A Mother's Secrets
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Tara Taylor Quinn
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HarlequinChapter One
Okay, so we’re doing this?
The definitive answer, a yes, came in the sound of ocean waves as Dr. Jamison Howe pounded out his morning jog on the beach. Sand sprayed. His tennis shoes thudded a regular rhythm in the thick substance, rubbing against the small toe on his left foot.
And in the sunrise, he saw Emily’s grin, ear to ear, her eyes glinting with the happiness she’d never lost, even during the grueling brain surgeries she’d had to endure after her biking accident. She’d promised him, seconds before they’d put her under for that last surgery, that they were going to have their baby. Their family. She’d made him promise that that’s what he’d be thinking about while the surgeons worked on her.
The future. The baby they’d been trying so hard to conceive. It was going to happen, she’d told him. She’d been so certain that he’d really believed her. And had spent every second of those hours focused on a nonexistent baby. Imagining a boy or a girl. Playing with names. Picturing scenarios with a running or biking stroller, backpacks that held a little one.
Disneyland rides. Swimming lessons. He and Emily standing quietly, watching their baby sleep.
Which was why, when they’d told him she hadn’t made it through the surgery, he hadn’t believed them. Even after he’d been allowed in to see her lifeless body.
The truth had hit when he’d arrived home that night instead of sleeping in a recliner chair by her bedside at the hospital as they’d planned. When he’d climbed into their bed alone.
And he’d been bereft.
There was no baby. And no Emily, either.
Pounding feet. May sun half blinding him. Ocean breeze cooling his skin. Cloying humidity.
And still, yes.
Christine Elliott was not overly fond of exercise. It wasn’t that she hated physical activity, it was just that most forms of regular daily exertion—running, bike riding, machine incline exercises, weight lifting—bored her. As the owner of a prominent, privately run fertility clinic, she was in tune with the need for good health. But she’d just allowed any other responsibility in her life to take priority over time at the gym. Or on the streets.
Until she’d discovered racquetball. Not as a sport or a game, but as a solitary physical expenditure of energy. She was up to five days a week, any week that would allow the time, alone in the little high-ceilinged room, banging the little rubber ball off the walls. Again and again. She’d upped her shot over the past year. Purposely hitting it so it would be impossible to return and then racing to return it. Sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. But always trying. Always upping the ante on what she expected of herself.
Always needing to prove that she could do more. Do better.
Yeah, she got that this was a character flaw: her inability to accept herself as she was. The incessant need to always prove her worth to herself. Surrounded by doctors—psychiatrists and gynecologists—and counselors at her job, she knew all of the rhetoric.
And there was nothing wrong with loving her solitary racquetball time.
Except when she failed to set her alarm and she ended up late for her Tuesday afternoon appointment.
That wasn’t cool.
Nor was it completely true. The appointment existed, but she always built in extra time, and was only at her desk fifteen minutes before her four o’clock appointment was due to arrive, instead of the scheduled half hour.
Newly, though quickly, showered, and back in her tie-dyed sundress and heeled flip-flops, her shortish brown hair still slightly damp on the ends that curled up in the back, she opened the file on the top of her desk.
Dr. Jamison Howe. She remembered him and his wife, Emily. She’d attended high school with them, though, as they were both two years ahead of her, they didn’t know her. She hadn’t recognized them, either, when she’d met with them two years before. They’d been through all of the genetic testing, and while no apparent reason had presented for their inability to conceive, they’d wanted to speak with her about options offered through her clinic—The Parent Portal.
Reading the file, she instantly remembered details. The two, who’d been best friends since they were eight years old and too cute for words together, had decided to try in vitro fertilization after struggling with infertility. They’d gone through the embryonic process and had been due back into the clinic for implantation the day after Emily’s bicycle accident. They’d chosen to freeze her embryos, for use as soon as she was deemed well enough to sustain a healthy pregnancy, but that hadn’t happened. Emily Howe had died on the operating table the previous year.
The embryos had been in frozen storage ever since. Waiting to be destroyed, as was common practice in such situations.
Per the legal contract, between each of the Howes and The Parent Portal, Jamison was now sole owner of the embryos and the only person who could make that difficult decision.
A phone call, a notarized signature to the lab, would make that happen. He needn’t visit The Parent Portal, but Christine wasn’t all that surprised by the fact he’d requested to come in person. In the years she’d been in business, she’d come to understand the full emotional depths that people went through when dealing with their own fertility, their future. Most couldn’t just destroy what, to them, once represented the beginning of their child, with a phone call. Some hung on to embryos for years. And while Christine had her degree in health management and was not a counselor, her clients often sought her out when they had difficult decisions in front of them.
