Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

Afterward, when reality settles in and I can feel the hard tile under my hip and the heaviness of her draped across me, I find myself in a total fucking panic.

All my life, I’ve dreamed of being like my brother, and now I am.

Like Reid, I want something that doesn’t belong to me.

When I wake up on the kitchen floor, I am alone and wearing my boxers and Reid is standing over me. “Look at what the cat dragged in,” he says. “I told Liddy you had nine lives.” He’s dressed impeccably, and he’s holding a mug of coffee. “Better hop in the shower, or you’re going to be late for court.”

“Where is she?”

“Sick as a dog,” Reid says. “Running a fever, apparently. She wanted to stay home, but I told her she’s the next witness.”

I grab my clothes and hurry upstairs. I should get ready, like Reid said, but instead I knock on the closed door of Liddy and Reid’s bedroom. “Liddy?” I whisper. “Liddy, you okay?”

The door opens a crack. Liddy is wearing a bathrobe. She pulls it tight at the collar, as if I haven’t already seen everything underneath anyway. Her cheeks are flushed. “I can’t talk to you.”

I wedge my foot in the door so she can’t close it on me. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Last night, you were-”

“A sinner,” Liddy interrupts, her eyes filling with tears. “Last night I was married. I’m still married, Max. And I want a baby.”

“We can figure it out. We can tell the court-”

“Tell the court what? That the baby should go to the couple with the wife who’s cheating on her husband? The wife that loves her husband’s brother? That’s not quite anyone’s definition of a traditional family, Max.”

But I barely hear the last sentence. “You love me?”

She ducks her head. “The guy I fell for was willing to give the most important thing ever-his child -to me for safekeeping. The guy I fell for loves God, like me. The guy I fell for would never think of hurting his brother. Last night didn’t happen, Max. Because if it did-then you’re not that guy anymore.”

She closes the door, but I just stand there, unable to move. Reid’s footsteps echo down the hallway as he approaches. When he sees me in front of his bedroom door, he frowns and looks at his watch. “You aren’t ready yet?”

I swallow. “No,” I tell him. “I guess not.”

On the witness stand, Liddy can’t stop shaking. She tucks her hands underneath her legs, but even then, I can see shudders going through her. “I always talked about being a mother,” she says. “In high school, my girlfriends and I would make up names for the babies we’d have. I had it all planned out even before I got married.”

When she says the word married, her voice breaks.

“I have the perfect life. Reid and I have this beautiful home, and he makes a good living as a portfolio manager. And according to the Bible, the point of marriage is to have children.”

“Have you and your husband tried to conceive?” Wade asks.

“Yes. For years.” She looks down at her lap. “We were just going to look into Snowflakes Adoption. But then Max… Max came to us with another idea.”

“Do you have a strong relationship with your brother-in-law?”

Liddy’s face drains of color. “Yes.”

“How did you react when he told you he wanted to give his pre-born children to you and your husband?”

“I thought that God had answered my prayers.”

“Did you ask him why he didn’t want to raise the children himself? Maybe at a later date?”

“Reid did,” she admits. “Max told us that he didn’t think he’d be good at it. He had made too many mistakes. He wanted his children to grow up with a mother and a father who… who loved each other.”

“Have you had much interaction with children?”

For the first time since she’s gotten into that chair, she brightens. “I run the Sunday School program at our church. And I organize a youth ministry camp during the summers. I love kids.”

“If the court saw fit to give you these pre-born children,” Wade asks, “how would you raise them?”

“To be good Christians,” Liddy says. “To do the right thing.” As soon as she says it, her face crumples. “I’m sorry,” she sobs.

Across from me, Zoe shifts. Today she is dressed in black, like she’s in mourning. She stares at Liddy as if she’s the Antichrist.

Wade pulls a crimson silk handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and hands it to Liddy to wipe her eyes. “Your witness,” he says, and he turns to Zoe’s lawyer.

Angela Moretti stands and tugs on the hem of her suit jacket to straighten it. “What can you give these embryos that their biological mother can’t?”

“Opportunities,” Liddy says. “A stable Christian home.”

“So you think that money is all it takes to raise children?”

“Of course not. They would live in a loving household.”

“When was the last time you spent a few hours with Zoe and Vanessa?”

“I… I haven’t…”

“So you don’t really know what kind of love their household is filled with, do you?”

“I know it’s immoral,” Liddy says.

“So it’s Zoe’s sexual orientation that makes her an unfit mother? Is that your testimony?”

Liddy hesitates. “I didn’t say that. I just think that Reid and I-we’re the better option for these children.”

“What kind of contraception do you use?” Angela asks.

Liddy blushes. “I don’t use any.”

I have a sudden flash of last night, her head turned so that her throat was exposed, her back arched beneath me. “How often do you and your husband have sex?”

“Objection!”

“I’ll allow it,” the judge says. Dirty old man.

“Answer the question, Mrs. Baxter.”

“Thursdays,” Liddy says.

Thursdays? Once a week? Like clockwork? If Liddy were my wife, I’d be in the shower with her every morning. I’d grab her when she walked by me at the dinner table and pull her onto my lap-

“Do you time intercourse so that you might be able to get pregnant?”

“Yes-”

“Have you ever been pregnant?”

“Yes… several times… but I’ve miscarried.”

“Do you even know if you can carry a baby to term?”

“Does anyone?” Liddy asks.

Atta girl.

“You realize that if you get these embryos and they’re transferred to you, you may still not have a live birth.”

“Or,” Liddy points out, “I could have triplets.”

“You said that, in the Bible, the point of marriage is to have children?”

“Yes.”

“So if God wanted you to have children, wouldn’t you have had them already?”

“I… I think He has a different plan for us,” Liddy says.

The lawyer nods. “Of course. God wants you to become a substitute mother by depriving a biological mother of the same right.”

“Objection!” Wade says.

“Let me rephrase,” Angela says. “Do you agree that what you want most in the world is to have and raise a child?”

Liddy’s eyes, which have been trained so carefully on Angela Moretti, slide toward me. My mouth feels like it’s full of broken glass. “Yes,” she says.

“Do you agree that not being able to have a biological child is devastating? Heartbreaking?”

“Yes.”

“And yet, isn’t that exactly the fate to which you consign Zoe Baxter, if you take her embryos?”

Liddy turns toward Zoe, her eyes full of tears. “I would raise these babies like they’re my own,” she whispers.

The words pull Zoe out of her seat. “They’re not yours,” she replies, quietly at first, and then more forcefully. “They’re mine!”