The Surrogate Mother

by Freida McFadden

  “I don’t feel so good,” I mumble. I stare down at my Diet Coke, wishing it would magically morph into a margarita.

  “But I thought things were going well.” Shelley takes a chip from our communal bowl. “Monica got pregnant on her first shot, and you said that ultrasound was normal. So… good?”

  I chew on my lip. I haven’t voiced any of my anxieties to Shelley, partially because I haven’t had a free moment to talk to her in person and this was a little too heavy for text message, but also because I know she’s going to say, “I told you so.” And I don’t need an “I told you so” right now.

  But on the other hand, I need to talk to someone about this.

  “Things have been weird lately,” I admit.

  “Weird in what way?”

  “Like…” I run a chip through the salsa, even though I’m not terribly hungry. “Sam and Monica have gotten to be… friendly.”

  Shelley raises an eyebrow. “Friendly?”

  And just like that, the whole story comes pouring out. The night we gave Monica a ride and she stole the shotgun seat. The dinner I was late for, where Monica and Sam bonded big time over math jokes. The way she calls him “Sammy.” The ultrasound I missed, followed by the two of them getting coffee after.

  “He said he was just going for twenty minutes,” I say, “but I texted him and he didn’t get back to me for two hours. So.”

  “Wow,” Shelley breathes. “That’s intense.”

  “And haven’t you noticed how she’s been wearing more makeup lately and dressing more seductively?” I add. “She always used to dress like she was in church, but now she looks… you know, hot.”

  “Monica’s really attractive,” she agrees. “I always thought so. And she’s Sam’s type.”

  I frown. “His type?”

  She smiles crookedly. “Well, she looks like you. So I’m assuming that’s his type.”

  Good point. I never thought of Sam as having a “type,” because he rarely comments on other women or talks about old girlfriends. I’ve never even seen photos of the women he dated before me. But he asked me out so quickly after we met, there must have been something that drew him to me immediately.

  And yes, Monica looks like me. Except younger. And curvier. And pregnant with his kid.

  “Also,” I say, “they’re texting each other.”

  “They are?”

  I nod. “I saw a text from her pop up on his screen this morning.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Um.” I think for a minute. “I think she was thanking him for sending her a math paper she liked.”

  “Well, that’s pretty innocent.”

  “But how is she so into math all of a sudden?” I stir the ice listlessly in my Diet Coke. “She wanted to go to school for graphic art to become a creative director, and now somehow she knows all about matrices and cokernels, whatever the hell those are.”

  “I don’t think Sam is going to be overcome by passion while talking about math.” She snorts. “Actually, I take that back. Maybe he would.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “I don’t know, Abby.” She shrugs. “It sounds like the texts are pretty innocent. But if you’re not sure…”

  I frown at her. “What?”

  “Do you have the code for Sam’s phone?”

  My mouth falls open. “I’m not going to spy on my husband!”

  “It’s not spying. It’s snooping.”

  I do have the code for Sam’s phone. But I don’t intend to do anything with it. “I’m not doing that, Shelley.”

  “Well, then you really don’t know how innocent it is, do you?”

  I don’t like the direction this conversation is going in.

  “I mean, really, Monica hasn’t actually done anything wrong, has she?” I crunch miserably on a chip. “After all, it’s my own fault I messed up the time for the ultrasound.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well,” she says thoughtfully, “doesn’t Monica have access to your calendar? Couldn’t she tell you the wrong time, wait for you to put it in your calendar, then swap it out for the correct time so you look like an idiot when you show up?”

  My mouth falls open. “Do… do you really think she’d do that?”

  Shelley shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  And then there’s that morning meeting I was supposed to have with the Cuddles people that I didn’t know about. Is it possible Monica could be responsible for that?

  “I don’t know, Shel,” I say. “That’s a little too diabolical. I can’t imagine Monica doing that.” I pause. “Can you?”

  She’s quiet for several seconds while I hold my breath. Finally, she says, “I guess not.”

  I let out my breath. I’m glad she doesn’t think so, because I couldn’t possibly take away Monica’s access to my calendar. She’s my assistant—a large part of her job is making sure my calendar is updated and accurate. I have to trust her.

  And I do. I trust her.

  But maybe I’ll change the password on my phone. My birthday isn’t very secure.

  “But still,” she says. “It’s an emotional situation for everyone. Monica is pregnant, so she’s got all these hormones. And then Sam—he’s wanted a baby for a long time, and now here’s a woman who’s pregnant with his child, but she’s not his wife. That’s got to be messing with his head.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble. “We should have adopted. This was a mistake.”

  Shelley is silent.

  I sigh. “Go ahead. Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “You know what.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me you told me so. You said this was a mistake before we even got started.”

  “I’m not going to say ‘I told you so’ when you look like something the cat dragged in.” She shakes her head. “What kind of friend do you think I am?”

  The kind who tells me I look like something the cat dragged in? Never mind.

  “Anyway,” I say, “Monica will be leaving work soon, so I’ll probably hardly see her until the baby comes. Just at the appointments. And then in less than five months, we’ll have the baby.”

