Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HIM — BEFORE

“I have a plan.”

We’re sitting across the dinner table from each other, eating a meal I prepared that’s filled with nutrients to improve her fertility. Walnuts and tomatoes in the salad—the former to improve chances of ovulation and the latter to bolster my already satisfactory sperm—full-fat cottage cheese for her egg health, beans to improve her chances of implantation, salmon for a good source of omega-3s, and half a grapefruit for reproductive health as a dessert. A meal fit for a mother, though I’ve begun to greatly doubt she’ll ever be one.

I’ve limited her sugar, cut her off from alcohol and caffeine completely, and limited her red meat consumption to once a week. Everything that should work, everything that should fix this, and yet none of it is.

Nothing is working, and I’m not a man who takes no for an answer. We may not have money for solutions, but I will find a free one. I will fix this for us.

She looks up from her salmon, her eyes tired. This is killing her. I have to fix it. I know how badly she wants this, just as much as I do. “What plan?”

“To get us a baby.”

She lets out a soft laugh. “That sounds a bit criminal.”

“I want to get a surrogate.”

She pauses for a moment, then puts down her utensils, studying me. “You know we can’t afford that.”

“What if I said I could make it happen for free?”

Now she looks intrigued. Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean? How?”

“We could find someone who would agree.”

She pulls her head back, shaking it in disbelief. “Cal, no one is going to agree to have a baby for us for free. Not to mention all the medical bills associated with a pregnancy.”

I roll my lips together. She’s not going to like the next part, but it’s going to be what it is. And that is our only option.

“Unless she doesn’t know she’s our surrogate.”

Now she’s looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “What are you talking about?”

“If I were to get someone pregnant, perhaps someone who didn’t want a baby, then convince her to give up the baby to us, it would be like a free surrogate.”

She opens her mouth, then closes it again. “You’re talking about cheating on me?”

“Sleeping with someone else, yes. Purely for the act of procreation. I wouldn’t be enjoying it.” Her upper lip curls, and I reach across the table to take her hands. “It wouldn’t be cheating because you’d know about it. You’d be in the loop.”

“Do you have someone in mind?” she asks, worried.

“No. Well—” I bite my lip. “There’s a student in class?—”

She stands, taking the napkin from her lap and throwing it down on the table. “Another student? What is going on with you? Is this some sort of fetish?”

“No,” I tell her, standing up too, my voice calm. I’m already practicing being a calm parent, but she’s still young and has much to learn. “No, of course not. It wouldn’t be anything I’d take pleasure in. It would be for us. For our family. I know for a fact this student doesn’t want kids.”

“How would you know that?” she demands.

“We discussed it. The entire class.”

She shrivels away from me. “You…what? Sussed out your class? Polled them to find a candidate?”

Yes. “No.”

I asked them specifically who in the class wanted kids someday during our discussion of The Handmaid’s Tale , with the intention of finding the most attractive student who was also uninterested in children. Someone to check all the boxes.

But I can’t tell her any of that, so instead, I say, “It came up organically and gave me the idea.”

Still, she doesn’t look convinced. “So, what? You’re…you just want to get her pregnant and hope she doesn’t have an abortion? Or change her mind?”

“She won’t.”

“She won’t, to which one?”

“Either one.”

She presses her lips together in frustration. “You don’t know that.”

I rush around the table, taking her hands. “Do you trust me?”

Her eyes waver.

“Do you trust me?” I repeat.

Finally, she nods slowly, her eyes filled with tears. “Yes.”

“Then trust me when I say I’ve got this. I’m going to fix it. She will give us a baby— our baby—and then our family will be complete.”

“You wanted a whole family, lots of kids.” She’s crying now. “This doesn’t fix anything. I’m doing everything I can, everything you and the doctor said. I want to do this for you. I want to give you everything you’ve dreamed of.”

“One will be enough,” I tell her. It’s a painful change to an already perfect plan, but the only one I’m willing to make. “I can be happy with just one.”

Finally, she stops crying. “She doesn’t know you’re married?”

“I don’t think so, no.” I stopped wearing my ring in class months ago, but Janelle doesn’t need to know that.

“And she won’t get hurt?”

Always thinking about others. “No, of course not.”

She sniffles, drying her eyes. “Well, what’s her name? I want to look her up. I want to know her.”

I smile, my heart seizing. She’s on board. It actually worked. “Her name’s Sadie Hawthorne, and let me tell you, Ellie, she’s absolutely perfect.”