The Offering

by Angela Hunt

  And I certainly couldn’t earn that kind of cash in a Cuban checkout stand.

  * * *

  “Whatcha doing, baby girl?” a man murmured in my ear.

  “Gideon!” I turned and playfully swatted his bare arm with the newspaper I’d been reading at the kitchen counter. “You scared me to death.”

  He wrapped his arms around me, nuzzled the side of my neck, then planted his cheek next to mine. “Whatcha reading? Looking for yard sales?”

  “Not today.” Giving up my search of the classifieds, I dropped the paper and slid from my stool, grateful for my husband’s attention. Gideon wrapped his arms around me, his chiseled muscles flexing and bulging in easy rhythm as he drew me closer. I ran my fingers through his dark hair, long now, and curly, a far cry from the buzz cut he’d worn during his early years in the Army. Men who belonged to the elite unit Gideon led weren’t supposed to look like they were in the military, but I could spot one of his buddies from fifty yards away. Though they rarely wore uniforms, they carried themselves in a certain way—shoulders squared, backs straight, arms hanging loose, and eyes observant. They were supermen who could survive by eating grass and drinking dew, and they were prepared to take action anywhere, at any time.

  Gideon looked around. “Where’s our angel?”

  “Taking a nap. I put her down when we got home, and she hasn’t moved since.” I peered up into his dark eyes. “Good day?”

  He shrugged. “We’re keeping an eye on a developing situation, so we might be heading out soon. But we shouldn’t be gone too long.”

  I took a deep breath to calm my leaping pulse and didn’t ask any questions. Gideon led a counterterrorism unit under Special Forces Command, and though I knew he did important work, I didn’t want to know what his job entailed. He had always been intent on his training, but lately he had also been tense and cautious. I never knew when he would be called away—sometimes he left in the middle of the night—and he couldn’t tell me where or why he was going.

  All I knew was my husband wasn’t allowed to travel more than an hour away from Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base, home to USSOCOM, the Special Operations Command headquarters. He and his sixteen-man unit frequently disappeared for days, then returned to family life as if they’d never been away.

  Though I found Gideon’s unpredictable departures frustrating—probably because I’d never been good at saying good-bye to people I loved—I was proud of my husband. He and the other secretive special operators were brave, dedicated, and skilled warriors, and I was always grateful when they came home unscathed.

  I, on the other hand, was not an ideal military wife. I wasn’t good at saying good-bye, I wasn’t brave, and I didn’t feel an innate need to be all that I could be. Worst of all, I couldn’t sleep when I knew the pillow next to mine would be empty, so Gid had developed the habit of slipping out without telling me he was going. When I woke without him, if his duffel bag lay on the floor of the closet, I knew he had only gone out to the base or to run an errand. But if the duffel bag had disappeared, so had Gideon.

  He tightened his arms around me, then nodded at the newspaper on the counter. “Why were you reading the want ads?”

  I sighed and stepped out of his arms. “You know I adore your family, but I need a bigger paycheck. I could have had that middle school lunchroom job if I had a college degree. I could do a lot of things if only I had a degree, so I need to go back to school. I was looking through the classifieds and hoping to find some way to pay for it.”

  Gideon’s brow furrowed. “I could talk to Dad about giving you a raise.”

  I shook my head. “I already make more than the hourly employees. If Tumelo gave me a raise I’d be making as much per hour as Amelia. Considering that I’m only a cashier and she practically runs the place, that wouldn’t be fair.”

  “I could see about earning some money on the side—”

  I brushed my fingers across my husband’s lips. “You can’t do that. I’m sure there’s a regulation against it, and even if there isn’t, I don’t want you worrying about things at home. This will be my way of contributing to the house fund.”

  “You already do plenty.” His arms slipped around me again. “You’re a great mom and a good wife.”

  “Only good?”

  His eyes twinkled. “Okay, you’re a fantastic wife. And we’ll get our own house, I promise. We just have to be patient.”