  She grins. “And I promise—no baby showers this time.”

  “Please no,” I say. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”

  Except that’s not true. I can imagine something worse.

  _____

  Sam is sitting across from me on the couch, quietly working on his computer. That’s something we do—sit next to each other in the living room, both of us working. Sometimes we don’t say a word for an hour or more, but it still makes me feel close to him. Especially when I put my legs up on the couch, and he puts his hand on my calf, absently stroking it. And whenever I look up at him, he smiles.

  Sam’s phone breaks the silence by buzzing with a text message. He picks it up and grins at the screen.

  “Who’s texting you?” I ask, as casually as I possibly can.

  “Monica.”

  Of course. Prior to Monica entering our lives, Sam only got texts from me and from work. Now she’s his new text buddy.

  He nudges me. “She found out the gender of the baby.”

  “Oh.” I slide my laptop off my lap. “I thought we decided to wait until the birth to find out.”

  He frowns. “We did?”

  “Yes! We did!”

  “Uh…” He looks down at his phone, then back at me. “So… she already sort of… told me.”

  My mouth falls open. “She told you?”

  “Well, I didn’t realize we were waiting to find out!”

  I shake my head. “You knew I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “I didn’t know that.” He’s typing something into his phone as he talks, which is incredibly irritating. What is he saying to her? That his wife is being a bitch? “Seeing what the baby looks like will be enough of a surprise, don’t you think?”

  I don’t know what to say. It’s too late
to change the fact that Monica blabbed to him. Also, why would she text him and not me? I’m the one she works with. I knew her before he did. It’s because of me that all of this is happening.

  “So what is it?” I finally ask.

  “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  I let out an irritated huff. “If you know, then I want to know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!”

  He grins crookedly. “It’s a boy.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’re going to have a son!” His brown eyes are wide and excited. “Isn’t that incredible?”

  His enthusiasm is contagious. I was feeling upset about Monica blowing the secret but he’s right—the important thing is we’re getting a healthy baby. A healthy baby boy! This is really happening—we’re going to be parents soon.

  “I love you so much, Abby.” Sam puts down his computer on the coffee table and climbs on top of me. He kisses my neck until my body starts to tingle. “I’m so glad you’re my wife.”

  I smile to myself, giving into the wonderful sensation of my husband’s lips on my body. I try to ignore the buzzing of the text messages still coming in on Sam’s phone.

  Chapter 18

  Today is our big meeting with Cuddles, and I’m so nervous, I could throw up.

  The last time we met with Cuddles, I was nervous but in an excited sort of way. I knew my campaign was incredible, and I felt one-hundred percent confident. Today I feel none of that confidence. My only hope is I can fake it.

  Somehow I haven’t been on my game lately though. Ever since the night of that dinner I missed two months ago, it’s like I can’t keep anything straight. Earlier in the week, I completely missed an important meeting even though it was right in my calendar. I misplaced an entire folder of baby photos and had to ask Cuddles to fax them to me again. Denise had to come in to scold me on two separate occasions for not responding to Cuddles’s emails. Also, I became violently ill from some banana pudding baby food I sampled.

  I could use another week for this meeting, but that’s not happening. It’s today—like it or not.

  Monica has loaded up my presentation on the laptop connected to the projector in the conference room. I have to say, Monica has been a rock star lately. Given how scatterbrained I’ve been lately, she’s doing an amazing job picking up the slack. Ever since I missed that meeting on Monday, she’s started printing out daily itineraries to leave on my desk in the morning, she’s been highlighting important emails in my inbox, and she’s arranged a gourmet lunch for the Cuddles execs at the meeting.

  Yes, she’s still friendly with Sam. He swears they haven’t gotten together again for coffee, but I still see her text messages popping up on his cell phone. Also, her last OB/GYN appointment coincided with a meeting I absolutely couldn’t miss, so Sam ended up accompanying her by himself. I tried not to let it bother me how happy he seemed after that appointment. It’s about the baby—not about Monica.

  I’m sitting in the conference room, chugging coffee as I chew on my fingernails, when Jed Cofield and his minions arrive. I’m worried Cofield is going to be cool to me after I missed answering several of his emails, but he comes right over to me and shakes my hand. Although I notice he doesn’t hang onto my hand any longer than necessary.

  “Good to see you again, Abby,” he says. He flashes his teeth at me. “I expect you’re going to dazzle me yet again today.”

  I do my best to return his smile. “Naturally.”

  Confident. Act confident.

  I usually don’t even have to tell myself that. It’s become automatic to follow Denise’s lessons to project an image of complete confidence. Even when I start to suspect I’m wrong about something, I’ll plow forward with my shoulders squared, and you would be amazed how often that’s effective. But today I’m not sure I have it in me.

  “I always tell everyone,” Cofield says, “that Abby Adler—she’s the best. You want to sell your product, she’s the one.”

  “I appreciate that, Jed,” I say.

  And I smile confidently. I should be confident—I have an excellent track record. There’s no reason to doubt myself.

