkwardly personal in detail—my relationship with him was similar to my relationship with my dentist. A once-a-year visit for an hour that was about as unpleasant as a root canal. I only did it because my mom asked every year on her birthday for my father to join us for lunch. I think she hoped one day I’d let him off the hook for leaving us, somehow see in him what she still seemed to despite the disintegration of their marriage and his subsequent escape.

Mom had been alone in her beloved garden when she died—because while her cooking was atrocious, her green thumb was remarkable—one Sunday late afternoon while David, the kids and I made pizza and played Trouble. Now that she was gone I had lost my bearings, and though I could get the girls out the door to school dressed and with lunches packed, the rest of my day was typically spent puttering around the house, making lists of things I had no intention of doing and feeling sorry for myself. My mom drove me crazy at times, like all mothers do, but it had been just the two of us for so long and I loved her fiercely. Sometimes, especially at night, the pain got so bad I was sure I was having a heart attack just like she’d had, certain I’d inherited her silent heart problem and would face a similar fate.

David continually assured me I was not having a heart attack when the pain was at its worst, placing his stethoscope against my heaving chest in the middle of the night and taking my symptoms—racing heart, sweating, nausea—seriously, because he was my husband and loved me. He was more patient with me these days, not like when I stressed about Josie’s stuffy nose turning to pneumonia or the sliver in my foot from the deck going gangrenous. He was generally unflappable—he said he couldn’t get worked up about a sliver when he spent his days and nights trying to keep very sick or injured people alive—but I knew it was just who he was. And it was one of the things I envied most about him.

Hannah appeared in the doorway of our home office, a room I intended to use one day when I figured out what job title came after “stay at home mom,” with a look on her face that told me my days of holing up in my house were almost over.

“What are you doing?” she asked, stepping into the room and putting a plate filled with chocolate chunk cookies on the desk.

I pointed to her bare feet. “Why do you always take your shoes off? You know this is a shoe-on house.”

“Well, you don’t have shoes on. And why are you answering a question with a question?”

I gestured to the plate of cookies. “Stress baking again?”

“Work baking. Don’t get too excited, though. They’re gluten-free. Not bad, but gluten really does make everything more delicious.” She padded over to where I sat and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Are you okay, Katie?”

I pushed her away gently. “Go back to the door. I don’t want you breathing this in. You have your transfer in a few days.”

Hannah pointed at the cigarette in my hand. “That’s what I meant about what are you doing. I know the eighties are back in fashion, but think this might be a tad retro?”

I smiled and took a long drag, then turned my head and exhaled out the open window. “Yeah, but I don’t care. Tell me, why did I ever stop smoking? I forgot how good it feels.” Hannah’s grandfather had been an occasional smoker, and until the unfortunate day when her grandmother caught us red-handed, we used to steal cigarettes out of his silver monogrammed cigarette case after school and run down the street to the park, where we’d hide behind the climber and giggle and cough while we smoked, feeling grown-up and wild and a little woozy from the nicotine.

“Feels good for now, until the lung cancer settles in,” Hannah said, dragging a chair up to the window. “Give me one.”

I pulled the pack out of her hand and tucked it under my arm. “No fucking way,” I said. “You’re about to make a baby. I’m not letting you put anything in that body of yours except kale and red meat. Speaking of which, the steaks are in the fridge marinating and the kale salad is in the crisper.” Back in the early days of trying to conceive, before the fertility medications and doctors, Hannah had scoured every website and piece of advice she could about baby making and had gone on a strict high-iron diet. It only lasted for a month, but it was also the only other time she got pregnant naturally. Unfortunately she miscarried almost immediately, but I still bought her organic red meat before every procedure, feeling superstitious about it all.

“Technically the baby was already made when my sad little eggs joined Ben’s very enthusiastic sperm in a plastic dish a few days ago—did I tell you that’s actually what they called his sperm? Enthusiastic.” Hannah sighed, tugging the pack from my hand and pulling a cigarette out. “Are these menthol?”

“Yup. I went old-school.” I lit the cigarette she held between her lips. She took a deep drag and coughed a little. “So you need to eat an extra helping of the kale to make up for this, okay? Promise me.”

“No need.” Hannah took another drag, not coughing this time. “This really is like riding a bike, isn’t it?”

I nodded and lit another cigarette right from the one between my lips, which had burned down to the filter. “Why no need?” I asked.

“It isn’t going to happen,” Hannah said, pushing my feet off the sill and coming to sit beside me. I didn’t comment right away. By now I was well used to her negativity when it came to all things infertility, and had learned jumping too quickly to the positive only pissed her off and shut her down. We rested our feet side by side on the chair she’d just vacated, and I commented on how nice her toenails looked, each covered with a fresh and glossy shade of lilac polish.

“Grape Frost,” she said, wriggling her toes a little. We smoked in silence for a moment longer.

“Look, I know it’s got to be hard to stay positive after everything, but—” I started.

“The embryos arrested.”

I swiveled to look at her. “What does that mean? Arrested?”

“It means they didn’t grow. Which means we won’t be doing a transfer,” Hannah said, looking down at her feet again.

“Okay, so next month, then.” I nudged her shoulder, hoping she’d look at me. She didn’t. “You’ve waited this long, you can do one more month.”

Hannah shook her head and pulled on her cigarette. The office was filling with smoke, but it was still early in the day. I had time to air it out before the girls came home, and David was on a long shift. Though I had only ever been a fair-weather smoker—picking up the habit during particularly stressful times and dropping it when life felt smooth and easy—technically I had quit twelve years ago, when I found out we were pregnant with Ava. But I kept a pack hidden at the back of my underwear drawer, just in case.

“We’re done, Katie.”

“What? No,” I said, placing my hand on her leg. “No, you are not done. Sure, take this month, take two months if you need to, but you can’t give up.”

She jumped off the windowsill so fast I lost my balance, dropping her cigarette into my glass of water before I could stop her. Then she peeled back the plastic cellophane on the plate, grabbing a cookie and pacing while she ate it, frowning as she chewed. Someone who didn’t know her as well might think the frown was about the arrested embryos, but I knew she was contemplating the cookies’ texture and flavor, and how to make them better.

“We’re not giving up—we’re giving in,” she said, her mouth half-full of cookie. “There’s a difference. Ben said he couldn’t do it anymore. And I sort of agree.” She stopped pacing, swallowing the mouthful and staring at the half-eaten cookie left in her hand. “More salt, more butter, less vanilla.”

I took the cookie out of her hand and had a big bite. “I say just add another cup of chocolate chips and you’re good to go.”

Hannah started crying.

“Or not. Maybe pecans?” I said.

“I’m a mess. I look terrible. I’m exhausted. I feel like shit. I’m crying all the time. Like, all the time, Katie,” Hannah said. “And you know how I hate to cry. Plus, none of my clothes fit. I’m fat.”

I shook my head. “You are not fat. You’re beautiful.”

“Tell that to my jeans and these zits,” she said, pacing again, still crying but less so. “All I do is think about babies. And hate everyone who has one. I can’t even stand going to Starbucks in the middle of the day anymore, because inevitably there’s some new mom sipping a latte and breast-feeding. Glowing in all her fucking new-motherness.” She looked at me pointedly. “And you know how much I love my London Fogs.”

I nodded, watching her carefully. “I know your love runs deep.”

“It really does,” Hannah said, sniffing and licking her fingers free of melted chocolate. “And in the few moments I have when I’m not thinking about babies or missing London Fogs, I’m injecting myself with needles. I’m a fucking human pincushion. Seriously. Have you seen my stomach lately?” Without waiting for me to answer she lifted her tank top and uncovered dozens of bruises and angry red dots, all blending together in a mesmerizing pattern better suited to an artist’s canvas than my best friend’s torso. I forced my eyes back to her face, which was blotchy from the strength of her tears.

I put my cigarette out in the glass where Hannah’s half-smoked one still floated and walked over to her. Taking the cookie out of her hands, I grabbed a tissue from the holder on the desk and gently wiped the remaining chocolate off her fingers.

“Thanks,” she said when I took another tissue and wiped her eyes with it. “I love you, Katie.”

“I love you, too, Hannah. We’re both sort of a mess, aren’t we?”

Hannah nodded, and a laugh bubbled out of her. “You stink, and so does this office,” she said. “David is going to lose it.”

“He won’t be home for hours,” I said, handing her another cigarette and taking one for myself. We lit them off the same flame from the lighter that came free with the pack of cigarettes. I inhaled deeply, feeling the cool burn of the menthol-flavored tobacco hitting my airway.

