“And maybe she will believe you and be ever so happy that you have the baby she carried to raise. But she will still know that the baby you are claiming to be your own child is no such thing. She would know that you, Amanda Tutt Hartmann, who is supposed to be above reproach and has millions of followers who think that you have a direct line to God Almighty and can save their souls and heal their bodies and make their pitiful little lives seem worthwhile, you are living a lie. The girl could blackmail you, Amanda. Or sell her story to the media. And if all those millions of followers lose faith in you, they are not going to donate the money we need to elect our candidates to high office. The Alliance of Christian Voters would wither up and die. We wouldn’t have friends anymore in Washington, and without the right people in Washington, the oil industry would suffer. We’d have to live at the ranch and feed out more cattle in those cruel, smelly feedlots you hate so much. Maybe we could turn the ranch house into a hunting lodge for rich, old cigar-chewing men—as long as the deer and quail population holds out, of course.”
“Stop it,” Amanda demanded, her beautiful face made hard and almost ugly with anger. “You are making too big of a thing out of this. Jamie Long signed a contract promising never to tell anyone about anything. She would have to give the money back if she ever told.”
“Amanda, that girl could get twice as much from some tabloid for telling them that she is the biological mother of your baby.”
“Then we would have to sue her and the tabloid for libel.”
“And then there would be a trial with the whole world watching. The judge would order DNA tests on you and the baby and Jamie Long and Toby. Those tests would not only prove that Jamie Long is the biological mother of the child, but they would also show that the child is related to you, which offers only two possibilities as to its father—me or Sonny—which would certainly give rise to all sorts of unseemly speculation. That girl signed a contract with a legally married husband and wife, Amanda. She did not sign a contract with a woman and her dying son. Your actions have made that contract null and void. She could sue you not only for breech of contract but for the money she needs to raise the child.”
“You don’t know that any of that is going to happen,” Amanda insisted. “Jamie is a dear girl, and she loves me. We have prayed together. It would never occur to her to cause trouble.”
“You may be exactly right,” Gus said in his most reasonable tone. “But how will she feel if she learns that you have lied to her? That the high and holy Amanda Hartmann has knowingly entered into a fraudulent contract?”
“Well, then, let’s make a new contract and give her some more money to sign it.”
“And what will you do if she says no?”
“The girl loves me,” Amanda said emphatically, her chin set, her eyes wide. “She is not going to say no.”
“You don’t know that, Amanda. When she signed on for this gig, the idea of a baby was just an abstraction to her. It was just a way to make a lot of money. Now there’s a living child moving around inside of her and all these maternal hormones racing around her body. If it had just been Toby’s kid, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the girl decided to renege on the deal. But now the equation is different. It is not Toby’s child. It’s Sonny’s.”
“So, what are you saying, Gus?” Amanda asked, her eyes narrowing.
Gus paused a few seconds before answering. “That you don’t need to worry about anything,” he said, patting her hand. “I’ll see that nothing goes wrong. You will have your baby.”
“Thank you,” she said and kissed him once again, then held out her empty glass for a refill.
When Jamie crept back up to the tower, the candles had been extinguished in Sonny’s room, the light over his bed dimmed.
Mary Millicent’s room was dark. Jamie waited for her eyes to adjust then tiptoed over to the bed. “Are you asleep?” she asked.
“Not unless I’m dreaming.”
“I thought you might like to sing some Christmas carols,” Jamie said, switching on the bedside lamp. “I came earlier but your children were here. Did you have a nice evening with them?”
“Of course not. My children have ruined my life.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about your own son and daughter,” Jamie said.
“I say terrible things about them because they are terrible people, and don’t you forget it, girl.”
Mary Millicent grabbed hold of Jamie’s arm. “Help me sit up,” she demanded, and Jamie obliged, propping up pillows behind the old woman’s frail body.
“Terrible people,” Mary Millicent repeated. “And if you don’t do exactly what they say, they’ll lock you up in a tower, too. Or they will have you killed, like they did with Sonny’s father. Amanda went crying to Gus that Sonny’s father wouldn’t let her have Sonny all the time and wouldn’t let her change his name to Hartmann, and then someone shot the man in the head,” Mary Millicent said, making an imaginary pistol with her hand and pointing it to her temple. “I wonder how long it will be until Amanda gets tired of her new husband and asks her brother to get rid of him. And don’t you look at me like that, young lady,” she said, shaking a finger at Jamie. “I may be as old as dirt and have a few screws loose, but I know what I know. Maybe it’s my fault Amanda and Gus turned out the way they did. I raised them like they were God’s anointed, like they could do no wrong. And now God is punishing me. But you know what? I wish that God would just strike us all dead. Me, Amanda, Gus, and Sonny, too, and put an end to all things Hartmann. God should just open up the earth and let this whole damned ranch and everyone who lives here drop right down into hell. Except for Sonny, of course. Sonny should go to heaven. Just Sonny. Yes, I’m going to pray for God to do that—to drop all of us except Sonny into hell, so if I were you I would be hightailing it out of here. And when that baby of yours is born, don’t you ever tell him how he came to be. Don’t tell him that his father was a dead boy being kept alive past his time. You just tell him his daddy was killed in a car wreck or in some war.”
