Judith Wall - The Surrogate

“How can we sit here and talk sanely about how I should live my life without you?” she asked. “We only just found each other. And if you die, it will be my fault. I created this impossible mess. If anyone should die, it should be me. But if I die, my child will be raised by a religious fanatic who thinks she speaks for God and by her insidiously evil brother.”

“I don’t want to die, Jamie,” Joe told her. “I want to live on and make little brothers and sisters for Billy. I want to live to a ripe old age with you at my side. But if I die tomorrow, I will be grateful for this time we have had together.”

She nodded. “Me, too.”

Then she reached for him, and they made love with tears and poignancy and frantic professions of eternal love.

Joe woke at dawn surprised that he had slept at all. Jamie was curled on her side beside him. He lay there for a time, reminding himself why it was necessary for him to get on with things, why he couldn’t wait a few more days to make this trip no matter how gut-wrenching it was to think of her here alone and defenseless. Their time here had been glorious, but always a nagging voice in the back of his mind kept reminding him that the longer they stayed in one place the more likely they were to be discovered. Someone could make an innocent remark about seeing a young couple with a baby walking on the beach. Or helping this clueless guy who was trying to buy clothes for his girlfriend and her baby. Or renting a beach cabin to a young couple who arrived on a motorcycle with a baby and not much else.

He swung his feet to the floor.

After he’d pulled on his clothes and picked up his boots and knapsack, he looked toward the bed. Jamie was watching him. When she started to speak, he shook his head. Instead of words, he put a fist over his heart in a gesture of eternal fidelity.

LENORA PICKED UP the phone. “Law office,” she said.

“Lenora Richardson,” a man’s voice requested.

“This is she.”

“I am a friend of Jamie Long’s.”

“Oh, my God!” Lenora said, clasping the receiver more tightly. “How is Jamie? And where is she? We lost track of her.”

“I wonder if it would be possible to speak with you privately. I have Jamie’s permission to make this request.”

Suddenly wary, she asked, “Why? What’s going on with her?”

“Jamie’s life is in danger as a result of the surrogate-mother arrangement negotiated by Mr. Abernathy. She speaks highly of you and asked me to consult with you as to the best way to handle this situation.”

Lenora took a few seconds to replay the man’s words. “I’m not an attorney,” she said. “You need to speak with Mr. Abernathy.”

“Perhaps, but I would prefer to speak confidentially with you first.”

Lenora tapped her pencil on the desk. “This is highly unusual,” she said softly, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the door separating her office from Bentley’s was closed.

“I’m aware of that,” the man said.

He sounded earnest, Lenora decided. And worried. Maybe even frightened.

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t very important,” he added.

“I gather you don’t want to come here to Mr. Abernathy’s office.”

“I’d like for you to meet me at the bar at the Holiday Inn on Mockingbird Lane. At six o’clock.”

“Will Jamie be there?” Lenora asked.

“No.”

“How will I know you?”

“I’ll find you. Jamie said you look like a runway model.”

Lenora had trouble concentrating on her work the rest of the afternoon.

Bentley left at five-fifteen. Lenora was locking the door minutes later. As expected, the traffic at that hour was impossible. She was ten minutes late when she walked into the hotel bar. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Several men at the bar had turned on their stools to stare. One man was watching her more surreptitiously in the mirror over the bar. Then she saw the young white guy with a shaved head and whiskery face waving at her from a corner booth.

She headed for the corner, taking in his jeans, black T-shirt, heavy black boots, and great build.

She sat across the table from him. “What’s your name?” she asked. “And what’s your connection to Jamie?”

“I’m Joe. I’ve known her since she was in grade school. She said to tell you that someday she hopes you and she can lunch together again at the Driskill Grill.”

They were silent as a waitress approached. They both ordered coffee.

“Okay, so you know Jamie,” Lenora said. “But why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff? And what makes you think that her life is in danger?”

For more than an hour Lenora listened to Joe’s tale, interrupting with frequent questions. And at one point she took out her cell phone to call her husband and tell him she would be later than she had at first thought.

What she was hearing was just too bizarre to be believed. But why would anyone make up such a story?

She switched from coffee to a gin and tonic. Joe stuck with coffee.

Lenora confessed that she’d been worried about Jamie. Even though they had agreed to stay in touch, Jamie had never responded to her phone messages or her letters. And when she showed up at the ranch, she was told that Jamie had packed up and left without leaving a forwarding address. A nagging voice had said that Jamie would have let her know that the surrogate-mother arrangement hadn’t worked out and given some indication of her plans for the future. And it seemed strange that Amanda herself had not told Bentley that the arrangement with Jamie Long had been terminated-and perhaps asked him to find her another young woman to use as a surrogate mother. Lenora had been stunned when she heard that Amanda Hartmann had given birth to a baby boy. There hadn’t been nearly enough time for that to happen, unless she got pregnant about the same time Jamie was inseminated, and Lenora was positive that Amanda had once indicated she was no longer able to have children. And besides, Lenora just couldn’t see Amanda putting her carefully augmented and liposuctioned body through such an ordeal.

But using her brain-dead son’s semen to impregnate Jamie?

The newspaper story about the return of a kidnapped baby in Oklahoma City that Joe had showed her was convincing, however. The missing woman was described as tall, slender, and in her early twenties. And she had a baby about the same age as Jamie’s would have been.

Lenora rubbed her forehead in an attempt to ward off a threatening headache. That baby in all those photographs wasn’t really Amanda’s? And Jamie’s baby is Amanda’s grandchild? “Okay, Joe, I want you to tell me why you called this little meeting so I can get home to my husband.”

“I need a copy of the contract that Jamie signed. And I need your boss to act as an intermediary between Jamie and the Hartmanns. And as soon as she and her baby have undergone DNA testing and we have irrefutable proof that she is indeed the mother of the baby, I want Abernathy to inform Gus Hartmann that this has been done. Then the burden will be on Amanda’s husband to prove that he is the father of the child. Since that would be impossible, the contract that Jamie entered into with Amanda Hartmann and Toby Travis would be invalid. I plan to obtain a court decree saying just that. And I want Gus to know that if anything happens to Jamie or if her baby is kidnapped, the contract along with the DNA tests and the court decree will be made public along with Jamie’s sworn testimony as to the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping of the baby girl in Oklahoma City.”

Lenora shook her head. “The only thing Bentley did was locate a suitable candidate and draw up the contract. Bentley had no idea what Amanda had in mind.”