“Cheers to us,” Hannah said, tapping her cigarette to mine. “And for what it’s worth, there’s no one I’d rather be a mess with.”

“Me neither.”

We smoked that cigarette, and then Hannah went back to work, leaving me to get the smoke out the office with air fresheners and the big fan we kept in the basement. With the fan blowing full blast and a freesia-scented candle burning, I put the cigarette package back in my underwear drawer, headed to our bathroom with the plate of cookies and took the rest of the boring beige polish off my toenails.

8

HANNAH

October

“Are you seriously making popcorn?” Ben opened the fridge, pulling out a beer and an apple. He rubbed the apple on his jeans—his version of giving it a good wash—and, holding the glossy red fruit between his teeth, opened the beer with a quick twist. He held up the beer bottle with a questioning look, and I shook my head.

“No, thanks. I’m in the mood for something stronger tonight. And you love popcorn.” I turned the handle on the Whirley Pop popcorn maker, which was heating up on the stove. It had been a gift from my mom two Christmases ago, a “healthy snack” alternative to help me lose some weight. I had been a rower all through college and still wasn’t used to my softer body, though I didn’t like to admit that. Apparently one of Mom’s bridge friends had a daughter who had a terrible time getting pregnant, until she took up running and lost twenty pounds, then poof, twins. My mom was quite certain if I got thin—like my sister Claire was, like Mom had been her whole life—I’d finally get pregnant. While I had wanted to tell her to take the Whirley Pop and shove it, I thanked her for the gift and then promptly hid it at the back of a kitchen cabinet behind a stack of old bakeware.

Tonight was the first time I’d used the Whirley Pop, and only because we had run out of microwave popcorn.

“Wrong. I love melted butter,” Ben said. “Popcorn is just a vehicle for the butter.”

I rolled my eyes and continued turning the handle, hearing the first kernel pop. “I want to make tonight fun, or at least tolerable, and popcorn is fun. We can pretend it’s movie night...just without the movie.”

“Hannah, I love you. But popcorn isn’t exactly ‘fun,’ and looking through classifieds is nothing like movie night.” Ben took another bite of his apple, swishing it down with a sip of beer. I scowled, both at his attitude about what I had planned for our night and the whole beer and apple thing. While most people enjoyed salted peanuts or chips with a beer, Ben preferred fruit. He could eat whatever he wanted, blessed with his mom’s height and his dad’s metabolism, and that he chose an apple over nachos felt a little as if he was rubbing it in.

“I didn’t say it was like movie night. I said I wanted to make it fun...like movie night.” Ben just shrugged, and with a sigh I dumped the hot popcorn in a large bowl. “Can you hit Start on the microwave? Butter’s ready to go.”

“So how does this work?” Ben asked, taking a handful of popcorn and looking at the screen. I had already opened the site, having found it during my research mission earlier in the day.

“I think it’s like any ad site, you search and see what pops up.” I typed a couple of words in the search box and hit Enter. I was playing naive, because I didn’t want Ben to know I’d already done a pretty thorough search. I needed to know what to expect ahead of time, because Ben wasn’t exactly on board with the idea of surrogacy.

Two pages of hits came up, and, taking my own handful of popcorn, I scanned the first page.

“Okay, this one looks good. ‘In search of a loving couple to take this incredible journey with,’” I read out loud.

Ben snorted. “Nope. That one sounds too high maintenance.”

“Stop it. Just humor me, okay?”

He took another handful of popcorn and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “Fine,” he said, munching on the kernels. “Tell me more about this incredible-journey woman.”

“Thank you.” I shifted the laptop so Ben could see the screen better. “Thirty years old, mom of three. Good. We know her equipment works. Married—to the same man—for the past eight years, and she’s asking...whoa. Holy shit.” I pointed to the dollar amount in the ad, leaving a buttery fingerprint on the screen.

Ben leaned in and squinted. He was supposed to be wearing his reading glasses, which he’d finally had to admit he needed, but he was having a hard time accepting that at thirty-five he was aging...or at least his eyes were. “Forty thousand dollars?”

“That seems a bit high. Thought it was around thirty thousand? Maybe because she’s already had a successful surrogate pregnancy?”

“Go to the next one,” Ben said, taking a swill of his beer.

I sipped my gin and tonic and clicked on the next ad.

“So this one was a gestational surrogate before—that’s when she carries the couple’s embryo,” I explained.

“I know what a gestational surrogate is,” Ben said, getting up to grab another beer and a handful of grapes. “Need anything?”

I shook my head, reading on. “She didn’t like the medications when she did the gestational gig—can’t say I blame her,” I said, looking over at Ben. He nodded, settling back on the couch. We had briefly discussed trying to find an egg donor and maybe giving that a try using my own uterus. But the thought of paying for someone else’s eggs, then turning them into embryos, then trusting my uterus to let them grow... It left me weak with anxiety and despair.

I couldn’t explain how, but I knew—I knew, deep inside—that my body would never carry a baby to term. And I couldn’t handle one more negative pregnancy test or chemical pregnancy. Sure, we could also get donor eggs, fertilize them with Ben’s sperm to make embryos and then find a gestational surrogate, but the cost to do that would be astronomical. And we’d already spent thousands of dollars to get to this point—surfing for surrogates on date night.

“So she’s only willing to be a traditional surrogate, which is perfect for us.” Ben nodded again, and I smiled at him before looking back at the screen. I was nervous, so much more invested in this than I cared to admit.

“Married, healthy, two kids, good BMI, no family disease, had a recent psychiatric evaluation...” At that Ben raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment. “Huh. Okay. Says she would prefer a Christian, traditional couple, and wants a relationship after the birth.” I chewed a stray cuticle, trying to decide how I felt about that. The Christian thing didn’t worry me, even though Ben and I were not religious, but a relationship after the baby was born?

“I guess that’s not so different from adoption,” Ben said, shrugging. “What do you think about that?” I knew he wasn’t keen on doing a surrogacy, but I loved him for appeasing my need to look at all the options.

“Let’s go to the next one,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. I was weeks off the fertility medications now, so I couldn’t blame the tears that sprang to my eyes on that anymore. What I wished I could say was that I loathed every second of this, no matter what I had said about the popcorn and fun. I wanted to have my own baby, not pay someone else to have one for us.

I hated that I’d dragged Ben into this sad mess, where we were spending our Saturday night reading surrogate classified ads and pretending it was something we wanted to do. I was worried that I couldn’t make myself talk to Ben about how much adoption scared me. How I preferred the idea of surrogacy because the baby would at least be genetically linked to one of us. But most of all, and the thing I hadn’t said aloud to anyone, ever?

I was deeply ashamed to be an infertile woman. I despised my body for failing me, failing Ben and our marriage, on the most basic of things.

Pushing that shame and sadness down, I read the next few ads out loud. They all sounded similar enough that by the end of the two pages it was hard to remember one from another. The popcorn sat heavily in my stomach, and I regretted putting so much butter on it. I shut the laptop forcefully and turned on the television.

Ben shifted so he faced me. “What are you doing?”

“I think you’re right. I don’t think this is a good idea.” I flicked through the channels. “What do you want to watch?”

He took the remote from my hand and turned the television off. “Maybe we should talk about option C.”

“What’s option C?” I asked.

Ben swallowed hard but kept his eyes on mine. “Not having kids.”

I stared at him, unsure what to say. We had talked briefly about the possibility of not having a family, but for me it was never a real option. But looking at his face I saw the concern, and worry, and realized all of this had taken as much out of him as it had me. So because I loved him more than I hated the idea of never having a child, I said, “Okay, let’s talk about option C.”

And the truth was option C had some decent stuff going for it. Travel. Financial freedom. Flexibility. The ability to be selfish. Saturday morning sleep-ins and late Sunday brunches. Glass coffee tables with supersharp corners, white couches and expensive throw pillows.

So while I brainstormed and wrote down the top ten places I’d like to travel with Ben, and he sketched out and calculated how much it might cost to design us a dream home overlooking the ocean, my heart wasn’t in it.

Option C meant there would never be a baby.

I hated option C.

* * *

Around three o’clock in the morning, unable to sleep, I crept out of our bedroom and went downstairs to the kitchen. Bowl of Cherry Garcia ice cream in one hand and my laptop in another, I sat at the kitchen table and fired up the computer. I left the lights off, eating the cherry-and-chocolate ice cream by the laptop’s glow, and went back through the ads Ben and I had browsed earlier.