  My confidence doesn’t waver again until Denise enters the room. She strides right up to me, her ice-blue eyes regarding me with barely repressed disdain. She’s been witness to every single one of my screw-ups lately, and she’s not impressed.

  “Abigail,” she says. “I’ll be in the back to lend my expertise if needed.”

  The subtext is painfully obvious: I’m going to stay in the room in case you mess up.

  The last person to enter the room is Monica, carrying a plate of gourmet sandwiches. She’s wearing a vivid red blouse paired with a black skirt that shows off what are some really very nice legs. Between her boobs and her legs, every red-blooded male in the room swivels around to stare at her. Cofield’s mouth is hanging open. I wonder if Sam were here, he’d be staring too.

  Monica is now close to six months pregnant, but she’s still able to hide it with creative clothes pairings. For example, her red blouse hugs her breasts, but is loose around her midsection. I expect in another couple of weeks, she won’t be able to hide it anymore at all. Which means that as painful as it will be, I’m going to have to give up Monica. Nobody at work can know about our arrangement.

  When everyone is seated and has chosen a sandwich, I can begin my presentation. With their product information and the baby photos, we’ve written the copy for and designed a website to display their baby food. We’ve been going back and forth on it for months, and now I’m showing them the near-final version. Even as late as last night, Monica and I were going over a list of slogans to find the best one.

  “Obviously the real website will be interactive and we’re working with our tech people on that,” I say, “but I just wanted to show you what we expect it will look like.”

  I give everyone in the room a chance to look at the image I’ve flashed on the screen. In spite of my issues recently, I worked very hard on this website. I hope they appreciate it.

  Jed Cofield is the first to speak. I was hoping he’d say something enthusiastic, but instead he frowns at me. “Um, Abby?”

  “Yes?”

  “This isn’t what we talked about at all.”

  All eyes in the room are suddenly staring at me. This isn’t what we talked about at all. What does he mean by that? I incorporated absolutely everything he told me. How could he say something like that?

  “What do you mean?” I ask carefully.

  Cofield shakes his head. “These weren’t the babies we discussed using. Remember—I said we needed a more diverse selection. Also, I said I wanted to have the toddler foods at the top and the stage one foods at the bottom.”

  He’s right. He did say all that to me. And I made the changes. Except when I look at the screen displayed overhead, I realize the image does not reflect any of this. I see the first baby in the image is the kid with red hair that sticks up, which I specifically remember Cofield saying was an “ugly baby” because I got offended by his calling any baby ugly. But here is Cofield’s “ugly baby,” staring me right in the face.

  Oh my God, did I put the old images in my presentation?

  Oh no.

  I can’t believe I did that. What a stupid mistake. And to not even double-check it before a major presentation in front of the Cuddles executives… what is wrong with me? I must be losing my mind.

  “Um…” I shift between my feet, trying to figure out how to play this like it isn’t a huge mistake. I’m not sure if there’s a way. “Right, so these are the first images I used, so I could show you how much better our new design is.”

  “Okay…” Cofield says.

  And now everyone is waiting for me to show them the new design.

  “I need a few seconds to load it,” I say. “Sorry.”

  I’m not fooling anyone. Monica has to come to the front of the room to help me load the correct images, and it’s a complete mess. I
can feel the anger emanating off Denise, who is doing her best to placate the Cuddles people while I attempt to salvage the meeting.

  It takes twenty minutes, but I finally get the right image on the screen. Okay, fine—it was a bit of a snafu, but the important thing is, I’ve got a great website for their product. That’s all that matters.

  “I don’t know, Abby…” Cofield is saying.

  Jesus Christ, now what?

  “Yes?” I say, as calmly as possible.

  “I don’t love that slogan.” He shakes his head. “Cuddles Baby Food—nothing is more important than your baby’s tummy.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Aside from the fact that it’s terrible. I couldn’t come up with anything better.

  “It’s clunky,” he says.

  “Clunky?”

  “I want something that rolls off the tongue,” he says. “You know?”

  Denise is giving me the stink eye from across the room. I wrack my brain, trying to remember the list of slogans I had saved on my computer. There are others they might like better. If only I could remember…

  “How about,” Monica says suddenly, “Cuddles Baby Food—because your baby deserves the best.”

  The slogan rings a bell. It’s from the list of rejects from last night.

  Cofield turns to stare at the woman who’s been serving him coffee and helping with the projector. A slow smile curls across his lips. “Actually, I like that.”

  Monica beams. “Really?”

  “Yeah!” He nods vigorously. “It’s clean, simple… and it guilt trips the parents into paying a little more for our baby food.” He leans over to grin at Denise. “This girl here is a gem.”

  “Well, I can’t take credit,” Monica says quickly. “It was on Abby’s list. She’s really the one who came up with it.”

  “Yes, but you’re the one who knew it was right for us,” Cofield says. “That’s half the battle.”

  “Very true.” Denise smiles warmly at my assistant. “You know, Monica is one of our rising stars here at Stewart.”

  She… is?