She’d present the facts, most of which they already knew, in a way that allowed them to step back. She’d give them a glimpse of a fuller picture, one in which science and biology couldn’t create people alone. Without the final component of a loving mother and a womb in which to grow, the embryos were just science and biology. Oftentimes she was able to help them see their way more clearly to a decision they’d probably already subconsciously made before they’d entered her office.
It was all part of the job she’d created for herself and taken on with her whole being. Her clients were all looking to create families of their own. The Parent Portal was her family. Her progeny. Her future. Her love and happiness.
Her purpose.
There’d been a time when she’d envisioned being a mother herself one day. But then an excruciating young love had put her on a completely different path.
A buzz from the reception desk interrupted her contemplation, letting her know that her client was on his way in and the knock on the door sounded a full five minutes before Jamison Howe was due.
She was ready. Had been in since six that morning to prepare for the day, as per her general routine.
She’d mentally chosen to conduct this meeting on the tan-colored leather sofa and chairs on the other end of her office. Something more comfortable and homey for what was sure to be an emotionally difficult conversation. There was nothing legal to discuss here.
Opening the door, she stepped back.
Jamison Howe, his thick, long, dark hair tipping the collar of his short-sleeved dress shirt, barely gave her a glance as he took seemingly purposeful steps right past her and lowered his tall athletic frame in one of the two leather chairs in front of her massive, light wood desk.
So much for homey and compassionate.
But that was fine.
Anything she could do to make this difficult time easier for him...
He looked completely different than she remembered. But when she looked back, mostly what she remembered from her one visit with the Howe couple was...Emily. The woman’s unbounding joy in life. Her smile, which seemed completely genuine, from the inside out, even when discussing the possibility of failure of the in vitro process. The two-year-old impression of Jamison stored in Christine’s brain was of a quiet man who seemed truly happy to give his wife whatever she wanted.
As she remembered, he’d been a PhD in math. Taught some kind of spatial art class at the local, privately run, but nationally known, art college in town. Also had a math professorship at a university in Mission Viejo, or LA. Someplace with a bit of a commute.
He’d had super short hair then, too, and wore dress pants with his shirt and tie, instead of the jeans his shirt was currently tucked into. He’d had a beard before, she remembered that. The clean-shaven look suited him, showed the strength in his jawbone as he flexed it.
Nervously?
The kindest thing she could do for him was get him through the next few minutes and out of there as quickly as possible. She had a notary on standby—an employee of the clinic—and they could fax the paperwork to the lab for him.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Dr. Howe said before she’d even taken her seat behind her desk. “I’d like to say that I won’t take up much of your time, but, if you can even consider indulging my request, that won’t be the case.”
She dropped a little heavily into her seat. A little less gracefully than usual.
“I have time,” she said, meeting his dark-eyed gaze with the professional courtesy she offered everyone who stepped through her door.
The office was hers. The appointment, the need, was his.
He had her curious, though. What request could he possibly have of her? A notary took seconds. Faxes, the same. It was all standard procedure.
But not to him. For the father of the embryos under consideration, the choice he was about to make could seem like a matter of life and death.
Maybe he wanted her to talk to someone for him? She’d do whatever she could. Of course she would. Her clients, every single one of them, even those she only knew by name, were dear to her.
Which was why she always tried to meet each of them, at least once.
“My request is quite unusual, and I’ve been rehearsing all day, in between summer session classes, trying to come up with the best way to break it to you. But if there is one, I’ve been unsuccessful in finding it.”
Okay, so now she was really curious. The man seemed strangely energized. Not broken.
Sitting forward, her arms on her desk, she said, “Well then I suggest you just ask.” Hoping that whatever it was, she could grant the request. The man was endearing. An unusual combination of vulnerable, strong, sexy and...a bit unsure?
“I’ve decided to use the embryos that Emily and I had frozen. To go forward with our plans to have a family.”
She nodded, buying herself time while she assessed him. He seemed perfectly rational. Calm, even, as he made the statement.
“I take it you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“I have. For months. And I have no doubts. No hesitation.”
She was getting that.
And absolutely hated to have to deliver her next piece of information. The Parent Portal was not a surrogacy clinic. They could do the fertilization process, would happily do so, once he found a surrogate, but they didn’t hire women to have babies for others. She could refer him, though...
Searching her mind for the best option, she was already reaching for her drawer to pull out a brochure when he said, “You don’t approve.”