I stopped at the one of the woman who preferred a Christian couple and wanted a relationship after the baby was born. Something about her had stuck with me, perhaps because she was one of the only ones to not romanticize the experience. There were no adjectives like wonderful or incredible peppered throughout, and I liked how up front she was about what she wanted out of the contract, money aside.

Tapping my spoon gently against the sides of my now-empty bowl, I tried to imagine what it would be like to have another woman carry a baby for me—a baby I had no genetic link to. My mind filled with a million questions and concerns, like how we would pay for it, and how our friends and family would react, and how I could be certain the surrogate wouldn’t change her mind in the end and fight us to keep the baby. And if I would love a baby that wasn’t mine as much as one I gave birth to.

Ben and I had agreed to put the surrogacy idea on the back burner. He preferred the idea of adoption, worried about the astronomical costs and complications—both emotional and logistical—that came with surrogacy, and as a last resort, option C. With a sigh I shut the laptop and took my bowl over to the sink. While I rinsed it I imagined rinsing out baby bottles after midnight feedings, and the pain in my belly was so intense I doubled over the sink, dropping the ice-cream bowl—the loud clang as it hit the stainless-steel tub echoing through the kitchen.

“Fuck it,” I said, drying my hands and opening the laptop again.

Scanning the ad I found the contact information, and before I could even think about what I was doing, I typed her an email. With my finger over the enter key, poised to hit Send, I realized I was shaking. I told myself I wasn’t committing to anything. It was just an email, and Ben didn’t even need to know about it because nothing would likely come of it.

I hit Return, saw the confirmation my email had been sent and then went back to bed.

9

KATE

My cell phone rang, the familiar bars of Michael Jackson’s “Pretty Young Thing” filling the silence of the kitchen. Hannah. I jumped, a hand to my chest, only then realizing I was still holding the butter knife I’d been spreading the peanut butter with.

“Shit,” I said, glancing down at my previously white shirt. There was a large peanut-butter stain right in the middle of my chest. Why did I even bother trying to wear clean shirts, and a white one at that? I ran my finger over the excess peanut butter and licked it off, answering my phone.

“Hey, you,” I said. “How goes it?” I tucked the phone in the crook of my neck and, glancing at the large clock on the wall, swore under my breath and quickly cut the crusts off the bread. My head was still pounding, despite the migraine medication I’d taken at four in the morning, but at least the tingling in my neck and arms was gone and my stomach had settled.

“Hey, are you going to be around for a bit after the girls go to school?” Hannah sounded weird. Out of breath. Like she had a secret she couldn’t wait to let burst out of her mouth.

“It’s a migraine morning, so David’s taking them. You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, good. Okay, I’ll be by in about forty minutes. Want a latte or maybe a tea for your head?”

“Coffee, definitely,” I replied. “I haven’t had a chance to make any yet. That’s probably why my head is still pounding.”

“For the last time, set your coffee timer. It will change your life, promise.”

“So you say.” I leaned into the knife as I pressed it against the sandwich, the soft bread squishing and some peanut butter and jam squeezing out the edges.

“I’ll get you a double shot. See you soon.”

“See you soon,” I said, hitting End with a peanut-butter-covered fingertip. “Shit!”

“Mom, you need to put a dollar in the jar.” Ava came into the kitchen and grabbed a triangle of the sandwich before I could stop her. “Is this peanut butter?” Ava asked, holding the sandwich up in the very tips of her fingers as though it were poisoned.

“Yes, it’s peanut butter. You love PB&J sammies. What’s the deal?”

Ava rolled her eyes. “First of all, stop calling them ‘sammies.’ You sound really lame.”

“Well, excuse me,” I replied, tucking the other triangles into Josie’s reusable sandwich bag, which was covered with bumblebees and tulips. “And I’m not lame. I’m your very cool, very hip mother.”

“Secondly,” Ava said, ignoring me, “you know you can’t send peanut butter to school. We need that soy nut butter crap.”

“Shit,” I said, quickly followed by, “Don’t say it. I know.” I pointed a finger at the jar on the windowsill, which was half-full of dollar bills. “I’ll put my money in today and after school you need to put a dollar in for using the word crap.” It had been my idea to do the swear jar, after watching some parenting show while I was at the dentist’s office trying to ignore the drilling in my mouth. But it had backfired, as I was responsible for at least 70 percent of the money in there. I reached into the pantry and grabbed two protein bars and two fruit cups. “There’s no time to make more sandwiches, so protein bars it is.”

“Fine,” Ava said, taking her lunch bag from me and putting it in her backpack. “I’m tired of sandwiches anyway.”

“Where’s your sister?”

“She’s changing again. Something about not feeling the color pink today.”

“Josie!” I shouted up the stairs, just as David started coming down. “Sorry, can you grab Josie? They’re going to be late.”

David turned and went back up the two stairs he had come down, shouting Josie’s name as he did.

I finished packing Josie’s lunch and tucked it into her backpack, mentally running over all the things I needed to do before they left for the day. My mind felt foggy, an irritating side effect of the medication I took to thwart the debilitating migraines that struck every month or so.

David and Josie came into the kitchen, looking as if they’d coordinated their outfits. Josie was dressed in black leggings and a tunic, and David wore his all-black paramedic uniform. “You look lovely.” I kissed Josie on top of her head. “Black is a great color on you.”

“Thank you, Momma,” she said, her chin tilting up and a smile coming across her freckled face at the compliment.

“Okay, get going or you’ll miss the morning bell.” I kissed the two of them on their cheeks, foreheads, noses and lips, just like I did every morning. Ava wiped her lips afterward, but Josie came back for a second kiss. I was grateful I had a few more years of kisses and snuggles and Josie thinking I walked on water before the hormones kicked in and I became her “lame,” forgetful, cussing mom instead of her hero.

David pecked me on the lips when I handed him his lunch, and I pulled him in for another kiss. “Have a great day,” I said.

“You, too.” He smiled at me, his gaze settling on me in a way that made me feel warm inside. “How’s the head?”

“Better,” I said. “Hannah’s bringing me a coffee, so I’ll be right as rain in no time.” David kissed me again, and then in a rush they were out the door, and suddenly all was quiet in the house again. With a sigh, I sat at the kitchen table and rubbed the back of my neck while I checked my inbox filled with spam offers and PTA to-dos, impatiently waiting for Hannah, her news and my double-shot latte.

10

HANNAH

We had an off-site photo shoot and I didn’t have to be at the restaurant we were featuring until ten. At nine o’clock I rang Kate’s doorbell, nervously tapping the toes on one foot as I mentally rehearsed how I was going to justify what I was planning to do.

I could tell she wasn’t feeling well when she opened the door, even though she was smiling. Her eyes were dull and her face pale.

“Thank God,” she said, kissing my cheek and taking the tray of coffees from my hands. “I really do need to set that timer. David usually makes the coffee, but he didn’t get a chance this morning.” She smelled like peanut butter and tea tree oil, which I knew she used on the girls’ hair every morning before school, claiming it had kept them lice-free even during the school’s inevitable outbreaks.

“How’s the migraine?” I asked, following her into the living room. I sat on the couch beside her and tucked my legs under me. She took a sip of the latte and closed her eyes. “So much better now. Thank you for this.” Then she opened her eyes and looked at me in a way that made me even more nervous, her deep brown eyes holding steady on my face. “Out with it, Hannah. What’s up?”

I cleared my throat, shifting to grab my own coffee. “So I’ve done something... Something I probably shouldn’t have. No, definitely shouldn’t have.”

“What have you done?” Kate asked slowly, as though she was giving both of us time to prepare for whatever it was.

It all came out in a rush. “I emailed a surrogate even though I told Ben I wouldn’t, and now she wants to meet, like tomorrow, and I said I’d meet her and I didn’t tell Ben and I’m not sure I want to because I know he’s going to lose it and she’s asking for forty grand to do this and she’s really religious and we’re not and she wants to have a relationship with the baby after it’s born but I really want to meet her. I think. I’m pretty sure—”

“Stop talking,” Kate said, and so I did. She casually took a long sip of her coffee and then got up. “This calls for chocolate.” A moment later she was back, a huge dark chocolate bar on the coffee table in front of us. Kate popped a piece of the chocolate in her mouth and sucked on it, melting it on her tongue. I didn’t bother reminding her chocolate was one of her headache triggers.