  “But being patient is hard.”

  “My team has a saying: The path of least resistance is the path of the loser. Good things usually hurt.”

  I smiled, only slightly amused at his he-man humor. “Have you always dreamed of being Captain America?”

  He tipped his head back and laughed, the warm sound filling our small kitchen. “Maybe I have. America is a great country, you know? My grandparents may talk about Cuba all the time, but they wouldn’t want to leave Tampa. Neither would my parents.”

  “Neither would I.” I settled my head against my husband’s chest, reassured by the strong and steady sound of his heart. “But I’d follow you anywhere.”

  Chapter Three

  ¿Cómo está, Claude?” I smiled at our quirkiest and best-tanned customer. “Did you find everything you need?”

  The old man dropped a bag of beans on the counter, then scratched at his grizzled white beard. “You don’t carry suntan lotion. You should order some.”

  “Mama Yanela’s is a Cuban grocery. We don’t carry everything.”

  “But this is the only place I like to shop. So be a dear, will you, and ask your boss to stock some suntan lotion? I like Hawaiian Gold.”

  “But this is Florida, not Hawaii.”

  I waited, expecting him to chuckle at my little joke, but he only crinkled his brow. “Hawaiian Gold, okay? When you tan all over”—he winked, reminding me that he lived in the local nudist colony—“you need the best.”

  “I’ll ask about it,” I promised, dropping his beans into a bag. “And, um, then you can tell everyone at the colony that we have the good stuff. Suntan lotion, I mean.”

  He grabbed his bag and turned for the door, twiddling his fingers in a backhanded wave as his pink flip-flops slapped the floor.

  From the canned goods aisle, Amelia snickered.

  “Hola, Mandy.” I looked up as Mario, Amelia’s husband, entered the store wearing his butcher’s apron. “¿Está bien?”

  “Bien,” I called as he hurried past. “Hope you’re good, too.”

  Gideon’s family spoke Spanish almost exclusively at home, making an exception only when they had to stop and translate something for me. Even Gideon’s mother, Elaine Lisandra, had learned to speak Spanish fluently, though she was as much a gringa as I was. I tried to learn Spanish, honestly I did, but I couldn’t see much point in learning when they all spoke English as well. And they lived in America—shouldn’t they adapt to us instead of the other way around?

  But some of our older Cuban grocery customers apparently believed in the adage about old dogs not learning new tricks. So I tried to maintain a working vocabulary in Spanish, practicing how to meet and greet and count back change, along with reciting the names of fruits, meats, and delicacies such as octopus salad (ensalada de pulpo), our special of the week.

  I had just scribbled a note to ask Mama Isa about suntan lotion when a hugely pregnant woman came toward the register, one arm holding her shopping basket, the other supporting her back. The woman looked slightly familiar, but I couldn’t place her face.

  When she lifted her basket onto the counter, I tilted my head. “You look familiar. Do you attend Calvary Chapel? Or maybe you just shop here a lot.”

  The woman smiled. “I’ve seen you in the car pool line at the Takahashi school. My little boy goes there.”

  I nodded. “Okay, now it makes sense. This is my daughter’s first year at the school.”

  “I’ve noticed her—she’s cute. Does she like the school?”

  “Marilee loves it. And she’s learned so much! I ke
ep telling my husband we may have a budding Mozart on our hands, but he just laughs and tells me to rein in my imagination.” I shot a pointed glance at her protruding belly. “I see you’re expecting another child. Your second?”

  “This?” Her free hand fell protectively on the mound beneath her breasts. “This baby is responsible for my being here—I’ve a desperate craving for flan. Though I don’t know why I’m eating anything. I feel like I’m about to pop.”

  I studied her belly again. “When’s your baby due?”

  “Any day—and it’s not my baby.”

  I had been about to lift a can of evaporated milk from her basket, but my hand froze in midair. “Did you say—Wait. What did you say?”

