A Mother's Secrets

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Legally you have her consent, on that contract you both signed. Just as she had the sole and legal right to determine what would happen to your frozen specimen in the event of your death.”

  He frowned. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “Who said there was one?”

  “Your tone of voice...”

  So neutral hadn’t been a good choice. Either that or the man was uncannily observant.

  “I just wondered, though it’s honestly none of my business, whether you were just doing this out of grief, and to honor Emily, as opposed to really wanting the child yourself. Like I said, none of my business...you have all legal rights to do as you’ve stated. But a child...that’s a lifetime commitment. And doing it alone...that’s not easy. None of it’s easy. It’s hard. And messy. And frustrating. And...”

  “It’s standing by the crib alone, watching my child sleep,” he said, his gaze direct. “Having to do all of the middle of the night feedings alone. All the baths. Mastering all the learning curves. Cheering him or her on alone, making all of the tough decisions alone. And it’s bringing to life the miracle that will make life worth living,” he said. “Trust me. No one wants a child more than I do,” he said.

  So maybe, back then, he hadn’t just been happy to give his wife whatever she wanted. He’d been happy because he’d known they both wanted the exact same things.

  For a second there, Christine envied him—the widower sitting across from her. At least he had a memory of knowing what that felt like—to have someone in your life who not only shared your hopes and dreams but really needed them, too.

  Having been alone for most of her adult life, pursuing her career and what drove her, she could hardly imagine how great such a shared life would be.

  “Okay, so I assume you’re here to get the process started,” she said, pulling out her bottom right hand drawer, reaching into the proper file for the pamphlet she needed. They were all there, clearly labeled, easily accessible. “Unfortunately, we don’t provide surrogates here at The Parent Portal, but this would be my recommendation for a clinic that does. If you don’t like At Home,” she said, naming the clinic, “there are dozens of others in the state, and I’m sure one of them will work for you. Once you’ve chosen the surrogate, if you want us to oversee the fertilization process, on up through the birth, since that was Emily’s wish, we’ll be more than happy to do so.” When he didn’t immediately take the pamphlet, she slid it through the small pieces of three-dimensional art populating her desk to lay it in front of him.

  He was nodding. Watching her. Pressed his lips together. Bit the lower one and then pressed them together again.

  This was the emotion she’d expected when he’d first come in the door... Everyone reached that point differently.

  She’d give him as long as he needed. Glanced at a multicolored porcelain horse, part of her collection, at her angel figurines, scattered in various spots on her desk, at a small metal heart-shaped sculpture...

  “I’ve actually chosen the surrogate,” Dr. Howe said, in an odd tone of voice that had gone suddenly scratchy sounding. “Or, at least, I know who I want her to be,” he said. “She hasn’t yet said she’d do it.”

  He met her gaze, but not as openly as he had before. Signaling clear discomfort.

  “You need me to talk to her.” She finally got what this meeting was about. He wanted her to talk his female choice into having his baby.

  “No,” he said, sitting back, both arms resting on leather, his hands gripping the edges of the chair. His knuckles were white. She stared at them. At their whiteness, as though it was a signal to her, something vital.

  “I don’t need you to talk to her,” he continued, paused.

  “I need you to be her.”

  Chapter Two

  “Excuse me?”

  Jamie heard his cue, but was too busy fighting an unusual case of jitters to jump in with the explanation he’d mentally perfected over the past few months. The hard part was done. The part he’d found no good way to do—letting her know what he wanted to do.

  The rest was supposed to flow smoothly.

  And then, perhaps, maybe some nerves would come into play as he awaited her final response.

  “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood, Dr. Howe. I’m not for sale here. Nor is anyone else at this clinic. There are certified, viable clinics that help with surrogacy, but The Parent Portal isn’t one of them.”

  The words should have stopped him. Propelled him out the door while uttering an abject apology.

  They didn’t. While her shock was evident, he heard no anger in her tone.

  “You suggested surrogacy as a possible option down the road. When Emily and I met with you. You said that if it turned out that tests proved her uterus to be inhospitable, surrogacy would be a way for us to have the baby we wanted.”

  “It would have been. Still is,” she amended, her expressive eyes wide and filled with compassion. “I’m sorry if I misled you, but I was only listing options, not in any way suggesting that I was available to perform them...”

  He nodded. Remained in his chair as he’d started, leaned back, arms down. Mostly because he was a bit uncomfortable with the swarming in his stomach, the way just looking at her started a bit of a maelstrom inside him.

  Emily had gotten emotional over everything. He’d always been the calm one.

  So now that he was pinch-hitting on earth for both of them, he was suddenly going to be experiencing the emotions his wife would have, as well? The idea, while pleasant in some kind of bonding way, was not one he welcomed. Losing Emily had changed him irrevocably, to be sure, but some parts of himself had to remain as they’d been.

  “I understand.” He found his voice, because the only other option was to sit there and let the idiocy tumble around inside him. “I fully understand,” he assured her. “I was just hoping you’d hear me out.”

