The telephone extension on the wall behind the doctor rings suddenly.
“Excuse me,” he says to Peyton, and reaches up to answer it.
“I’m meeting Rita for an early lunch in an hour,” Nancy says, leaning chummily against the examining table. “Do you want to stick around and come with us? We’re just going over to the diner on Forty-second. It’s fast and cheap.”
“I’d love to, but I really can’t. I’ve got to get back to the office. Tell Rita I said hi, though.”
“I’m sure she’d love to see you in person.”
“I’m actually meeting her for a movie later, so . . .”
“You are? She didn’t mention it. Maybe I’ll tag along.”
Peyton merely nods awkwardly, wishing she hadn’t said anything. She gets the impression from Rita that Nancy can be a bit pushy.
“I mean, I love her to death,” Rita has said, “but she’s got a way of working her way in wherever you least expect it.”
Hanging up the phone, Dr. Lombardo informs Nancy, “There’s a patient’s husband in the waiting room. He wants to talk to both of us after we’re through here.”
“No appointment?”
“No. He just walked in. He said it’s important. I’m sorry, where were we?” he asks Peyton distractedly, rolling back over on the stool. “Did you have any more questions?”
Relieved to have the labor coach topic dropped for today, she shakes her head. “No, I think I’m all set for now.”
“Great.” He flashes a brief, but genuine, smile. “Go ahead and get dressed then, and we’ll see you in a month. After that, it’ll be every two weeks, and then every week of the final month. Sound good?”
“Sounds good.” Peyton sits up and swings her bare legs over the table in the direction of the adjacent dressing room where her clothes and bag are stashed.
“See you later,” Nancy whispers, and gives a little wave.
She follows Dr. Lombardo, who is striding out of the room, and asks, “What’s the name of the patient whose husband is here to see us?”
In the last moment before the door closes behind them, Peyton hears the inconsequential answer.
“It’s Cordell. Derry Cordell.”
The biggest—perhaps only—drawback to living in Bedford, Anne Marie decides as she climbs back into her Mercedes in the post office parking lot, is that there are no working pay phones.
It isn’t something she noticed until this sun-splashed July morning. But she’s just spent the last half hour driving around the local business districts in search of one, to no avail.
That’s because everybody in town, even the kids, presumably has a cell phone of their own.
One might also assume that everybody in the metropolitan area also has access to caller ID.
Which is why a pay telephone—and anonymity—is crucial for the calls Anne Marie is about to make. Even now, she isn’t sure which call she’ll place first, or what she’s going to say—or if she’ll manage to say anything at all. If she can’t bring herself to speak, it’s good to know she’ll be able to hang up and go back to her life once and for all, without leaving a trail.
But if she makes this connection, opens this next door, and the one after that . . . well, who knows what she’ll discover?
The calls, both of them, are a long time coming. And she’s finally ready; as ready as she’ll ever be.
The boys are safely ensconced in her friend Karen’s vast basement recreation room, thrilled at this unexpected play date with her twin daughters.
“Take your time,” Karen told Anne Marie when she dropped them off. “I hope it’s not too painful.”
She of course was referring to the emergency dental work Anne Marie claimed to be having this morning.
“Oh, it’ll be painful,” Anne Marie responded somberly, not talking about the mythical dental work at all.
But she has to do this. It’s the next logical step. She can’t go on indefinitely the way she has been. Now that Jarrett knows. . .
Not, of course, the whole story. He only knows the details she was forced to confess the night he found the Bible in her drawer.
She initially tried to pass it off as insignificant, but he’s no fool. He somehow sensed something was going on.
He even had the audacity to accuse her of having an affair.
That was when she told him the truth.
The partial truth, anyway. He found the Bible, but not the envelope.
His reaction wasn’t what she expected. He was shocked, of course—but also showed a compassionate side she’s never really seen before.
Maybe because she wasn’t looking. Maybe because it’s just far less complicated for her to see in him only what she wants to see.
Steering down Railroad Avenue, she tells herself that if she doesn’t find what she’s looking for here, she’ll return to Karen’s to get the boys, and call it a day.
Already thinking ahead, she reminds herself to feign tremendous pain in her mouth when she gets there. That will be a good excuse not to stick around and chat over coffee or lunch.
“We haven’t had a chance to sit down and catch up lately,” Karen said in her sweet southern drawl when Anne Marie called this morning to beg the favor.
“I know, and we’ll have to do that soon,” Anne Marie promised her friend.
Just as soon as I take care of business.
Business that a sheltered former debutante like Karen could never comprehend.
Pulling into the train parking lot, Anne Marie widens her eyes.
Mission accomplished.
She parks, locks the car, and walks slowly toward the pay telephone, steeling herself for whatever lies ahead.
Never before has such a thing happened.
Well, you should have known. You took on too much at once, and the result was carelessness.
Never before has an infertile, impoverished couple turned down the opportunity to receive the precious gift of parenthood.
What did you expect? You skipped the most important step in the process.
Ah yes. It is perhaps the most clever element in a flawless plan, the phase that allowed it to unfold in the past without a hitch.