“First of all, I have to say I’m sort of impressed. I mean, going on a secret surrogate-hunting mission? That is a very un-Hannah-like move.”

I squirmed, knowing she was trying to make me laugh but feeling worse by the second. “I didn’t mean for it to be a secret, I just... I don’t know. I just did it before I could think too hard about what I was doing.”

Kate nodded, looking at me thoughtfully. “Who is this person?” she asked, snapping off another square of chocolate.

“Her name is Lyla. She’s a mom, married and healthy, and she wants to be a surrogate. My—our—surrogate.”

Kate narrowed her eyes. “How did you find her?”

“A classified ad.” I tried not to cringe, hearing how it sounded. I mean, you went to the classifieds to find a dining room table or tickets to a sold-out concert, not for a woman to carry a baby for you.

Kate paused, the chocolate square partway to her lips. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope, not kidding.”

“And you’re sharing this with me instead of Ben because...?”

“Because I needed to tell someone who was going to be on my side,” I said, my voice dropping. The sweetness of the chocolate locked up my throat and I coughed hard a few times.

Kate rubbed my back. “Oh, honey. Ben is always on your side.”

I shook my head. “Not this time, Katie. Sure, he humored me and went through the ads with me, but I know he doesn’t want to do this. He thinks it’s... He wants to try adoption.”

Kate took my hands in hers and gently tugged on them until I looked at her. “And you don’t?”

“I’m not sure what I want anymore,” I replied. “No, that’s not true. I know exactly what I want.”

Kate squeezed my fingers. “You want a baby.”

I nodded. “A baby. And when I read through Lyla’s ad, something just... I don’t know, something just told me to email her. I didn’t even consider what I’d do if she responded back.”

“When are you going to tell Ben?”

“After I meet with her? I mean, maybe once I see her, talk to her, I’ll be sure it’s not the right thing to do.” I looked at Kate, then looked away quickly when I saw her face—she was right, of course. I had to tell Ben.

“Besides, you can’t go alone. What if she’s nuts? Has some kind of weird secret agenda, like pretending to be pregnant so she can get your money and then take off?” I didn’t want to admit that very thought had crossed my mind more than once.

“You’re right. This is a bad idea. Sorry, I just—”

“You just want to be a mom,” Kate said, holding my hands tighter. “Listen, I still think you should talk to Ben before you go meet any sort of potential baby mama, but if you really want to go through with this first, I’ll come with you. I don’t want you going by yourself.”

“Thank you. But... I should never have sent that email. I can’t shut Ben out of this, no matter how much easier it might be.” Kate gave me a small, sad smile. “I’m going to cancel.” My phone’s alarm went off. “Gotta run. I need to be at the restaurant by ten.”

I stood and hugged Kate tightly. “Thanks for talking me off the ledge.”

“Thanks for the latte. I needed it. You gonna be okay?”

I nodded. “Fine. You know me—I’m not a quitter.”

“No,” Kate said, shaking her head. “You are not.”

“Let me know if you need a hand with the girls after school, okay? You can put your feet up and I can make dinner.”

“Deal,” Kate said. A minute later I was waving at Kate as she stood in her doorway, heading toward the BART station. Fifteen minutes later while I waited for my train, I pulled out my phone and checked my messages. One from Ben, wanting to take me out for dinner tomorrow night; one from my mom, making sure I wouldn’t forget to call my uncle George after his gallbladder surgery; and another one from Lyla, confirming our meeting the next afternoon. Ignoring the messages from Ben and my mom for the moment, I hit Reply and told Lyla I’d see her there and was looking forward to it, then got on the train trying not to feel guilty about lying to everyone.

11

HANNAH

As I stood in the coffee line, secretly observing Lyla—who was engrossed in something on her phone—all I could think about was how tiny she was, her hips narrow and legs so short her feet only just grazed the floor when she was sitting down. I had good hips for pregnancy—wide and sturdy. I was also, at five-eight, on the tall side for a woman and so assumed that when Ben and I had a child he or she would probably end up tall—perhaps a volleyball player like Ben had been, or a rower like me.

I still hadn’t allowed myself to really consider what I was doing here—that this woman, waiting for her green tea latte and cinnamon coffee cake, was prepared to use her own eggs and body to carry a child for me, a complete stranger. Lyla looked up and smiled, and I smiled back, face flushing at being caught staring.

The guilt that swept through me was deep and swift, and I had the sudden urge to run back out through the coffee shop’s front door and pretend like I hadn’t agreed to this. Or better yet, I wished I could go back and erase that first email I’d sent Lyla, finish my ice cream and go back to bed instead of hitting Send. I should have told Ben—I had lied to him about something important exactly once in our relationship, back when we were still figuring out who we were to each other, and had promised him at the time I wouldn’t do it again. That was not who we were. My stomach knotted, and I felt sick.

“Fourteen seventy-five,” the young guy at the cash register said, and I had the feeling based on the tone of his voice that it wasn’t the first time he’d told me what I owed.

I mumbled an apology and fished a twenty out of my wallet, handing it to him with a smile. He gave me my change and the place card holder with my number, and I went back to our table.

Lyla looked up as I sat down and I noticed her eyes were brown, flecked with amber highlights that almost looked like there were tiny lights behind her irises. They were pretty. I had accepted that if we were to go the surrogate route, the baby would not look like me. Lyla was quite fair skinned, so at least Ben’s coloring would shine through. For some reason that mattered to me—that the baby looked like one of us—though I knew I should have let go of that ages ago.

“They’ll bring it out to us.” I placed the numbered card on the edge of our table.

“Thank you,” Lyla said, her voice exuberant and her smile wide. “So, Hannah, why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”

Her forwardness caught me off guard, until I remembered this wasn’t the first time she’d sat across from a woman she was considering carrying a baby for. I hated that I was the inexperienced one—the desperate one. The one who needed something and who had so much to lose.

“Well, let’s see,” I said, chewing one of my cuticles—a nervous habit I had been trying to break since I was a girl. You could always tell the state of my anxiety or stress based on the shape of my cuticles. “I’m thirty-five, grew up in Marin—Mill Valley, specifically. I’m a recipe developer at Femme magazine, which means I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking and eating, so as you can imagine it’s a great job.”

“Oh, I love the recipes in Femme,” Lyla said. “I don’t know how you stay so thin, having to eat everything.”

I smiled at the compliment and wished I could record it for my mother. “Well, we have a little industry trick. We don’t swallow most of what we taste—we spit it out. It sounds gross I know, but it’s the only way to avoid buying a new wardrobe every year. I gained about ten pounds the first six months I was at the magazine until I learned the taste-and-spit trick.”

“Huh, I never even thought about that, but it makes sense. What about your family? Are they here in San Francisco?”

“My dad died when I was ten,” I said, then thanked her when she told me she was sorry to hear that. “My mom lives over in Pacific Heights with my sister and her husband.” I cleared my throat and looked over to the coffee bar, hoping our drinks were on their way. The nervousness in my belly was increasing with every word.

“Are ya’ll close?” Lyla asked. “You and your sister?”

I looked back at her. “Claire’s five years younger than me, but yeah, I guess we’re close? Or as close as you can be when you have that many years between you.” Claire was an associate partner at her husband Peter Todd’s law firm and expected to make full partner within the next year—which would make her the youngest partner at the firm. And it had nothing to do with nepotism. She worked hard; she got what she wanted. As for me, I liked my job—a lot most days. I got to work with food—my first love—and it was the sort of work that allowed room for motherhood, too. But careers and age difference aside, the truth was that Claire and I were different in every way we could be—she was ambitious and confident, petite and pretty, while I was less so in all areas.

Lyla nodded. “I get that. My two boys are quite close in age, but have very different personalities. Luke is the oldest, and a risk taker—he’s going to turn my hair gray soon. Jason, my husband, says we’re going to spend a lot of time in the ER with Luke.” She smiled. “And Johnny is only fifteen months younger, but he’s an old soul. He’s a very quiet and responsible boy.”

“Do you have a picture?” I asked.

“I do!” Lyla shifted her chair to come beside me. She smelled like lavender and mint, and I took a deep breath in, the scent pleasant and relaxing. “Here’s Luke last year in the school play.” I looked at the screen on her phone, seeing a boy—around six or seven I guessed—dressed in a brown sheet cinched at the waist with a belt and sandals, a huge smile on his face—Lyla’s smile. “He played Joseph.” I nodded and murmured how sweet he looked, glancing at the next picture she pulled up. “And this is Johnny, also last Christmas.” Johnny sat in front of a fully decorated Christmas tree. He wore glasses and smiled, though he showed no teeth.

