Judith Wall - The Surrogate

“I’ll be fine. Really I will. I’ll talk to you soon. Okay?”

“No. I want you to promise me that you will call back tomorrow with a phone number where we can reach you.”

“I’ll try,” Jamie said and hung up the phone. She wondered if the Brammers had caller ID. She should have warned Mrs. Brammer not to tell anyone except Joe that she had called. And her husband. That would be okay. But no one else. She rubbed her forehead and tried to tell herself once again that her fears could very well be baseless. But how could she know for sure?

JAMIE SAGGED AGAINST the foyer wall by the pay phone. She wanted to carry her baby back into the nice warm library and sit in an easy chair for a time to ponder her conversation with Joe’s mother-to replay Mrs. Brammer’s words, turning them over and over in her mind and examining them from every angle as one would a handful of pleasing pebbles gathered from a creek bed. Jamie had no idea when she might see Joe again or hear his voice. But he was not married.

Even so, she must put thoughts of him aside and decide what she was going to do next. She would get back to them, though.

With no way of knowing when Joe would return home, maybe she should find another lawyer.

She imagined sitting across the desk from an attorney. Imagined the incredulous look on his or her face as she tried to explain the predicament she was in. And what if in the process of checking out her story, the attorney alerted the very people who were looking for her?

Joe wouldn’t think she was crazy. He would realize the threat against her was real.

She had always been in love with Joe. She could admit that now. It had not been just an adolescent crush.

She had tried to cure herself of Joe, telling herself that he was nice to her because he felt sorry for her. Sorry that her parents were dead. Sorry she didn’t have cute clothes and wasn’t popular and lost her one shot at being special when she hurt her knee and couldn’t run track anymore. But now Joe’s own mother had indicated that his feelings for her were not based on pity.

Jamie knelt and touched her baby’s unbelievably soft cheek with a fingertip. “Let’s go, my little Billy boy,” she whispered.

She stopped at a Conoco station on the way out of Guymon. She paid for gas, a cup of coffee, and a cheese sandwich, then-with an ever watchful eye on the car and its precious cargo-studied the map of Oklahoma taped to the wall. The Oklahoma-Kansas line was only thirty-five miles away.

She got back in the car and started the motor. Then, absently stroking her dog, she sat there for a time, trying to decide what to do. She was exhausted and desperately in need of sleep. The stitches in her bottom hurt like hell. The baby was whimpering, and soon she would need to nurse him again, longer this time. Maybe she should get a motel room here in Guymon.

But she had used her ATM card here. Twice. She could be traced to this town. Gus Hartmann’s henchmen might already be on their way. Jamie recalled a movie in which an on-the-run Julia Roberts discovered that her bank account had mysteriously vanished, leaving her without funds. Even though Jamie realized that she would be leaving an electronic trail by using her ATM card, she hoped to remove all of the money from her account before anyone had a chance to make it disappear. By then she would be far away from the town in which she made her withdrawals.

She needed to keep going. Needed to put miles between herself and Guymon. Needed to find other banks and withdraw the rest of her money before it vanished like Julia Roberts’s had done. Of course, she was probably being paranoid. Probably Gus Hartmann could not simply pick up a phone and make her money vanish. But just in case he could, she needed that money and whatever she got for selling her car to live on until she had a Social Security number and was able to find a job.

She closed her eyes, trying to will away the headache that was planting itself inside her weary brain.

The next thing she knew her head was jerking back. And she realized that she had dozed off while sitting in the car beside a gas pump.

She could see a road sign indicating that Liberal, Kansas, was straight ahead. She would go there, withdraw more money, and then decide where to go next. She drove behind the service station. She let Ralph run around a bit then fell asleep again while she was nursing Billy.

During the drive to Liberal, when she felt herself starting to nod off, she would pull over onto the shoulder of the two-lane highway, get out of the car, inhale the cold air, swing her arms around for a minute or two, then get back in and drive a few more miles.

Finally she crossed the state line. Liberal was just ahead.

A large stone monument announced that she had arrived in the town. She continued driving until she reached the downtown, where she pulled into the ATM lane of the Bank of America and withdrew $500.

Then, at the Community Bank, the words “Invalid PIN” appeared on the screen.

Very carefully she entered the number again. Then she punched “enter.” And the same words appeared on the screen.

“Oh my God!” Jamie whispered as goose flesh rose on her arms. Her worst fear had been validated. Any notion she had harbored that she had misjudged the entire situation vanished. Some ominous and seemingly omnipotent power had closed her bank account, and the electronic word of that closure had reached all the way to Liberal, Kansas.

She looked around, half expecting men with carefully trimmed hair and wearing overcoats and mirrored sunglasses to appear suddenly and pull her from the car. They hadn’t arrived yet, but they would.

She rested her forehead on the steering wheel. What should she do?

She couldn’t just sit here like a sitting duck. She needed to hide. And get rid of her car. ASAP!

The driver of the car in line behind her gently tapped on his horn, reminding her it was time to move on. For an instant, Jamie couldn’t remember how to drive.

Push in the clutch, she told herself. Put the car in gear.

She followed the curving drive to the street. Left or right? She turned right and drove hesitantly for a block then pulled into a parking space.

Ralph pushed his head under her idle hand, and she absently began to stroke him. She couldn’t take a bus or a train with a dog. And she couldn’t hitchhike in frigid weather with a two-day-old baby.

What would she do with her possessions if she abandoned her car? She hated to give them up. They were all she had left of her past.

But they were only things, she told herself. They weren’t worth losing her baby. Or her life.

She toyed with the idea of renting a car. But she would have to show her driver’s license. How long would it take for the transaction to be traced, for the men in mirrored sunglasses to be looking for a specific rental car with a specific tag number?

Then a hopeful thought crossed her mind. Maybe the computer at the last bank had malfunctioned. Maybe she should try another bank.

She pulled out of the parking space and made a U-turn on the wide street.

She pulled into the ATM lane of a third bank. Her hand was shaking as she inserted her card and punched in her PIN.

Once again she was informed that she had used an invalid number.

She had to get out of Liberal, Kansas. Now.

She left the bank and headed back toward the highway. When she reached the intersection, she hesitated. Anyone pursuing her probably would expect her to continue heading north, putting as much distance and as many states as possible between herself and the Hartmann Ranch.

She turned south. Once she had crossed back over the state line, she stopped at the first service station and bought an Oklahoma map. She wanted the anonymity provided by a large city, and Oklahoma City was the largest city in the state. She would use only the least traveled roads to get there.