Parker 
A SCENE
I LEFT THE OFFICE EARLY that day. I was exhausted, a little hungover, and, even though I knew it could never be, thinking about Amelia. I had planned to work from home, but when I got there, reading Flappers and Philosophers seemed more appealing.
When I heard a knock at the door, I assumed it was the yardman and called, “Come in!” I sat up, smiled, and said, “We have got to get better security at this place.”
Amelia laughed. “Yes, this is a very dicey neighborhood.”
My heart thudded. She had felt what I had felt last night. She was here to tell me. She handed me a folder. “I’ve decided for you.”
I almost asked what she had decided, but I recognized the folder. The surrogates. The babies. I’m sorry, Greer. How could I even think about another woman?
I loosened the knot in the tie I had worn to work. I opened the folder. “This is a picture of you.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a really nice picture?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Amelia sat down in a chair across from me, her forearms on her thighs, leaning in close to me. I ignored how her hair fell over her eye. I ignored how beautiful she looked. “I want to be your surrogate.”
I laughed. She did not laugh. Neither of us moved. “Oh God. Amelia, you’re not serious.”
“I am serious.”
“You can’t. I can’t. I mean, Cape Carolina. And our mothers. And paying you. And it’s all too weird.”
Hurt registered on her face, and I wished I could take it back. My instant response was that she couldn’t be my surrogate. But why? Because it’s too complicated and then you could never be with her.
“Oh God. No. Don’t take this the wrong way.” I paused. But I couldn’t be with her anyway, right? I glanced at Greer’s picture on the end table, rubbed my eyes, and got myself together. I would never move on from Greer. That much was clear. So why waste the chance to have someone I really knew and trusted carry my child? “I mean, let’s back up. In your mind, how would this work? With the girls in the folder, it was just a straight business transaction. They give me a uterus, I give them money. That’s it. With you, it’d be a totally different thing.”
I saw the tears spring to Amelia’s eyes, and I felt like a heel.
“I get it,” she said. “It’s all too much for you. I feel so stupid.” She stood up and turned toward the row of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the terrace.
I sighed, got up, and followed her. Yes, it was complicated. But also, it felt good, I realized. I had serious reservations about choosing a woman out of a file to shepherd my child into the world. I knew Amelia would give this her all. I knew she wouldn’t let me down. She wouldn’t let Greer down. I put my hands on her shoulders and said, “Okay. Thank you.”
She turned around, so close I could smell the cinnamon gum she was chewing. “What? I thought you didn’t want me to do it.”
“Well, of course I want you to. I don’t want some stranger carrying around the most precious thing I’ll ever have. I want to talk to my baby while it’s growing.”
She took my hands in hers, and I saw her eyes land on the wedding band I still hadn’t been able to take off. “I don’t want to complicate things for you, Parker. I really don’t. I just was thinking about how much this meant to you and how I’ve known you forever and you saved my life and all of those things. I mean, yes, I’m kind of at a crossroads, but it feels like time that I thought about someone other than myself.”
“It really is.” I winked at her. “So you’ll move in here with me?”
“Um, no.”
“Well, I’d want you to. Then you don’t have to pay rent, and I get to watch my baby grow.”
She scratched her cheek. “I was actually thinking about going home for a while.”
I raised my eyebrow. Home. I loved Greer. I loved Palm Beach. I felt eternally tied to this house. But just the thought of home made everything inside of me that had been so uptight relax. Why hadn’t I thought of this? I could go home. George, my boss and father-in-law, would understand. He would give me time off. I could work from North Carolina. He knew more than anyone that I had to do something to pull myself out of the murky puddle of depression I’d been living in. “Great,” I said, as if we’d been planning it for months. “I’ll get the back house repainted and ready to go, and we can live there.”
The back house was a supposedly hurricane-safe structure that sat about a half acre away from my parents’ house in a stand of trees. It had been on the property longer than the main house and had been home to many a wayward relative over the years. It also spent plenty of time empty and was the site of more ghost hunts than I could count.
Amelia looked confused. “Parker, I never mentioned us living together.”