“They’re very handsome,” I said. “And really look like you.”

Lyla looked at the photos, still smiling. “I get that a lot.”

My stomach dropped, thinking again that no one would ever say that about my child—if I could even find a way to have a child. I pushed the sadness away and focused on my coffee and brioche, which had just arrived.

Lyla went on to say she and Jason had just celebrated their ten-year anniversary, and had moved from Texas to San Francisco a year ago to move in with his mother, who was ill. Jason was working as a security guard but wanted to become a police officer, and while Lyla had worked as a medical receptionist in Texas, she was taking care of Jason’s mom and the boys now. I commented how tough it must have been to make the move, and she shrugged, saying that she wasn’t close to her own family and Jason’s mom was like a mother to her.

“So why are you looking into surrogacy?” Lyla asked.

I was suddenly uncomfortable—as much as I knew this was the conversation we needed to be having, I didn’t want to be having it.

“Oh, well, wow. Where do I start?” I laughed, but it came out sounding forced, and Lyla gave me a sympathetic smile. “We’ve been trying for six years, which when you say it out loud seems like way too long, doesn’t it?” I shook my head and took a deep breath, hoping it might relieve the tension sitting in a band across my chest. It didn’t. “I’ve been pregnant three times but miscarried very early on. And other than that, no luck. We’ve been working with a fertility specialist for about four years now.”

“I’m sorry, Hannah. That must be real difficult for you and Ben.”

“Thanks, yeah, it hasn’t been...easy. But I’m lucky. He’s amazingly supportive.” Except he has no idea I’m here talking with you, and I’m not sure what that says about me. About us.

“Are ya’ll married?” Lyla’s tone was casual, but the way she looked at me suggested otherwise.

“Yes! Didn’t I mention that? Seven years.”

“Oh, good,” she said, stirring her latte and sucking some of the green-tinged foam off the spoon. “Sorry if that sounds strange, but that’s real important to me and Jason.”

“Of course, I understand completely.”

“Do you and Ben belong to a church?”

I had been dreading this, knowing it was important to Lyla, and wasn’t sure how to answer. I went with the truth.

“No, we don’t.” I took a bite of my brioche and left it up to her to decide what to do with that.

“That’s okay,” Lyla said, forking her cinnamon cake and popping the piece into her mouth. I waited while she chewed and swallowed. “I just need to let you know I won’t do any genetic testing with the baby or anything like that and I’m pro-life.” She said this casually, as if we were discussing a new restaurant opening or the weekend weather forecast.

I sat there with my mouth open for a moment, surprised at how quickly we were at this stage of the conversation. “Of course,” I said again, swallowing hard. I hadn’t thought any of this through, and it was becoming clear I had not been ready to hit Send on that email.

“Do you have any questions for me?” she asked, pressing the back of her fork into the sugary crumbs that dotted her plate. She licked her fork and looked at me expectantly, her face open and friendly.

Yes, Lyla, I have no fewer than a million questions for you. Like, why are you doing this? How does this whole thing work? Do we pay you in one lump sum or monthly? Will we get to come to all the ultrasounds and be at the delivery? Will you agree to take a multivitamin every day and never drink a sip of alcohol? Will you talk to the baby while it grows, tell it about us?

“A few,” I said, trying to decide the best way to ask her the questions that overtook my mind, certain I couldn’t find a diplomatic way to ask the most important question: How will you place this baby into my arms, knowing it is part of you? “But how about another piece of cake first?”

12

KATE

David and I were sitting in the gym’s parents’ lounge—really a well-used room with plastic orange chairs and fluorescent lights that made the purple walls practically glow—watching the girls at their weekly gymnastics class and drinking bad coffee from the café next door. Every time I sat watching one of their classes I felt grateful for my mom, who had endured years of thrice-weekly dance classes and competition weekends throughout my childhood and teenage years, never complaining about uncomfortable plastic chairs or bad coffee or the time it took away from her having her own hobbies.

I took a sip from my white plastic take-out cup and grimaced. “Next time, why don’t we make coffee at home and bring it?” I silently thanked my mom again. “Oh, almost forgot. I’m meeting Hannah for a drink tomorrow night. That okay?”

“Sure. How is she doing?”

I paused. Long enough for David to swivel in his chair and look at me.

“She’s okay.”

“And?” he asked.

“And nothing.” I gave Josie a thumbs-up after her unassisted cartwheel and smiled big.

“Kate, what’s up? I know that look.”

“What look?” I asked, but then sighed and took a deep breath. “Fine. She was planning to meet with a surrogate.”

“A surrogate? Where?”

“Here. In town.”

David let out a low whistle. “I didn’t realize they were at that stage of things.”

“Well, they aren’t exactly at that stage of things.” I shrugged, then looked back at the girls. “It’s been six years and they’ve basically tried everything. I don’t blame her, but I’m worried for her.”

“What do you mean by they aren’t at that stage of things?”

I kept my eyes trained on the girls, even though they were doing nothing but waiting for their turns on the balance beam. “She didn’t tell Ben about the surrogate meeting.”

“What? Really? So, she was just going to go by herself? Without Ben?” David’s eyebrows rose along with his voice.

“I told her I’d go with her, but she said she was going to cancel anyway.”

“Katie...”

“What? I couldn’t very well let her go alone. She’s...she’s definitely off-kilter right now.”

David sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Do not get in the middle of this, Kate. She needs to talk with Ben, period. You can’t go meet a surrogate with her. This isn’t like getting dragged to boot camp for moral support or something. This is no small thing, and it’s between them.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Do you?”

I looked back at the girls, trying to mellow the irritation threatening to take over. “It doesn’t matter, because I talked her out of it.”

“I hope so. I would lose it if you did something like that without telling me.”

We sat in silence for a moment. “How would it even work?” David asked. “They don’t have embryos, right?”

“This surrogate would use her own eggs.”

“So the baby would be Ben’s and this other woman’s?” David gave his head a couple of quick shakes. “No way. I could never do that.”

“Why? It’s not really different from adoption when you think about it. Except at least Ben’s genes would get in there.”

“But what if this woman decided to keep the baby in the end? I mean, it would be her baby, right?”

“It would,” I said, frowning at the thought. “I don’t think Hannah really thought it all through.”

“Shit, Ben would flip if he knew she had propositioned this woman without telling him.”

“She didn’t exactly ‘proposition’ her,” I said, his choice of words grating on me; my need to defend Hannah boiling up. “It was more curiosity, or a reconnaissance mission, I guess.”

“Still...don’t you think he’d be open to it? He wants a kid as much as she does. But not telling him?” David shook his head again. “That’s a sure way to guarantee he won’t go along with it.”

“Well, she implied he wasn’t on board with the idea anyway.”

“That makes it worse,” David said. “I love Hannah, but she’s playing a dangerous game here.”

I pressed my lips together, pausing for a moment. “She’s desperate, David.”

“Desperate enough to risk her marriage?”

I shrugged. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about Hannah and Ben sticking it out if there was no baby—a relationship could only bend so much under stress before it snapped. And Hannah keeping this from Ben felt like a big crack in their happy marital veneer.

David nudged my shoulder, and I lifted my coffee cup to avoid spilling it on my legs. “For the record, if you ever kept anything big like that from me I’d be beyond pissed.”

“Noted, and ditto.”

* * *

“Are they asleep?” David looked at me from our bed, lying on top of the duvet in his boxers and an old hole-filled T-shirt from his days as a first aid instructor. He had plenty of shirts, including others from his instructor days, but for whatever reason this was the one I couldn’t get him to let go of. I filed it under things-to-ignore-even-though-they-drive-me-crazy-because-I-love-my-husband-more-than-I-hate-what-he’s-wearing.

“They are.” I got into bed beside him. Running my hands over his chest, feeling the softness of the fabric, I remembered back when we were as new as the T-shirt. Pushing it up, the black color now faded to a velvety gray, I planted a row of kisses around his exposed belly button. His abs flexed, and I looked up to see him smiling. “I’m going to lock the door,” I whispered into his stomach, kissing it again. I jumped to my knees and scrambled off the bed, my feet padding softly on the hardwood floor of our bedroom. With a quick twist of my hand, our bedroom door was locked—one of the best tips my hippie mother-in-law, a sex educator, had ever given me, even though I had been horrified at the time—and I was back in bed stretched out beside David.

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” I asked.