Jamie took a step backward.
“Hey, where are you going, girl?” Mary Millicent demanded. “I’m not through talking yet. And I want to sing Christmas carols.”
She grabbed a plastic water pitcher and threw it at Jamie. “You come back here, girl. You come back here right this minute or I’ll tell the witch and Amanda that you’ve been coming up here to see me. I’ll tell them to kill your dog.”
Jamie latched the door to her apartment behind her and pulled the sofa in front of the door. And put the coffee table on top of the sofa.
Angrily she wiped her cheeks. No tears, she told herself. She had gotten herself into this mess. She had to see it through to the end or…
Or what?
She knelt and petted her dog, who was confused by her late-night activity. He became more confused as she began to pace. He sat there watching her go back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match, occasionally offering a whimper to express his disapproval.
She needed to think.
Or maybe not so much to think as to organize all the disparate thoughts that were tumbling around in her brain. To sort things out. To work through her confusion.
Not that she believed everything that Mary Millicent said. After all, the woman was afflicted with senile dementia. Or Alzheimer’s. Paranoia. Or maybe she was just plain nuts.
But not all the time. Sometimes Mary Millicent seemed perfectly lucid. Which didn’t necessarily mean that she was telling the truth.
Was Sonny Hartmann really the father of the baby inside of her, she agonized. And was Gus Hartmann some sort of underworld figure who could arrange for people to be murdered?
Long after Amanda had excused herself and gone upstairs to bed, Gus sat staring at the glowing embers, sipping sherry and making plans. Just to be on the safe side, he’d have Montgomery destroy the girl’s copy of the contract. He didn’t want her showing it to anyone or it falling into the wrong hands.
&nbs
p; After the baby was born, the girl would be followed when she drove away from the ranch in her grandmother’s car.
No one would ever know what happened to her. She would simply vanish from the earth. Probably no one would even file a missing person’s report.
When Freda said it was time, Gus followed his sister up the wooden stairs, this time for the deathwatch. It was dark outside, and the candles had been lit once again. Montgomery was already there with Freda. Kelly joined them for a while then walked over to Sonny’s bed and offered a military salute. When she turned to leave, her face was covered with tears.
One of the gardeners—a burly man named Enrique—brought Mary Millicent’s wheelchair down the stairs to Sonny’s room and then carried Mary Millicent herself, which made Gus feel acutely inadequate. With his stubby legs, it was all he could do to get himself up and down the steep stairs.
They seated themselves in front of the bed and waited while Sonny’s respirations grew farther and farther apart and progressively shallower. Gus found himself holding his own breath while waiting for Sonny’s next one.
On and on it went. For hours, it seemed. Each time Gus was sure that he was gone, Sonny would take another breath.
He tried to convince himself that what was about to happen was, in a sense, after the fact. The living force that had been a wonderfully kind and gentle boy was already gone from Sonny’s body and had been since the day of the accident. Nevertheless, as long as his nephew’s flesh was warm and his heart was beating, the still form lying there on the bed represented Sonny to him.
Gus had surprised himself by agreeing to be here. But if his sister wanted him with her, how could he say no? He needed Amanda’s love more than he needed life itself. More so now than ever before.
Amanda asked Freda to lead them in singing “Amazing Grace.” Mary Millicent’s quavery, old voice rose above the rest. At the end of that hymn, Mary Millicent said they must sing Sonny’s favorite hymn and began singing,
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper, He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing…
Gus remembered the words to every verse. He was, after all, the son, grandson, and brother of evangelists, and actually it felt good to sing the familiar words from his childhood. He moved his chair close to his mother’s wheelchair so they could harmonize, as they had done so often all those years ago.
Suddenly they realized that Sonny’s breathing had stopped. Freda put her fingers to his neck. Then she kissed his forehead, put her hands to her face, and began to sob.
Gus and Amanda helped their mother to her feet. She kissed her grandson’s lips and stroked his hair and face. “Good-bye, my poor little Sonny boy,” she whispered in his ear. “You can go be an angel now.”
Then Gus kissed Sonny’s lips and chin and forehead. And his eyes. His hands. His silent heart. He felt as though his own heart were bursting inside his chest.
Amanda lingered, caressing her son’s face. “Take good care of my baby, Lord,” she implored. “Take him to your breast and love him for eternity.”
“Amen,” Gus said.
He envied his sister her faith. How nice it would be to think of Sonny in a bright warm place with love all around.
Jamie awoke to the sound of the wind—a howling wind that sounded like a horde of enormous creatures enraged because they could not force the stone fortress from its foundation. She glanced at her clock and realized it was morning—a very dark morning.
She dressed in layers and pulled on her coat. “Let’s get this over with,” she told Ralph.
She was surprised to see Miss Montgomery, Nurse Freda, and Kelly coming out of the housekeeper’s apartment and heading in the direction of the great hall. Jamie waited on the bottom step as they walked past her, the expressions on their faces solemn. Miss Montgomery and Kelly acknowledged Jamie’s presence with perfunctory nods. The nurse seemed not to notice her.