“My approval isn’t even a consideration here,” she quickly told him. “But for the record... I think I do approve, though I still don’t like that word. More to the point, I think it might be a great choice for you.”
Not for some, certainly, but perhaps for this man... “You and Emily...you’ve been a pair since you were in grade school.” She said out loud what she’d just read again a few minutes before. “It seems fitting that you would continue on with what she so clearly wanted more than anything else...to have a child that was a part of both of you.”
He nodded, cocking his head a bit as he seemed to assess her. Her words. “You get that,” he eventually stated.
Her shrug was accompanied by a smile. “It’d be hard not to, even after having only spent that one hour with the two of you.”
“Before that last surgery...” He broke off speaking, but didn’t break eye contact. “She made me promise that I would believe that we were going to have our baby,” he said. “For a while there, after she died, I was thinking she was just being her...you know...thinking of everyone else, of me...giving me something good to think about during surgery, but later, it dawned on me what she was really doing. She was, in her own way, begging me to continue on with our plans, whether she made it through the surgery or not.”
The words brought her a second of unease.
“So...you’re doing this for her,” she said, careful to keep her tone even. Having a child to honor his dead wife was...perhaps...a self-sacrificing noble gesture. For the wife. But a baby...a child...a life...
“You’re afraid I’m being selfish...thinking only of how badly I want this child...and trying to justify using Emily’s embryo without her specific consent.”
“Legally you have her consent, on that contract you both signed. Just as she had the sole and legal right to determine what would happen to your frozen specimen in the event of your death.”
He frowned. “So, what’s the problem?”
“Who said there was one?”
“Your tone of voice...”
So neutral hadn’t been a good choice. Either that or the man was uncannily observant.
“I just wondered, though it’s honestly none of my business, whether you were just doing this out of grief, and to honor Emily, as opposed to really wanting the child yourself. Like I said, none of my business...you have all legal rights to do as you’ve stated. But a child...that’s a lifetime commitment. And doing it alone...that’s not easy. None of it’s easy. It’s hard. And messy. And frustrating. And...”
“It’s standing by the crib alone, watching my child sleep,” he said, his gaze direct. “Having to do all of the middle of the night feedings alone. All the baths. Mastering all the learning curves. Cheering him or her on alone, making all of the tough decisions alone. And it’s bringing to life the miracle that will make life worth living,” he said. “Trust me. No one wants a child more than I do,” he said.
So maybe, back then, he hadn’t just been happy to give his wife whatever she wanted. He’d been happy because he’d known they both wanted the exact same things.
For a second there, Christine envied him—the widower sitting across from her. At least he had a memory of knowing what that felt like—to have someone in your life who not only shared your hopes and dreams but really needed them, too.
Having been alone for most of her adult life, pursuing her career and what drove her, she could hardly imagine how great such a shared life would be.
“Okay, so I assume you’re here to get the process started,” she said, pulling out her bottom right hand drawer, reaching into the proper file for the pamphlet she needed. They were all there, clearly labeled, easily accessible. “Unfortunately, we don’t provide surrogates here at The Parent Portal, but this would be my recommendation for a clinic that does. If you don’t like At Home,” she said, naming the clinic, “there are dozens of others in the state, and I’m sure one of them will work for you. Once you’ve chosen the surrogate, if you want us to oversee the fertilization process, on up through the birth, since that was Emily’s wish, we’ll be more than happy to do so.” When he didn’t immediately take the pamphlet, she slid it through the small pieces of three-dimensional art populating her desk to lay it in front of him.
He was nodding. Watching her. Pressed his lips together. Bit the lower one and then pressed them together again.
This was the emotion she’d expected when he’d first come in the door... Everyone reached that point differently.
She’d give him as long as he needed. Glanced at a multicolored porcelain horse, part of her collection, at her angel figurines, scattered in various spots on her desk, at a small metal heart-shaped sculpture...
“I’ve actually chosen the surrogate,” Dr. Howe said, in an odd tone of voice that had gone suddenly scratchy sounding. “Or, at least, I know who I want her to be,” he said. “She hasn’t yet said she’d do it.”
He met her gaze, but not as openly as he had before. Signaling clear discomfort.
“You need me to talk to her.” She finally got what this meeting was about. He wanted her to talk his female choice into having his baby.
“No,” he said, sitting back, both arms resting on leather, his hands gripping the edges of the chair. His knuckles were white. She stared at them. At their whiteness, as though it was a signal to her, something vital.
“I don’t need you to talk to her,” he continued, paused.
“I need you to be her.”