“Who?” His voice was low, his lips caressing my ear and whispering that I had too much clothing on. I obliged by lifting my arms over my head so he could do something about that.

“Hannah and Ben,” I replied, only half paying attention to what his hands were doing. “If they can’t have a baby, do you think they’ll stay together?” My heart beat faster, in part from David’s touch and in part from imagining the end of Hannah and Ben, which was unacceptable as far as I was concerned.

David propped himself up on an elbow and rubbed his thumb over my jawline. “They’ll work it out. They love each other. And, yes, they’ve been through hell with all of this. But they are stronger than that. You’ll see. It’ll be okay.”

I smiled, then wriggled out of my underwear with some help from David’s persuasive hands. Our bodies knew each other so well—having done this enough times there was never any doubt of a home run for all. My breathing sped up and a moan formed in the back of my throat as David gently spread my thighs, moving between them. When I wasn’t sure I could hold out much longer, I lay a hand on his head and pulled his hair gently, forcing him to look at me. I gestured under the bed and he smiled, nodding.

“Which one do you want tonight?” he asked, and I heard him rustling through the box under our bed, which held a variety of adult-only toys and, like the door, also had a lock on it.

“You choose,” I replied.

A minute later I was enjoying David’s choice for the evening, no longer caring about hole-filled T-shirts I’d dreamed of tossing out weekly with the trash or the state of Hannah and Ben’s marriage.

13

HANNAH

Ben was working late, so I said I’d meet him at the restaurant. My mind was still spinning from my coffee date with Lyla, but I had such a good feeling about things. It had been a long time since I’d felt anything but unhappiness and disappointment in the baby-making department, and Lyla had given me something to hope for again.

After we’d polished off another piece of cake and latte each, Lyla basically told me she was in. That she had to chat with her husband, of course, but she couldn’t see a reason for us not to take the next steps, which involved lawyers and contracts and doctors and probably a hundred other things I hadn’t yet considered. I wasn’t expecting her to decide that quickly, picturing many emails, phone calls and meetings between the four of us, and it threw me off. Tears in my eyes, I’d jumped up and hugged her while she was still in her seat. She’d laughed and said I could thank her when she was pregnant.

Though she answered my questions about why she wanted to be a surrogate—with refreshing honesty she said it was a financial decision for her family but also an altruistic one because it meant helping another couple become a family—and gave me some insight into the process, which was about as complicated as I expected, I never got around to asking the most difficult question.

I could lie and say I decided it wasn’t all that important—after all, this wasn’t her first time. She had walked away from a baby before, so there was no reason to think she wouldn’t—couldn’t—do it again. But the truth was I had been too afraid in the moment to do anything to ruin things before they even got started. It was a lot like a first date, where you leave out the baggage and unsavory details, because you really want to go out with this person again.

Thinking about how to tell Ben what I’d done—and that Lyla had chosen me, chosen us—left me light-headed with anxiety on the cab ride over to the restaurant. With every passing minute I became more convinced I should have talked with him first, like Kate said. Of course he would have been fine with it. Ben wanted a baby as badly as I did...

Or at least he used to.

These days I wasn’t sure if he really was willing to do whatever it took, like I was. Would he be okay joining his sperm with another woman’s egg, a stranger for whom this was more a job than anything else? Would he feel awkward about bringing home a baby that wasn’t actually ours? Was he willing to invite another woman into our lives—us using her for her genetic material, her using us for our willingness to hand over tens of thousands of dollars?

Was I prepared for all that, as well?

Suddenly the idea felt all wrong. Too many variables crowded my thoughts. There were so many ways this could go wrong, and only one way it could work out.

But if it worked, I would have a baby.

My phone buzzed, and I looked down to see a new text had arrived. My stomach lurched when I saw it was from Lyla.

So nice meeting you today. Forgot to ask, do you have a picture of you and Ben? I’d love to show Jason. Can’t wait to get started! Chat soon—Lyla

For a moment I did nothing. I read the text a half dozen times, then, fingers shaking, found a great photo of Ben and me, from our last vacation a year earlier in Jamaica for his annual family reunion. When that picture was taken we had been waiting to hear if our latest procedure had worked, distracting ourselves with family dinners on the beach, massages at the spa and long afternoon naps in lounge chairs shaded by palm trees. We weren’t pregnant as it turned out, but at the time—sun shining and ocean warm—it felt as if anything was possible.

With a quick note saying it was lovely to meet Lyla, as well, and a promise to be in touch soon to sort out details, I attached the photo and hit Send.

It started to rain just as the cab approached the restaurant, and I grumbled about forgetting to bring an umbrella. The cabdriver kindly offered to walk me to the restaurant door, pulling out a large umbrella from the trunk and giving me his arm. I took it as a sign that my luck was changing. That Ben would be thrilled at my news, once he got over his surprise. I could spin this. He would forgive me for not telling him first.

Inside the restaurant it was dim and heady with scents of roasting meat and the hostess’s sharp perfume. I quickly scanned the tables, looking for Ben, and saw him in a booth in the corner. With a smile and a point, I told the hostess I saw my husband, and she walked me over to the table. Ben was facing me and looked up as I walked past the few tables to get to where he sat. He smiled, eyes lighting up as they took me in. I thanked the hostess, then stood in front of Ben.

“What do you think?” I asked, turning one foot out and placing a hand on my hip. I winked and smiled, and he nodded slowly.

“That dress was made for you.”

I flushed, suddenly wishing we were home and wearing a lot less. After I sat down—still imagining Ben unzipping my dress and running his hands all over my body—he leaned toward me and kissed me firmly on the mouth. “Those shoes are going to get you in trouble later,” he whispered. I smiled, taking my foot out of my red patent leather heel and running it up the inside of his leg under the table.

“Well, look at you.” Ben leaned back and grabbed my foot under the table. He rubbed my arch and my calf, and shivers ran up and down my body. I was transported back to the early days of our relationship, when the feel of his fingertips on my bare skin made my stomach wiggly and my cheeks hot, much like now.

“I need a drink,” I said, slightly breathless. Ben pouted as my foot slipped from his hand, and I laughed. The waiter was there a moment later and I ordered a gin and tonic with extra lime. Ben caught me up on his day and the project he was working on with his dad, and I told him about my latest recipe—spicy chocolate torte for our February issue—not mentioning anything about Lyla. I had no clue how to bring it up. So, Ben, today I had coffee with a surrogate who said she’d like to carry a baby for us. You should really try this olive tapenade, it’s amazing.

Ben was ordering our appetizers and main courses and I was trying to figure out how to open up the Lyla conversation when my phone buzzed again. I nibbled the crostini our server placed in front of me, topped with grilled octopus and spiced mango marmalade, and glanced at my phone under the table. Lyla. But an email this time. I quickly opened it and tried to read it discreetly.

“Medium rare?”

“Sorry?” I asked, looking up to find Ben and the server watching me.

“Your steak. Medium rare?” Ben asked.

“Sure. Yes, that’s perfect.” I hadn’t had a steak rare in a while, always eating everything fully cooked just in case I was pregnant.

While Ben and our server debated if he should have the flatiron steak or the paella, I scanned the email.

Sorry to tell you this... Jason and I agree that we’re better suited to a Christian, more traditional couple... I’m sorry to get your hopes up... I’ll be praying you find your perfect match...

I felt dizzy and hot, my face surely going fiery red in the candlelight. The half-eaten crostini dropped from my hand, hitting the table and leaving an oily splotch on the tablecloth.

“Hannah? You okay?”

My mouth open, I looked at Ben and tried to get the words out. No, I am not okay.

“What’s up? Is something wrong?” He gestured to my phone resting limply in my hand.

I looked back at the screen, which had since faded to black and tried to reconcile what I’d just read. Only half an hour ago Lyla had written she was looking forward to getting started. What changed? I racked my brain, thinking of our conversations. Everything was fine until I sent the photo. What happened?

I couldn’t hear Ben but could see his lips moving. The whooshing in my head grew louder; then everything focused on Ben’s face. On the errant eyebrow hair that grew longer than the others, the one he made me pluck out monthly. On his crystal-blue eyes, which were perhaps the slightest bit too far apart and were now filled with worry. On his beautiful brown skin—much darker from a week in the sun in the picture I’d sent to Lyla. Jason and I agree that we’re better suited to a Christian, more traditional couple...

More traditional couple. In a flash I knew what had happened, why Lyla changed her mind, and that I could never, ever explain any of it to Ben.