Outside the cold took Jamie’s breath away. As soon as Ralph had found just the right spot to relieve himself, he came racing back up the steps, obviously eager to go back inside.
Her breakfast tray was waiting outside her door. She carried it inside and, telling Ralph she would be right back, headed down the corridor toward the chapel. She pushed open the hidden door and climbed the wooden stairs. The room where Sonny had been was empty, the bed stripped.
She thought of the little windswept cemetery with its iron fence. Soon Sonny Hartmann would be laid to rest in that sad, lonely place.
Chapter Nineteen
“MY GOODNESS—seven months,” Freda said as she palpated Jamie’s abdomen. “Time flies, doesn’t it?”
Jamie didn’t bother to respond. If she had, she would have disagreed. For her time dragged by like a brick harnessed to a snail.
She lay quietly while Freda continued her examination. “You’re doing fine, sugar,” the nurse said as she helped Jamie to a sitting position. “Do you have any questions?”
“Not really,” Jamie said.
“Well, you should. Your due date is still two months away, but sometimes babies come early. I want you to call me at the first sign of labor or if your water breaks or even if it just begins to dribble some. Or sometimes the first sign of impending labor is when the mucus plug is expelled, which always has some blood mixed in. No cause for alarm. But whether it’s labor pains or your water breaking or passing the mucus plug, I want you to have Montgomery get in touch with me. Day or night.”
“Then what happens?” Jamie asked.
“Hard to predict. Even lean girls like you with great muscle tone usually take a while with their first baby. I’ll keep you as comfortable as possible throughout, but it won’t be a walk in the park. You know that, don’t you?”
Jamie nodded.
“Afterward, you’ll be drowsy from the pain medication and bleeding quite a bit,” Freda explained. “You’ll need to stay here at the clinic for several hours so I can keep an eye on you and then you can recuperate over at the ranch house for a couple of days.”
When she was finished at the clinic, Jamie walked over to the security office. Lester must have been watching for her. The door opened, and he walked over to his truck. “You walking or riding?” he asked.
“Walking,” she said and headed toward the stretch of road that led to the ranch house. She settled into a brisk pace then took a deep breath of the cold air, willing it to clear her head of all but pertinent thoughts. As her grandmother would have said, it was time for her to fish or cut bait. She needed to figure out how she was going to navigate herself through the next two months of her life.
It was not going to be easy.
Jamie still had no qualms about the practice of surrogate motherhood per se. Her disillusionment began when she realized that trust was not to be a part of her relationship with Amanda and her husband. And Jamie had always found it odd that the baby was going to be born on an isolated ranch in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. Amanda had gone to such lengths and expense to have this baby. Why would she allow it to be born in such a remote location without an anesthesiologist, obstetrician, and pediatrician in attendance? To some extent, Jamie had been able to put aside such concerns when she met Freda and saw the clinic. Freda was a certified midwife and no stranger to delivering babies. Deliveries sometimes turned into true medical emergencies, however. Why take the risk? Why not have the baby delivered in a hospital in Amarillo?
There was only one rationale that Jamie could see for having the baby at the ranch. If the baby were delivered in a hospital, she could screw up the whole deal by refusing to sign the adoption papers and simply walk out the door with the baby in her arms. Legally no one could stop her. At the ranch, she knew that the baby would be whisked away the minute it was born. Even if she refused to sign the papers, she knew that she would never be allowed to see the baby, much less leave with it.
Of course, if Amanda really was having a baby herself, it shouldn’t m
atter all that much if Jamie backed out of the deal—unless the baby she carried was Amanda’s grandchild.
God, it was all so confusing. At times her brain felt as though it had turned into mush.
Just have the baby and leave, she told herself. The words had become her mantra as she walked up and down dirt trails and gravel roads, as she paced up and down her living room, as she ate her solitary meals and lay sleepless in her bed.
There was nothing she could do to change the terms to which she had agreed. And she didn’t really want to do anything to jeopardize the life she had planned for herself. The child she carried was Amanda’s child and not her own, she told herself for the umpteenth time. She didn’t want a child at this point in her life. She wanted a chance to live for herself.
Except that Mary Millicent possessed a passkey left over from the days when she was the chatelaine of Hartmann Ranch and had come tiptoeing into Jamie’s corner of the castle. And the things Mary Millicent had told her made her afraid.
But Mary Millicent was a crazy old woman who disliked her own children, Jamie reminded herself. How could she possibly put any credence in her tales?
She remembered Lenora’s warning that powerful people have methods of getting their own way and that if Jamie signed the contract, she must be absolutely committed to upholding her end of the bargain and never looking back.
Just have the baby and leave. That was the only safe and sensible thing to do.
She tried to imagine what would happen following the baby’s birth. After she had signed away her legal rights to the child, Miss Montgomery or Freda probably would take him to Amanda.
How would she receive the money owed to her, Jamie wondered. And how soon after the delivery would she feel well enough and strong enough to leave? Not days. No way was she waiting around here for days. Jamie wanted to have her car packed, gassed up, and waiting for her in front of the clinic. With Ralph waiting in Freda’s office.
The Surrogate Page 17