  “I don’t see...”

  “Please.” He held her gaze steadily. He needed her to listen.

  When she nodded, the odd sensations in his stomach settled.

  “I’m not a fanciful man. I’m a mathematician. One who excels at and thrives on proving that everything lines up. And makes sense. There have been a series of events, starting way back when Emily and I were kids, that have all added up to this point. To my being here with you. I’m not about to sit here and tell you that she was some kind of psychic or angel on earth, or anything more than a human being just like you and me, but I can tell you that she’d look at me in a certain way, speak in a certain tone of voice, and whatever she said came to be. I don’t think I realized it when she was alive, but since she’s been gone, when I look back, I see that it was there.”

  “That’s not all that uncommon.” Christine’s tone was filled with warmth, but also respect. She wasn’t humoring him as many might have done. He wasn’t at all surprised by that.

  But that warmth in her gaze... It wasn’t at all personal, but felt that way to him. His body reacted.

  What in the hell was going on?

  His life was a neat and clean spreadsheet. Not a jumbled mass of inexplicable impressions. More than that, he honestly liked who he was.

  “When one loses a loved one, the past becomes more concrete. It’s a whole picture, not part of a moving and changing one. That life becomes finite to us.”

  He recognized the words. “You’ve been through grief counseling.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “When you have the completed picture you can study it more easily, and the mind naturally tries to make sense out of the things that stand out to us. For some people, the lucky ones, the mind succeeds.”

  She was throwing him off course. Yet, he couldn’t argue her logic.

  “Not to get too deep or heavy here, but I think that we all know more, deep down, than we consciously see,” she continued as
though they were there to discuss life after death.

  Avoiding the real topic on the table?

  He took encouragement from that.

  Because if she was just going to turn him down, without consideration, there’d be no reason not to just get it done.

  Right?

  “So maybe that’s why, after someone is gone, it’s easier for us to see the places in her life where she was acting from that deeper place. Maybe it’s those truths that stand out to us when we look at the whole picture that that life represented.”

  She was looking at the trinkets on her desk. And there were a lot of them. Colorful fake flowers in a colorful vase, too.

  He got the distinct impression that he needed to rescue her. From this conversation, not from the flowers.

  And that was bordering on him not being himself again. He was more recluse than rescuer.

  “I first met Emily in the emergency room when we were eight,” he said, off plan, but not completely. “She’d been bitten by a dog. I was there because my father was in kidney failure again. It wasn’t my first time hanging out there by a long shot. I saw them bring her in. But I can also remember, to this day, her words as they wheeled her past me. ‘Don’t let them hurt the dog,’ she said. Like I could do anything about any of it. Anyway, I kept walking by the cubicle where they’d taken her, and one time, the curtain around her was open. She asked me if I wanted to see her dog bite up close. Which, of course, as a kid, I did. She asked me if I wanted to be her friend, and I nodded. We got to talking, and when her mom came back from having used the bathroom, Emily announced that she and I were friends and her mom smiled and asked me my name, as though I belonged. I spent most of that afternoon in her little cubicle while they waited for whatever they were waiting for. When they finally came in to stitch her up, I got up to go and she asked me to stay. And when she was released and in the wheelchair on her way out, she told me to remember that we were friends. I remember thinking she was a bit goofy to think that we’d ever see each other again, but I liked the sentiment. I told her goodbye. And she said, ‘See ya.’”

  Not goodbye. “See ya.” As though she’d known...

  “A month later, when I went back to school, there she was, the new girl in our third grade class.”

  “What happened with your father?” Christine asked.

  “I imagine he spent the night at the hospital, though I don’t have specific memory of that. He most always did when he went into failure. He’d been in a bad car wreck before I was born. Both of his kidneys had ruptured. He had another transplant the year that I met Emily, but he died when I was in junior high.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged off the sympathy. In some ways his childhood had been hard, with so much time spent in hospitals due to his dad being so sick, but in others, it had been the best. His mom and dad had always been there for him. Doing fun things with him. Giving him a solid base of love and security. His mom was still that. As was his stepfather, the man who’d been his father’s best friend.

  “Emily somehow knew we’d meet again,” he said, getting the conversation back on track. “She knew that our friendship was real. And she took comfort from it that day, squeezing my hand and not crying at all as they stitched her up, letting me watch.”

  He’d almost cried, she’d hurt his hand so bad.

  “I think she also knew, when she went into that surgery a year ago, that she wasn’t going to make it. Or at the very least, she knew she had to provide for me in the event that she didn’t make it. Her last words were a promise to me that our baby would be born. She made me promise that I believed her.”

  Christine’s gaze narrowed. She swallowed.

  But she seemed to have no calm and steady words of compassion to offer.

  * * *

  Dr. Jamison Howe was either one hell of a con man, or he was about the most unusual person she’d ever met.

