Six years earlier, George had said stoically, “I’m not losing a daughter. I’m gaining a son.” Then he slapped me on the back and poured me some scotch. But this talk was different. This wasn’t something as run-of-the-mill as a proposal. This wasn’t run-of-the-mill at all.
When I walked into his top-floor corner office that morning, George was, as always, behind his huge mahogany desk and the Wall Street Journal. I asked him one morning how he had time to read two newspapers every day. He had looked shocked. “Parker, how do you have time not to?”
Greer had taken his ritual to heart. She had read the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times every day, too, right up until the month she died.
He peeked over the top of the paper and folded it neatly when he saw me. He stood up and said, “What are you doing here, son? I thought you were in North Carolina.”
I nodded and swallowed. George gestured for me to sit in one of the small black leather wingback chairs that flanked his desk.
“Well, sir…” That was a dead giveaway that I was nervous; I always said “sir” a lot when I was. “I need to talk to you about something.”
He nodded knowingly. “Ah yes. I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve known it was coming for quite some time. And I want you to know that you have my blessing.”
Known it was coming? How? Even I hadn’t known it was coming. I studied his face as he said, “Parker, no father could have wished for a better man for his daughter. You stood by her faithfully in the worst of the worst, and I know firsthand what kind of fortitude that takes. So I wish you and your new gal well. I want you to find happiness.”
Ohhhh… I almost laughed, but I cleared my throat instead. “Well, actually, um, no, sir. That’s not what I’m talking about, exactly.”
“Oh. Well, then just keep that talk in your back pocket for when the time comes.”
I smiled. “I’m not sure that time will ever come, but I appreciate it. But this is about something… different.”
He raised his eyebrow at me. “Will I need scotch?”
It was barely nine a.m., but, even so, I nodded.
He nodded, too, but didn’t move.
“Greer and I had embryos frozen before her treatments,” I started. “We had planned on having children together once she got well, but then…” I paused, looking down at my hands, the freshness of my pain this morning catching me off guard. I took a deep breath, not bothering to finish the sentence, because if anyone knew that Greer hadn’t gotten better, it was her own father. “I have these pieces of her just sitting in a freezer, and I thought I might try to have one of them.”
He looked positively confounded. “You’ve lost me, son.”
“Well, I would get a surrogate. And then I’d raise the baby…”
He shook his head. “You mean to tell me that you are planning on having my late daughter’s child, your child, with a surrogate?”
This was not going as well as the proposal chat.
I shrugged. “Well, I’m thinking about it.” I nearly gulped. “Yes, sir.”
That big bear of a man got up from his side of the desk. I got up, too, reflexively, defensively. He lunged at me, hugging me so tightly I thought I was going to lose feeling in my middle. He pulled back and wiped tears from his eyes, which I had seen him do only twice before. He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “A grandchild would be just the thing.”
I realized that mine wasn’t the only life that had all but ended when Greer went. George’s had, too. He needed me. I needed him. And he was right: a grandchild would be just the thing.
Amelia
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
LYING ON A PAPER-COVERED TABLE in Dr. Salter’s tiny, old-fashioned Cape Carolina doctor’s office, eyes closed to block out the glare of the inhospitable fluorescent lights, waiting for the procedure that would change my life, I felt, for the first time in weeks, completely calm. We were here. This was happening. It was real. I sensed eyes on me, and I opened mine, realizing that it was Parker’s gaze I felt. When I smiled at him, he kissed my hand that he was holding in both of his. That was it, I realized. His being there was why I felt so calm.
Channeling my inner Greer, I had made Dr. Salter—poor Dr. Salter—take me into the lab before the implantation to see the embryos, which had been shipped to NC from Palm Beach for the occasion. We were implanting the two most viable ones: the teddy bear and the flower, as Greer had called them. They really did look uncannily like their namesakes.
“Hi, babies,” I had said to the two of them—a boy and a girl. “I’m Amelia, and I am going to be growing you for a while until you’re big and strong enough to come out and play. I have known your daddy, Parker, for a really, really long time, and I think he is going to be the best father in world. You two are extremely lucky babies.” I paused. “So get ready to get sticky and stay inside me for the next nine months—or a little longer if you want.” I touched my finger to the slide and whispered, “This is really important to a lot of people.”
So, yeah, it’s weird to talk to cells. But I wanted them to know that I was in this for the long haul.
I realized on the drive home how incredibly simple it had all been. All this buildup, all this worry. And, in a matter of minutes, it was over. It had happened. The actual process had involved little more than a tiny catheter and had been pretty darn easy. The mild sedative probably helped.
As Parker drove, unable to wipe the smile off his face, I, still blurry from the drugs, finally took a moment to reflect on all that had transpired the past couple of months.
While Parker and I were working out the details of this new arrangement—all while cohabiting at the octagon-shaped guest house on the Thaysdens’ property—my childhood friends still thought I was going to change my mind. They figured that before Parker and I could get our IVF scheduled and legal paperwork signed I would go starry-eyed for some man. They kept shoving eligible bachelors in my face, and they were all fine. A couple were actually really great. But what they didn’t understand was that it wasn’t the men I didn’t like.
All marriage was, it seemed to me, was one big competition. Who had a nicer car, who had a better house, who was more in love, who had better jobs, made more money, went on better vacations. I didn’t think social media had helped things much, but I thought the people who blamed it all on Instagram were wrong. The world had been this way for as long as I had been in it.
I had promised myself that I wouldn’t get caught up in the whirlwind when Thad and I got married. But I did. I couldn’t help it. I honestly did love him, so much. So why I felt the need to have everyone see and comment on that, I’m not sure. How I felt in my heart should have been enough for me. But when I started planning dinner dates based on which restaurants were the coolest and vacations based on what other people would think, not what I really wanted to do, I realized that I had become a person I never wanted to be. And then he left me for Chase, and, well, if you want to talk about losing the game, that was the way to do it. I had lost, once and for all.
The only way to truly stay out of the game, I thought, was to remove myself from it altogether. Now, when my friends talked about their awesome lives, I was sort of immune to it, like a spinster aunt. No one was in competition with me. At least, that’s how it felt, already. I could ooh and aah over their baby pictures and go to their showers and listen attentively about their latest trips.