A pregnant midwestern teen suddenly changes her mind about the clients’ suitability, instantly transforming their newfound, elated certainty into crushing disillusionment. A deliberate deception, yes, but psychologically brilliant, and of course it’s for the couples’ own good.
But this time, there was no midwestern teen who selected the couple’s profile from among dozens of others. This time, there was only a bizarre proposition that would challenge any upstanding recipient’s moral fiber, coming directly on the heels of a seemingly miraculous offer out of the blue.
Is it any wonder Hamal and Khadijah Khatir said no?
If they had been painstakingly baited and hooked as all the others have been, this wouldn’t have happened. They’d have been reeled in slowly, then, with exquisite timing, abruptly released—only to have another tantalizing lure immediately dangled before them. They’d have seized that with the same fervent hunger as the others, willing to do anything to avoid being cast back.
But there simply wasn’t time, and there was all the distraction, the unexpected necessity of removing three additional obstacles. . . .
Of course, with the first—with Derry Cordell’s unexpected demise—the key element was eliminated. Suddenly, there was no visibly pregnant mother waiting in the wings.
It was a mistake to attempt to replace her when there was simply no time to properly execute the plan.
Well, you live and learn.
You take things one step at a time.
And it’s better to operate the plan with donors chosen randomly, from a distance, women with whom one is not required to interact on a regular basis. While the proximity to their lives is tantalizing and at times beneficial, it’s too difficult to keep up this exhausting facade for months on end.
So what now?
Peyto
n Somerset will be preparing to give birth in a matter of weeks. That doesn’t leave much time to find a suitable set of loving parents.
But the spark of an idea—a provocative, daring idea—has already begun to take shape. . . .
See Me.
With a scowl, Peyton rips the yellow Post-it with its blood-red lettering off her computer screen.
Leave it to Tara to show up in her office looking for her the moment she left her desk to make one of her increasingly frequent runs to the ladies’ room.
Oh well. At least Tara doesn’t realize she came in an hour and fifteen minutes late this morning because of her appointment with Dr. Lombardo. Thanks to Candace’s access to Tara’s daily calendar, Peyton knew her boss had a breakfast meeting downtown today. That’s why she scheduled the appointment when she did.
At least Tara’s secretary is sympathetic to Peyton’s situation. Candace is even making a quilt for the baby. She works on it at her desk whenever Tara is away on business trips.
Today, of course, as Peyton approaches the secretaries’ bay on her way to Tara’s office, the quilt squares are nowhere in sight. Candace is busily typing, but looks up when she sees Peyton.
“How’d the doctor’s appointment go?” she whispers. “Did you find out what you’re having?”
Peyton smiles, touched by the girl’s interest. “Not yet. Maybe next month.”
“Well, the background is yellow, like I told you, but I’m putting both pink and blue diamonds into the pattern,” she says. “That way, it’ll work for either a boy or a girl. I want it to be done soon in case you have the baby early.”
“Don’t say that!” Peyton exclaims, clasping her stomach as if to keep the baby from going anywhere any time soon.
“Don’t say what?” a voice asks.
She turns to see Tara standing in the doorway of her office, eavesdropping.
Might as well put an end to this ridiculous game, Peyton thinks wearily, lifting her chin.
“Candace just mentioned something about my having the baby early, and I told her not to say that. I’m not due until October,” she adds, figuring Tara has probably been wondering.
Or maybe not.
Maybe she truly doesn’t give a damn.
“October? That could be a problem. Come in and sit down, Peyton.”
Here we go, she thinks, following her boss into the corner office.
Tara closes the door behind them, never a good sign.
They take their seats facing each other, the broad mahogany desk lying between them like a battlefield.
“I had asked you to come in here and see me because I need you to do some traveling in the near future for the new product launch,” Tara crisply informs her.
Peyton’s heart sinks. “When, exactly?”
“I don’t know exactly. Over the next month or two.”
Surely Dr. Lombardo wouldn’t object to a short plane trip or two in her third trimester, even though the pamphlet he gave her back in the beginning said to stay close to home by that stage.
“Where would I need to go?” Peyton asks reluctantly.
“On location for the commercial shoot,” is the somewhat reassuring reply.
Until, gloating a bit, Tara drops the bombshell. “In Prague.”
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“Si, mi nina,” the priest murmurs, concealed behind the mesh window of the old-fashioned confessional.
With a pang, Mary realizes the voice isn’t Father Roberto’s familiar rumble, but that of a stranger.
“And when was your last confession?”
“One week ago.” Her response is barely audible. She nervously fingers the rosary beads in her hand, wondering what to do now.
“Pardon?”
“One week ago,” she says more forcefully. “I made my last confession one week ago, Father.”
She makes her confession every week, without fail.
And every week since May, without fail, she has neglected to tell Father Roberto her most terrible sin.
It took every ounce of strength she possessed just to get here today, to tell the trusted priest what she did. A dozen times, she turned and started to retrace her steps toward home, unwilling to go through with it.
But in the end, she prayed for strength, and she found the fortitude to walk into the familiar sanctuary.