  The woman pressed her hand to her back again and grimaced. “This kid belongs to a couple in D.C. As soon as I feel the first honest-to-goodness contraction, I’m calling them so they can fly down. And I don’t mind telling you, I’m more than ready to see my feet again.”

  I lifted a brow, then rang up the leche evaporada and a package of flan mix. “So the other couple is adopting your baby?”

  She gave me a weary look, wordlessly letting me know she’d been asked the question before. “It’s their baby—they defrosted a frozen embryo and I’m carrying it for them. A friend of mine convinced me this would be a good gig for a military wife.” The woman reached for a bag of merengue puffs and tossed it onto the counter. “Those look good, too.”

  “They are good.” I ran the puffs under my scanner and stuffed them into a grocery bag, glad to hear the woman and I had something else in common. “Your husband’s stationed at MacDill?”

  “He’s in Afghanistan. By the time he gets leave, I should have my figure back.”

  “So . . . you’re a surrogate?”

  The woman shifted her weight and leaned forward, bracing her arms on the checkout counter. “That term’s gone out of fashion because it usually means the birth mom is supplying the egg. No couple wants Mary Beth Whitehead drama, so most intended parents either supply the egg or buy it from an egg farm.”

  I shrugged to hide my confusion. “Wow. I had no idea that kind of thing went on around here.”

  “It goes on everywhere, I guess. Most people just don’t talk about it.”

  “But you do?”

  The woman tossed the Cuban version of a Twinkie into her basket. “Lots of women on the base do. Surrogacy agencies love military wives because they know we tend to be independent, we have access to great health care, and our husbands are underpaid. Plus, they’re always saying we have an unusual willingness to serve others. While I don’t know about that, all the other stuff adds up to a lot of willing women.”

  The word underpaid vibrated in my head. “You do this for money,” I whispered, thinking aloud.

  “Not only for money.” A suggestion of annoyance flashed in her eyes. “I’m doing it to help a couple who couldn’t have kids otherwise.”

  “Oh, I’m not blaming you,” I added quickly, “because I know how it feels to stretch a dollar until it rips. I don’t fault you at all, in fact, I think what you’re doing is great. You’re doing it to help your family, right?”

  “Why else would I go through this kind of agony?” The woman stepped back, looked pointedly at her bulging belly, and gave me a lopsided smile. “Trust me—at first it’s all about helping a childless couple, but as the months go by that good feeling fades and you keep reminding yourself that you’re doing something good for your kids. By the time I hand over this baby, I’ll have earned as much in nine months as my husband does in a year. Helping other people is great, but helping your family is better.”

  I snapped my fingers as a realization took shape. “The base—you must shop at the PX.”

  “When I’m not shopping at Walmart, yeah.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you again. Marilee and I shop there every couple of weeks.”

  “Well, I hope I’m skinny the next time you see me. I can’t wait to pop this baby out.”

  My mind bulged with noisy thoughts as I finished ringing up the woman’s order and ran her credit card through the machine. “Good luck with your delivery,” I said, handing over her grocery bag. “I hope things go smoothly for you.”

  “They had better.” Her mouth lifted in a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m giving these people nine months of my life. That’s enough.”

  I crossed my arms as the woman slowly waddled out of the store. Amelia stepped out from behind a display and followed my gaze as I watched our heavily pregnant customer get into her car.

  “Who was that?” Amelia’s brow wrinkled. “And isn’t she about to drop that kid?”

  “Her husband’s in Afghanistan, and her son goes to Marilee’s school.” I turned to face my cousin. “We were just talking about her pregnancy.”

  “I was wondering if we should call an ambulance. She looks like she’s at least a week overdue.”

  I didn’t answer, but stared at my cousin as a series of thoughts toppled like dominoes in my brain. Gideon and I needed money, we were a military family, and I had time and a strong constitution. We wanted other children, but not right away, so I could carry a baby for someone else. I’d have to do some research and convince the family, though, and Amelia knew la familia better than I did. I could talk Gideon into almost anything, but the other members of his clan weren’t as susceptible to my powers of persuasion. . . .

