“Yes, this is Jean Johnson. Who is this?”
“Hi.” I clutch my cell phone in my hand so tightly, my fingers start to tingle. “My name is Abigail Adler. Your daughter Monica…”
I don’t even know how to complete that sentence. Your daughter Monica agreed to allow my husband to impregnate her then give me the baby. When you put it that way, it does sound a bit odd.
Thankfully, Jean Johnson knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Mrs.
Adler! Yes, Monica told me all about it…” And then there’s the awkward silence.
There’s a whistling sound in the background. “Sorry about that,” Mrs. Johnson says. She has a pleasant, husky voice that makes her sound like a film star from another era. “I had put a pot of tea on a few minutes ago. I’m just going to turn off the oven. Sorry about that, Mrs. Adler.”
“Abby,” I correct her.
“Abby,” she repeats. There’s shuffling on the other line, the sound of boiling water being poured into a teacup. “So you work with Monica in New York, is that right?”
“Yes.” I clear my throat. “And you’re in… Indianapolis?” “Yes, I am. Born and raised.”
“It must have been hard when Monica moved away.”
“Yes, well…” She sniffs. “Children do what they want to do. You’ll find that out someday.”
I analyze her tone, trying to figure out if it was a dig. I don’t think it was.
“I want you to know,” I say quietly, “what Monica is doing for me… it means the world to me.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Well, that’s Monica—she always wants to help people.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. To a fault even.” She sighs. “Whenever someone tells her their problems—she’s got an open sort of face that makes people confide in her—she has to figure out a way to put it right for them.”
I feel a little jab in my chest. Monica is giving me the thing I want most in the world and here I am, investigating her. But this is Sam’s strict condition—he won’t go through with this unless we have all the information. He’s sorting through Monica’s medical records while I make these calls. He wanted to hire a private investigator, but I drew the line at that.
“We’re going to compensate her,” I say, desperate not to sound like we’re taking advantage. “We’re going to send her to graduate school in graphic arts.”
“Perhaps. But you have to know, she’d do it even if you weren’t paying her a penny.”
“Yes,” I agree. “I think she would.”
“Well, anyhow.” Mrs. Johnson lets out a sigh. “What information do you need about my Monica?”
I look at the list Sam scribbled out for me in his nearly illegible handwriting. “I guess… I was wondering if there are any serious illnesses that run in the family.”
“My mother has the diabetes,” she says thoughtfully. “But she’s still living. Monica’s father is healthy—well, no, a little bit of high blood pressure. Monica’s always been healthy as a horse.”
“Any…” I look at the next question and wince. “Any history of mental illness?”
“Mental illness?” Mrs. Johnson repeats. “You mean craziness? No, of course not! What sort of family do you think this is?”
“I, um…”
“Look, my Monica is a good girl,” she says. “Always did well in school, always was kind to everyone. I have to be honest with you, Mrs. Adler, I told Monica not to do this. That we’d find another way to raise the money for her to go back to school. But she wanted to do it. And now it feels like… what’s the expression? You’re looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
I fold Sam’s notes in half and push them across my desk. “You’re right, Mrs. Johnson. I’m sorry to take up so much of your time.”
I thank her again, but as I put down my phone, there’s something tugging at the back of my mind. Something not entirely right. But that makes no sense. Mrs. Johnson was perfectly nice, especially given what
we’re proposing to her daughter. Nothing she said raised any kind of red flag.
So what is that nagging feeling that I’m missing something?
There’s a baby in a booster seat at the table next to mine. An adorable little girl with beautiful blond curls. She’s got a handful of Cheerios sprinkled all over her tray and she’s picking them up awkwardly and stuffing them in her mouth. I watch her, trying to ignore the growing ache in my chest. I almost had a baby. I was so close.
“Chee-wo,” the little girl informs me.
I smile at her. Why are kids so cute? Denise doesn’t find children cute. She could look at a little girl like this one, shrug her shoulders, and go right back to texting on her phone.
“Chee-wo!” the girl says again, and this time she holds out a Cheerio to me with a chubby little hand dripping with saliva. She’s sharing her food. What a kind, generous baby. The mother is so lucky. She’s so lucky and she has no idea. She’s gabbing with her girlfriend, not even looking at her precious child. It’s so unfair.
Oh God. I think I have to move. “Abby?”
I lift my eyes. The girl standing in front of me gives off a “nice girl” vibe. She has a pretty, round face, with blond hair tied back in a high ponytail at the back of her head. She’s wearing a black short-sleeved blouse, which she hastily explained is part of her waitressing uniform. She has a well-scrubbed, clean-cut, American girl vibe—she’s the sort of girl who you might hire to babysit your children.
“Chelsea?” I ask. She nods.
Chelsea Williams is Monica’s roommate. The two of them have lived together for the last several years, and she’s the last person I’m scheduled to speak with before coming back to my husband to assure him that Monica is indeed “squeaky clean.” But from the bland, pleasant smile on Chelsea’s face, I know this meeting is going to go exactly as I thought.
“Please have a seat,” I tell Chelsea.
She slides into a chair across from me at the table. “I’m not late, am I?”
I shake my head. “I’m early.”
“Like Monica.” Chelsea laughs. “She’s always early.”
I already know this fact about my assistant. I value promptness in an employee, and this is yet another way Monica has managed to impress me.
“So how long have you been living with Monica?” I ask her.
“We met in college.” Chelsea opens up the menu in front of her. “So we lived together two years then and now for a year in the city. She’s probably my best friend.”
“So you know her very well then?”
She nods eagerly. “Absolutely. What would you like to know about her?”
I don’t have any notes from Sam this time. Really, there’s only one thing I want to know about Monica. Is it likely she’s going to change her mind and fight to keep her baby?
But I can’t straight out ask that. “Is she responsible?” I ask.
“Well, yeah!” Chelsea giggles. “Honestly, if it weren’t for her, we would have been booted out of our place ages ago for forgetting to pay the rent.”
I hesitate. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
“Not at the moment.” She raises an eyebrow. “You think a boyfriend would be okay with something like this?”
“Probably not.” “Well, then.”
I look down at my coffee cup. I just got a plain coffee—no cream, no sugar. When I was in college, I used to add about a quarter of a cup of cream to my coffee, but when I saw Denise drinking it black every day, I switched. Now that’s all I’ll ever drink. And like Denise, I lose respect for anyone who pours cream into their coffee.
“Does Monica take good care of herself?” I ask.
Chelsea frowns. “What do you mean? She, like, showers every day and all that.”
“I mean, does she do drugs or drink a lot or…?”
That makes her laugh. “Monica? No way. She’s a complete square.
Like, the designated driver and all that shit.”
Of course. I should have guessed. Everyone I’ve spoken to without exception has verified Monica Johnson is squeaky clean. She’s one halo away from being a saint.
“Listen,” Chelsea says as she wipes some white froth from her lips, “I just want to say I think the arrangement you’ve got with Monica is really cool.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you?”
“Yeah!” She nods vigorously. “Just because you’re too old to have children of your own, that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t make great parents, right?”
Too old to have children of my own? I’m thirty-six! I’ve got quite a bit of time left before menopause. If not for my bum ovaries, I’d have no trouble at all having children at my age.
But Chelsea here is all of twenty-three. I hate to think how old she thinks I am. I’m not even going to ask—why make this meeting more depressing?
“Thank you,” I say.
She grins at me. “So are you going to go through with it?” “Yes,” I say slowly. “I think we might.”