Father Roberto, she concluded, will guide her toward redemption. Perhaps, she even dared to think, he’ll say that this enormous secret is better kept buried, the innocent child better left with the only parents she knows.
Mary was prepared to rest her future, her family’s future, in his sturdy hands.
How is it that now, when she can no longer bear the burden; now, when she needs the kindly, trusted priest most of all, he isn’t here?
What a cruel joke fate is playing on her.
“Donde esta Padre Roberto?” she blurts.
A minute later, she’s running away from the church, away from the shocking news that the elderly priest died in his sleep last night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Prague?
Prague?
It’s been a good half hour since her boss sprang that on her, yet Peyton still can’t seem to get past the sheer audacity.
Tara knows she can’t go to Czechoslovakia any time in the near future.
Naturally, she had no choice but to come right out and admit it. Tara shook her head and informed Peyton that she’ll keep that in mind when her evaluation comes up.
When she ran into a coworker in the ladies’ room, Peyton spilled the whole story to her. She was silent at first, and Peyton assumed she was thinking, Well, what did you expect? But she ultimately urged her to march straight in to Human Resources and report Tara.
That might be satisfying in the short run, but it doesn’t solve the problem at hand. If Peyton doesn’t go to Prague—which she simply cannot do—she’ll be proving she can’t handle the new position. She won’t be allowed to keep the promotion, with the lofty title, larger office, and pay raise that go with it.
Maybe I had no business agreeing to take over Alain’s position in the first place, she tells herself now.
Either that, or she has no business having a child at this stage in her career.
The phone rings, jerking her thoughts back to the immediate present—and the memo she should have been typing these last five minutes she spent stewing about Tara.
“Peyton Somerset.”
“Oh, hi, it’s Claretta,” the floor receptionist says. “There’s a man out here who says he needs to see you.”
“Is he a messenger?” Peyton asks, balancing the receiver between her shoulder and her ear so she can go back to her keyboard. “Because I’m waiting for storyboards to arrive, but you can sign for them.”
“No, he’s not a messenger. Sir, what was your name?”
There’s a brief pause, during which Peyton continues to type. According to Tara, this memo needs to be e-mailed over to the client immediately. Or, as she so exasperatingly put it, “I need it done yesterday.”
“His name is Gil Blaney,” Claretta informs Peyton. “He said he’s an old friend.”
Gil. An old friend she hasn’t seen in weeks. After a long silence, he’s left a couple of messages on her answering machine over the last few days, but she hasn’t had a chance to respond. Apparently, he’s decided an in-person confrontation is in order. Terrific.
Shaking her head in frustration, Peyton tells Claretta, “I’m tied up now. I’ll be out in ten minutes or so if he wants to wait.”
She types furiously as Claretta relays her message to Gil.
“He says that he does want to wait, Peyton.”
“Fine. Tell him to make himself comfortable.” Peyton plunks the phone back into its cradle and goes back to her memo, her thoughts only half on the topic, which is, of course, the impending new product launch.
Gil has sounded increasingly needy with every message he’s left her. She can’t help feeling sorr
y for him, but she isn’t capable of being his sole sounding board at a time like this. There’s just too much going on in her own life to worry about somebody else’s problems.
Memo finished and e-mailed, she returns two calls to the media department before going out to meet Gil. The calls could have waited a few more minutes, but she can’t help wanting him to realize that she’s truly busy, far too busy to drop everything just because he’s dropped by the office.
Finally, she walks out to the reception area, where she sees him pacing. Obviously, he wasn’t in the mood to make himself comfortable.
“Gil,” she calls, and he stops walking and turns around.
Instant guilt. His face is drawn, his reddish hair needs a trim, and he hasn’t shaved this morning. Maybe in a few mornings. He should be wearing a suit at this hour on a weekday, but he’s dressed in rumpled cargo pants and a more rumpled T-shirt.
“What’s wrong?” She goes over to him but stops short of reaching out to give him the hug he obviously needs, aware of Claretta’s curious gaze. She’s a notorious office gossip.
“What isn’t wrong?” is Gil’s sardonic reply.
“Come on, let’s go into my office and talk.”
Peyton leads the way down the corridor, conscious of several occupants of the secretaries’ bay glancing up with interest. She can just hear them whispering, “Do you think he’s the father?”
Let them speculate.
She closes the door and bends to move a stack of heavy binders from her lone guest chair. Rather than gallantly offer to help her, as he normally would, Gil walks to the window and gazes unseeingly into the air shaft.
“What happened?” Peyton asks, edging by him to sit down, looking nervously at her watch, then at the stacks of papers and folders on her desk.
“Karla’s got the kids out in Oregon for the summer. And I lost my job.”
“You were laid off ?”
“I was fired, Runt.”
“For what?” she asks reluctantly, settling back in her chair.
“For taking two and a half weeks’ vacation.”
“You don’t have vacation time?”
“I get three weeks. I used one in February when I took Karla and the kids skiing. I wasn’t supposed to take the other two until August. We go to the Outer Banks every August. I reserve the same house every year,” he says desolately. “But now . . .”
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