  “What?” Amelia’s expression shifted to alarm. “Something wrong with my face?”

  “I need a coffee break.” I uncrossed my arms. “Want to come with me?”

  The question hung in the air between us, shimmering with significance, and Amelia seemed to understand that I didn’t really want coffee at all. “Jenna!” she finally called. “Can you watch the register a few minutes?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Mario?”

  “Claro. Un momento.”

  We waited until Mario stepped out from behind the meat counter, then I led Amelia toward the back of the store.

  * * *

  Amelia and I stepped out into a blindingly bright Florida morning. November had brought cooler temperatures, and with it the promise of something resembling winter, but not even the appearance of decorator pumpkins, dried cornstalks, and harvest scarecrows could convince our tropical sun that autumn had arrived.

  Amelia sank into one of the cheap plastic chairs by the back door, Mama Isa’s idea of furnishing an employee break room. “So what’s on your mind?” Amelia said. “Mama said you might be needing a raise.”

  “I don’t want a raise.” I pulled the other chair into the thin strip of shade cast by the overhanging roof. “But Gid and I do need extra money. Marilee’s tuition will go up every year, and her teacher has already mentioned that we need to think about buying her a piano. I wouldn’t worry about finances if I had the sort of job I thought I’d get after college, but I can’t get anything close to that until I finish and get my degree. Going back to school will cost money we don’t have.”

  Amelia propped her sneakered feet on an overturned plastic bucket. “Things are tough all over. Mario and I are trying to tighten our belts, too. Someday this store will be ours, so if we invest in it—”

  “Gideon and I can’t wait to invest, we need more income now.”

  Amelia hauled her gaze from the shrubs behind the store and squinted at me. “What’s your hurry?”

  I shook my head. “We’ve been married five years and we’ve never had a home to call our own. I’m sick of renting. And there’s Marilee’s school; the tuition goes up every year. Finally, we want to have more kids someday, in a house with a real backyard and room for a dog.”

  Amelia nodded. “Have you thought about a loan?”

  “We applied for a loan a few months ago; the bank turned us down.”

  “You could talk to Mama or Elaine or Abuela Yanela—”

  “Gideon doesn’t want to borrow money from the family. He says his parents and grandparents worked
hard to get what they have, so he’s not about to take it from them, not even as a loan.”

  Amelia pressed her lips together, then shrugged. “If you’re planning to ask me and Mario, I hate to disappoint you, but—”

  “I didn’t bring you out here to ask for money. I came because I wanted to ask your advice about something.”

  Her mouth twitched with amusement. “I would advise you not to clean out the cash register.”

  “Don’t be silly. I was thinking about that pregnant woman.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because she’s not pregnant with her own child—she’s having a baby for some people in D.C. It’s their kid. She’s only carrying it.”

  Amelia gaped at me like a woman facing an IRS audit. “Don’t tell me you think that’s a good idea.”

  I blinked, momentarily intimidated by the intensity of her reaction. “I don’t know what I think. First, I don’t know if I could do it. When you’re pregnant, you’re so aware of everything the baby is doing—you can feel it moving, kicking, and turning around. I’m not sure, but I think I could even tell when Marilee burped. I sang to her, I stroked her through my skin, I was so completely in love with her. . . .”

  A warning cloud settled on Amelia’s features. “Would you have been in love with her if she belonged to someone else?”

  She asked the question I’d been avoiding. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I’d feel. The idea never crossed my mind until today.”

  We sat in silence for a long while, then Amelia leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “You’re seriously thinking about this?”

  “I think maybe I am. The money’s good.”

  She snorted. “It’s crazy. Who does that? Ordinary people do not rent out their uteruses. Or uteri. Whatever the word is.”

  “But apparently it happens a lot these days. Maybe more often than we realize, and right under our noses. It’s just not talked about.”