“I’ll be right back,” I sputtered, getting up so fast my napkin and purse fell to the floor. Ben stood quickly, too, looking unsure about what to do. I asked a passing server where the washroom was and practically ran there, grateful for the individual stalls. Once inside a stall, I locked the door, then sat down when I thought my legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore.

I read the email again and then once more, tears coming fast. I heard the bathroom door open and a woman’s voice calling my name, identifying herself as the hostess.

“In here,” I said, mentally willing the young woman to leave. “I’m okay. I’ll be right out.”

The door squeaked shut and I heard her exchanging words with Ben, who was obviously right outside the women’s restroom.

Shit. I couldn’t tell him now. I had fucked up big-time, not to mention the promise I made all those years ago to always tell him the truth—especially about the big stuff. Why had I even sent that first email to Lyla? I was being punished—for lying to Ben, for being so desperate to have a child I didn’t see the warning signs right in front of me, for that time, long ago, when I’d wished motherhood away.

Pulling myself together, I flushed the toilet even though I hadn’t used it and splashed water on my face. Taking a deep, shaky breath I walked on unstable legs to the door and paused one more moment before opening it.

Ben stood right outside, frowning, the lines on his forehead thick with concern. He took a quick step forward and wrapped an arm around me. “What happened?”

I shook my head, staying in his protective embrace a moment longer. “I think it might have been the octopus?”

“Are you sick?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m allergic?”

“All of a sudden?” Ben led me back to our table, where I sat down and sipped the glass of water he handed me. Then he crouched in front of me, hands on my thighs. “You’ve had octopus so many times before.”

“I don’t know. I had a bite and suddenly felt awful. Sorry. I’m mortified.” I drew a shaky hand over my forehead and attempted a smile. “You can’t take me anywhere.”

He let out a long breath and gave me a gentle smile. “Don’t worry about that. I’m just glad you’re all right.” He stood, and I took his outstretched hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

A few minutes later—after multiple apologies to the waitstaff for leaving before our meals came out—we were in a cab on the way home, my head resting on Ben’s shoulder, his arm around me. It was still raining, and I felt empty inside. Gutted by the most recent defeat, which lay overtop of so many other setbacks like a thick woolen blanket.

I would never tell him what I’d done, or why Lyla had gone back on her decision. And I hoped I could forgive myself for it.

14

HANNAH

We’d been living together for three months, dating for six, when I realized I was late. The first few days I ignored it; then a few days later I double-checked the calendar to be sure I had counted properly. Then I looked through my pills, and in horror discovered I’d missed a day. I was so panicked I didn’t even tell Kate.

Ben knew something was up and kept asking if anything was wrong—clearly I wasn’t hiding my anxiety well. I said things were fine, just stress at work because I was up for a promotion, which I didn’t end up getting.

At the two-week mark I told Ben I had an off-site meeting so we couldn’t commute in together, kissed him goodbye, then called in sick the moment he left the apartment. After buying as many pregnancy tests I could fit in my hands at the pharmacy—five—I went back home, where I hoped to prove I wasn’t about to become a mother.

It was too soon. We hadn’t seriously talked about marriage, let alone kids. I hated my job at the newspaper, creating and testing recipes the guy with the byline took credit for, but knew it was a necessary stepping-stone. I was taking night classes to become a pastry chef and wasn’t ready to trade any of that for diapers or late-night feedings. And I’d started rowing again a few mornings a week, liking how taut my stomach had become as a result. I didn’t want a baby, didn’t see how a baby would fit into our lives—not yet.

Ben came home early—around three in the afternoon—and about one minute into the wait for test number five. A nearly empty two-liter bottle of soda was on the bathroom counter beside four used test sticks, all with two blue lines.

I was pregnant.

I heard the front door unlock. I froze, clenching test number five—which also turned out to have two blue lines—in my hand. “Hannah? Where are you?” Ben called down the hall.

“Bathroom!” I shouted. Our first apartment was so small you could literally get from one end to the other in mere seconds.

“You weren’t answering your phone, so I tried you at work. Rebecca said you called in sick?” His voice got louder as he came closer to the bathroom. “Why didn’t you call me?” We were still in that sweet spot of our relationship, when the sniffles that sent me back to bed warranted a call to my boyfriend, who would worry and fawn over me and make me his mom’s pepperpot soup and leave work early to pick up aspirin and cough drops. Not that Ben wasn’t caring now, because he was still concerned if I wasn’t feeling well, but we had moved past the soup and care package delivery and into the more realistic scenario of a “feel better” text and finishing out the workday.

Ben knocked on the bathroom door.

“Just getting out of the shower,” I said, eyeing the mess of test-stick packaging all over the floor. “Give me a second.”

I heard him retreat and quickly shoved the test sticks back into the boxes, then crumpled them all up into the plastic pharmacy bag, which I shoved to the bottom of the trash can. I dumped out the rest of the soda and stuck the empty bottle under the counter, reminding myself to throw it down the garbage chute later.

When I came out of the bathroom five minutes later, Ben jumped up from the couch and walked toward me. He had loosened his tie and held a paper bag in one hand. He looked me over, trying to figure out what was going on, and placed his palm against my forehead. His hand smelled like soap and felt cool against my skin.

“I’m fine.” My voice wavered, and I cleared my throat. “Just a touch of the flu I think.”

Ben looked at me strangely. “I thought you were in the shower?”

“I was. Why?”

He ran his fingers down my hair. “Your hair isn’t wet.”

I opened my mouth to explain—just say you wore a shower cap—and then closed it again, thinking maybe now was the time to tell him about the five positive pregnancy tests in the trash. “Right. The shower.”

“What’s going on, Hannah?”

“Nothing,” I said, too fast and too high-strung. He noticed and swallowed nervously. It occurred to me he thought maybe I really was fine, but that something was wrong between us. “I promise. Everything is okay. Aside from whatever virus has taken over my body. Speaking of which, what’s in the bag?” I asked, reaching for it and opening it up.

“Some throat lozenges, aspirin and those fizzy tablets for your stomach. Oh, and a Snickers bar,” he said with a smile. “I was trying to cover all the sickness bases. And the chocolate bar is for me because I missed lunch.”

“Thank you.” I kissed him, then apologized for probably getting him sick—he didn’t need to know that would be quite impossible. “You are the best boyfriend ever.”

“I know,” he said, winking. “Now get on the couch and let me take care of you.” I raised my eyebrows, and he laughed. “I was thinking some tea and aspirin, but I’m open to whatever might make you feel better.”

I dutifully drank my tea and took the two aspirin he gave me, then let him snuggle me on the couch under hot blankets while we watched too many hours of television. But while I lay there in his arms, laughing at the television as if I was actually paying attention, all I kept thinking was how badly I had messed everything up.

* * *

For a week I panicked about the pregnancy. I told no one, including Kate, because I wasn’t yet sure what I wanted to do. I’m embarrassed to admit I even flipped a coin—three to one for keeping the baby, though I was never any good at sticking to coin tosses. In truth I was terrified by both prospects: becoming a mother or choosing not to.

But luckily—or unfortunately, as I’d say now—it wasn’t my choice to make. My body chose for me, and two weeks after those five positive pregnancy tests, I miscarried. There was a disturbing amount of blood, and cramping intense enough to send me to bed early in the afternoon with a hot water bottle, which is where Ben found me after work.

“Are you not feeling well again?”

“Not really,” I said, sitting up and plopping the hot water bottle to the side.

“Maybe you should go to the doctor?” He looked worried. “It’s been over a week.”

My guilt kicked into overdrive. “I’m not sick. But I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.” Ben sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand up and down my bare shin, his forehead crinkled in anticipation of whatever I was about to say.

I took a deep breath. “I was pregnant.”

He stared at me for a moment, his mouth open in surprise, before asking, “Was?”

“I miscarried this morning.” I picked at some lint on my shirt, left there from the hot water bottle’s fleecy cover. I expected him to ask if I was okay, what happened, how I was feeling about it all, if I needed anything. Those were the questions I was ready for.

“You didn’t tell me.” It was a statement, wrapped in frustration.

“No, I’m... I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How far along were you?” Ben’s jaw was tight, his hands now on his lap instead of touching my leg. I knew the question he was really asking.

My voice quieted; my heart beat hard in my chest. “I found out two weeks ago.”

He looked up at the ceiling and exhaled loudly. “How could you not tell me, Hannah?”