  He wasn’t a scammer. There was no reason to con her. He could get what he wanted, a woman to carry his child, in any number of legally vetted health clinics across the state.

  Which left unusual.

  He was getting to her.

  It was a first.

  She had no idea what to do about it.

  Except do what she did. Listen. Try to understand. To help. At the very least to empathize. To consider his suggestion fairly, compile the logical reasons she couldn’t comply, and then move on with her day. To the next “Jamison Howe” or Emily Hannigan, a former classmate of Jamison’s who had also been a client of The Parent Portal.

  Life wasn’t easy.

  But it had moments of pure rightness. Of complete joy. Christine could attest to that.

  She wanted him to have his child. Wanted to help him. Would help him. Once she got him past the whole “her carrying his baby” thing. It wasn’t the first time she’d been asked. Was something she’d actually considered a few years back. But with her clinic, her position there, surrogacy had muddied her waters too much. There were a lot of great surrogates out there. She’d had clients at The Parent Portal who, after finding their own, had come to the clinic for the insemination, prenatal care and birth.

  “I planned to give you a list of many such instances in my life with Emily, times when she’d say something and then it would come to be in one fashion or another, but there’s only one that matters here,” Dr. Howe said. The man was handsome from the hair on his head on down. His eyes. The deep timbre of his voice. The way he held his torso when he spoke—not upright straight, and yet seemingly straight. Relaxed, but no slouch...

  “After we left here the day we met with you, she said that if it came to the last resort and we had to use a surrogate, it had to be you.”

  “She meant The Parent Portal, but I clearly misrepresented us to the two of you that day. We don’t provide surrogates. I mean, we could. We just don’t. I run a fertility clinic that insists on open family agreements, not a surrogacy clinic. I think it’s best to specialize, and our specialty is not surrogacy.”

  “You told us you’d given your son up for adoption.”

  She stared at him. Had completely forgotten she’d told them. But now that he mentioned it... Emily had told her that she’d felt so strongly about using The Parent Portal because of the clinic’s policy of acknowledging its patients and their needs, in the present and in the future. The woman had looked her in the eye, smiled and asked Christine if she’d ever had a child.

  She hadn’t prevaricated, even though she always did. But that day she hadn’t. It was the first time since she gave her son up at seventeen that she hadn’t. She’d told the Howes about the six-pound baby boy she’d loved so fiercely during his time inside her and then given to a family who’d desperately wanted a child of their own. Every day since, she’d been glad she made that choice, giving her son a family rather than bringing him into a home where his teenage mother was a nursemaid to her elderly grandparents.

  “Emily said that we’d be doing you a favor by using you as our surrogate because it would help you to allow yourself to have another child.”

  He might as well have hit her on the head with a baseball bat.

  It would have been kinder.

  Chapter Three

  Jamie wasn’t all that surprised when Christine asked him to leave. The look of blank horror on her face had preceded her abrupt request.

  He didn’t blame her. As soon as he’d heard himself repeat what Emily had said to him over two years before, he’d known he’d made a huge mistake.

  The personal remark, the reference to Christine’s own child, had been totally out of line. Definitely not in his rehearsed rhetoric. But then nothing about the afternoon meeting had gone as he’d imagined it might.

  At the door to her office, he turned, surprised at the tears he saw brimming in her eyes as she turned away from him. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing that t
here was no taking back what he’d said. “Emily and I had no business talking about you as if we knew you. And we really didn’t, actually. Sit and talk about you, I mean. She just made that one statement and we moved on. I have no idea why it stuck with me. I certainly never meant to repeat it to you,” he added. And when she didn’t immediately remind him that he’d been uninvited from their meeting, he continued.

  “I got carried off course, and absolutely didn’t mean to imply that Emily was right in that particular assertion. Or to make you think that I think she was some kind of gifted seer who was always right. She wasn’t. She was wrong a lot...” Like when she’d told him that buying their house was the absolute best thing for them to do. He was in the process of putting it on the market so that he could buy his way out of it and move on.

  “I was only letting you know why I felt so strongly about asking you to be our surrogate. That statement from her is the only weigh-in on the matter I’m going to get from her.”

  Christine was sitting back in her chair, hands folded across a completely flat midsection. Ignoring him politely, freezing him out of there? Or listening?

  “I’m certain about doing this, about having our family. I have no doubts or apprehensions at all. But finding a woman to carry Emily’s child? How do I do that? How do I choose a woman to give birth to the child that my wife conceived and wanted more than anything on earth? It’s not like I’m looking for someone to clean the house, here. Or bake my favorite cookies.”

  “You’d also be looking for someone to provide child care. Which you will presumably need to do after the baby is born as well. For now, you need a caretaker who’s willing to do the job 24/7, internally.”

  His hand dropped from the doorknob.

  She was engaging with him?

  Should he still leave? Or was it appropriate for him to stay? Was there any chance she’d consider his request?

  “Do you have a projected date for implantation in mind?” Her question had him leaning toward sticking around, but he didn’t move away from the door.