Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [128]
I touched my hair, wondering how I really looked to him. I hadn’t gained much weight with the pregnancy—being too upset to eat for much of the third trimester had helped with that—and I was only a few pounds away from being back to where I’d been when this whole thing had started.
“Were the boys good for you?”
He grinned. “Spencer used the potty all day.”
“He did?” I was delighted. He used the potty for me, but I usually put him in a pull-up before I left for the city, and I’d assumed that’s what Frank was doing, too.
“How is the baby?” Frank asked.
“She’s beautiful. An angel.” I felt my throat thicken, a hint of the sadness that came over me when I nursed and held the baby that wasn’t really mine, that there were no daughters in my future.
“Rory,” he said. “I like that name.”
“Me, too.”
“So,” he said, and settled his hands on his legs. “You like New York?”
“It’s fine. I miss the boys when I’m away. But the money will help.” Bettina had insisted on paying me a thousand dollars for the day and night I was up there, much too much money, I told her, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“I miss them, too. At night.” He pressed his lips together like he wanted to suck the words back into his mouth. Then, he said, “I miss us being a family. I miss you.”
I didn’t answer. I’d done the hardest work of my life, the thing none of the clone-girls in that story I’d read had done. I had broken free from my destiny. I had taken myself to the city, found money and a place to live. I could stay—Bettina hadn’t come right out and said it, but I knew if I offered to work as a nanny, she’d hire me, and I could bring the boys to New York and find a place for us there. I could have people like I’d had back in high school, people to talk to, to eat with. The whole world lay open before me . . . and now Frank probably wanted me to turn away from it, to come home and be what I was before.
“You weren’t wrong to be upset with me,” said Frank. Startled, I turned to look at him. His eyes were narrowed, his body stiff. “I wasn’t being the husband you deserved.”
This was unexpected. “Maybe I was wrong, too,” I said.
Frank shook his head. “You were trying to help us. And if I hadn’t been so stubborn about letting you work . . .” He dropped his voice until I could hardly hear him over the drone of the crowd, the noise of people coming and going. “I guess maybe you were lonely.”
I nodded, almost unconsciously. Frank kept talking. “We can sell the house, move to Philly. Spencer’s starting nursery school in the fall, so you’ll have some time. You can go to college, if you want.”
I felt a pressure inside of me building, a sob or a shout, I wasn’t sure yet. “You love that farm. It’s all you ever wanted.”
“I want you more. And I got a new job,” he said.
“With the airlines?”
“Nah. Teaching.” He took my hand. “I did so well in my classes they asked me to stay on. I’m still part-time at the airport, but it’s good money. Good benefits, too.” He paused, like he was steeling himself. “I looked it up online. Community college has classes online, or in Center City.”
I looked down at our fingers entwined. I’d thought about giving him back my engagement ring—it had cost almost two thousand dollars and was by far the most expensive thing outside of his truck that Frank had ever bought—but I hadn’t taken it off yet. I wondered if I would have made different choices, if I could have gone back in time, knowing what I knew now. Part of me thought I would have undone the surrogacy in an instant, wiped the slate clean, done anything to keep my marriage intact. Another part of me thought that I’d done just the right thing, that the pain of leaving him was the cost of a new and better life.
“Come home,” said Frank, his grip on my hand tightening. “Stay with us.”
I sat there, not answering. Rory was getting bigger, filling out, holding her head up with her clear eyes open, taking in the world. I could send breast milk by FedEx and visit the baby on the weekends.