I started to cry, the first tears I’d shed since finding out about the pregnancy. “Honestly? I didn’t know how I felt about it. And I wanted to figure that out first. But I guess none of that matters now.”

“Does Kate know?”

I shook my head. “No. I didn’t tell anyone.”

Ben nodded, and I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. At least he didn’t look as mad as before. He didn’t say anything for so long I started to get antsy, needing us to get to the part where he forgave me and we could move on.

“Are you okay?” he finally asked.

I lay back against the duvet and closed my eyes. “Yes,” I said. He shifted to lie beside me on the bed, then handed me my hot water bottle, which I pressed onto my painful abdomen.

I swallowed hard, my next words coming out in a whisper. “What if I’m a crap mother, Ben?” My own mother had done what I considered to be a satisfactory job, but she probably wouldn’t win any parenting awards. In fairness, she had raised my sister and me mostly alone, and we hadn’t made it easy on her. I had also spent enough time with Kate and young Ava—who had just yesterday flushed an entire roll of toilet paper down the powder room toilet, resulting in a very expensive plumber visit—to question if I was cut out for motherhood.

Ben laughed a little when I told him about Ava and the toilet paper, which for whatever reason made me cry harder. Probably because I knew then he wasn’t going to storm out of the bedroom and leave me to my cramps and tears and regret. “Everyone thinks they’d be a shitty parent, Hannah. That’s what helps keep you on guard to try and do the best job you can.” The tears came faster, hot and fresh. “If you think you’ll be stellar, you get cocky and miss things. People have been doing it forever. You’ll figure it out.” I almost believed him. “You’ll be a great mom, and I can’t wait to watch you in action one day.”

I blew my nose, honking into the tissues he handed me.

“I want you to promise me something.”

“What?” I blew my nose again.

“If you’re not okay, or freaked out about something, you have to tell me. I know you have Kate, and Claire in an emergency.” I snorted. Claire was pretty low on my who-to-call-in-an-emergency list. “But I’m not going anywhere. I love you. And for what it’s worth? I know having a baby right now wouldn’t have been ideal, but we would have made it work. So, promise me. Nothing but the messy truth from here on out, okay?”

“Okay.” I nodded. “Nothing but the messy truth.”

Except I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain.

What I never told Ben, or even Kate when she hugged me later that day after I confessed to her as well, was that when I realized I was losing the baby I didn’t feel sadness, or despair, or even loss... I felt relief.

I was relieved I wasn’t going to be a mother.

And that’s the sort of messy truth you keep to yourself, because perhaps that one time when you whispered, “Please, I don’t want to be a mother...” to the universe, it thought you meant forever.

* * *

A few days after the Lyla and restaurant incidents, Ben and I were sitting in Dr. Horwarth’s office getting the news I knew was coming but was still not ready to hear. How do you prepare for the brutal reality of being told you will never carry your own child? You can’t, I realized, as his words washed over me along with the sensation of drowning—I was circling the same stupid drain I’d been circling since that first negative pregnancy test, all those years ago. Except this time there was no rescue mission planned, no life vest, nothing to keep me from sinking straight down to the bottom.

“Remember at the beginning of all this how I suggested you draw a line in the sand, deciding how far you’re willing to go and what you’re willing to put your body through to make it happen?” Dr. Horwarth clasped his hands on his desk, his face gentle with understanding.

But while he might have understood what we were feeling on an intellectual level, the pictures of his smiling family displayed on the corner of his desk suggested he really didn’t get it, couldn’t get it.

“I remember,” I said, my voice breaking. Ben held my hand, like I expected him to, like he knew he should and had so many times before. But it brought me no comfort today.

“I’m wondering how close we are to that line now. I’m willing to keep trying. We can do another round of IVF...but I’ll be honest,” Dr. Horwarth said, pausing for a moment. “I’m sorry to say I don’t expect to have different results than what we’ve had.”

I was so filled with anger—at my body, at Dr. Horwarth, at Ben for sticking through this with me when he should have left to find a wife who wasn’t barren, at the woman in the waiting room who was having a hushed but excited conversation on her phone while she stared at her ultrasound photo, a smile stretched wide across her face. And tickling the edges of that anger was such a deep pain I was afraid of what would happen to me if I let it take over.

15

KATE

November

The waiting room was packed. Checking my watch I saw she was already twenty minutes behind. Settling in, I opened another magazine—this one with a young celebrity wearing a marshmallow-size diamond on her finger and declaring her three-month-long courtship “the time of my life”—and sipped my latte. While most might dread a trip to the gynecologist, I was always happy to be here. Not because of the exams—that would be going too far—but because Dr. Lisa Kadari’s practice had a self-serve latte machine, individually wrapped dark chocolate squares in a huge glass bowl and the best magazines. It practically felt like a holiday at her office.

I flipped through the pages—past silly articles on celebrities who did things just like us regular folk, like pick up their own dry cleaning and wash their cars—and put the magazine down a couple of minutes later. Scanning the other titles, I picked up the latest copy of Femme and turned to the food and recipes section. It was nearly Thanksgiving, and Hannah had done a two-page spread on putting a holiday-worthy feast on the table in under an hour. Seeing her smiling face in the corner thumbnail photo made me think about how she’d looked nothing like that happy woman at our drink date the other night—her eyes red rimmed, her ponytail disheveled and her spirit broken.

She’d tried to cancel on me; she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to infect me, and could we do it another night? When I showed up at her place thirty minutes later, saying that unless she was vomiting or running a 104-degree fever, she was coming with me, she’d gotten dressed without another word. Ben had watched her carefully as she left the room to get changed, after which we chatted about the nonimportant stuff like work and the girls’ recent soccer game until she came back out. But I knew he was worried, like I was. The past few months had taken a lot out of her, and it was as if whatever was chewing her up inside had just showed up on the outside for all of us to see.

Another twenty minutes and two magazines later I sat on the exam room table, waiting for the doctor. There was a knock, and a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. “Kate? You all set?”

Lisa Kadari was a petite woman with a big presence. She had thirteen-year-old twin boys—whom she had somehow managed to birth naturally at six and half pounds apiece—golden skin and hair that hung straight down her back in a glossy black sheet. When I asked her once how she got her hair so shiny, she’d said genetics and coconut oil. So I’d gone out and bought a giant tub of the stuff, slathering it all over my hair that night. I’d woken up with an oil-stained pillowcase despite the plastic shower cap and a new pimple on my forehead. That was the end of my beauty experiment with coconut oil.

She came in and took both my hands in hers in greeting, and I could see the remnants of a henna tattoo on her skin. “My cousin got married this past weekend,” she said, holding her hands out—her fingers splayed to show off the temporary tattoo.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, noting how intricate the designs were as they wrapped around her fingers and snaked up her arm in deep brown vines and leaves and starbursts, disappearing under the sleeve of her pastel-pink blouse, which poked out from her white coat.

“Thank you, I agree. Now, tell me, how are things?”

I dutifully filled her in for a minute or so on the girls and David and life before she asked, “And what can I do for you today?”

At this question I shifted slightly, clearing my throat and looking at my toenails, which I had fairly hastily polished that morning when I realized how ugly they looked bare. My feet were never going to win me any compliments, my toes slightly wonky and nails ridged thanks to years of dance class in too-tight shoes.

I wasn’t due for my annual physical for another seven months, and had been vague with the receptionist when I’d called to see if she could squeeze me in.

“I had a few questions...” My voice trailed, and then I laughed. “I have no idea why I’m so nervous all of a sudden.”

Dr. Kadari smiled. “Questions about what?”

“About another pregnancy,” I replied, the words tumbling out of me quickly.

“You want to have another baby?”

“No...that’s not what I want...” Dr. Kadari’s eyebrows rose slightly as she waited for me to explain. “David’s vasectomy might make that a tad tricky.”

“Yes, that’s the whole point of a vasectomy,” she said, laughing with me.

I took a deep breath and looked down at my toes again. “So, here’s the thing. I’m wondering if I’m in okay shape to get pregnant again. If my eggs are, you know, still young enough and all that good stuff.”

She rested her hands on her crossed knees and leaned back in her chair. “Well, you’re only thirty-five and have two healthy, beautiful children,” she said. “Of course we never can tell about egg quality based on age alone, but I’d say you probably have at least a few healthy ones left.” She winked and smiled, and I smiled back, feeling infinitely more relaxed.

“I’m considering doing something and I wanted to get your medical opinion before I say anything to anyone else. Is that okay?”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Dr. Kadari said. “So tell me, what is it you want to do?”

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