Suddenly, the thought of not living with her seemed the impossible part. I was so close to something like happy about this picture forming in my head. “But, Lia, that’s the perk. Right? My baby gets to know my voice before it’s born. I get to see your belly grow and know about your cravings and see what a pregnancy is like. It’d be such a gift.” I paused, not wanting to seem desperate but not wanting to let it go. “Please.”
“We need a contract,” she said, sighing.
“We don’t need a contract.”
She looked me in the eye. “We need a contract,” she repeated. “I need to know what you expect from me, what the rules are. It would make this much less messy for both of us.”
“Kale,” I said. “Kale should be in the contract.”
“I eat kale. You can leave that out.”
“Exercise, then?”
She snorted. “Right. Like I’m going to let my body go to hell while I’m growing your child.”
“Money,” I said.
“I don’t want your money,” she said immediately, ridiculously, since she had no job.
“I don’t want you carrying the stress of a job while you’re pregnant with my baby.”
She nodded. “Kale and barre are expensive.” She paused. “I have to ask you something kind of… awkward.”
“More awkward than me watching you give birth?”
We both laughed.
“You know the story I’m writing about what people do with their frozen embryos?”
I felt guarded. I felt protective of Greer, of my baby. But Amelia continued.
“I’ve interviewed a couple who has donated their embryos to science, and I have a lead on a couple who might talk about why they decided to destroy them. But this angle is…” She paused. “This angle is extraordinary, Parker. I think it would be amazing to write about.”
I felt myself relax. “Amelia, you’re going to spend the next year of your life on this. How could you not write about it?” I took her hand. “Are you serious? Are we doing this?”
She hugged me. I’d take that as a yes.
“Our parents are going to die,” she said into my ear.
I pulled away and said, “Let’s go cause a scene.”
I knew when I saw their faces they all thought we were going to announce we were dating. Everyone knew Olivia Thaysden and Elizabeth Saxton’s lifelong dream, from childhood—hell, maybe even from birth—was to have children who would grow up and get married. The truth was going to be a blow.
As I put my hand on the small of Amelia’s back to let her walk through the front door of my parents’ house first, I caught the conspiratorial smile that Mom and Elizabeth shared. Yeah, this was not going to be the dinner they were expecting.
It started out well. Mom had just had her kitchen redone and was excited to show it off. I don’t know much about kitchens, but I knew it was nice. We never ever talked about money in our house, but I knew Dad was one of the top producers in the country in his field. I was proud of Dad for forging his own path, for taking a risk and creating a new life for himself. Now I hoped he would feel the same way about me.
We all had cocktails and appetizers around the kitchen island, which Mom was explaining was travertine. Amelia smiled at me nervously, and I noticed how quickly she drank her first glass of wine.
Fortunately, nerves had never affected my appetite, so I was fully able to enjoy the stuffed figs, pimento cheese, and flash-fried cauliflower.
We had agreed that I would take the lead. It was my news anyway, my life that was going to change. Before I put it out there, I had to be sure. Not pretty sure or almost sure, sure sure. I thought about going it alone, the all-nighters and the dirty diapers, the fevers and the doctor’s appointments, my life no longer being my own. But then I thought about looking into the face of a child that was half-Greer, a child that we had imagined when she was alive. I would sacrifice anything to have her back. This was the only way that was ever going to happen. I was sure sure.
Greer had told me one day, with a scarf wrapped around her head, her face almost translucently white, not to do anything stupid when she was gone. The example she used was cryogenically freezing her in case she could be brought back to life. I tried to scoff, but it didn’t quite take. That woman knew me. I had actually Googled cryogenic freezing the night before.
Besides, this wasn’t extreme. It was normal. How many friends did we know who had done IVF? (Okay, one.) How many friends did we have who had had surrogates? (Again, one.) But that wasn’t nothing.
I noticed that Mom had brought out Great-Grandmother’s crystal and silver, which she only did on special occasions. As everyone sat down, I decided it was best to just get it out there, face the firing squad.
So I cleared my throat and said, “Um, you guys, I have an announcement.”
My dad gave me the eye. “Don’t you mean we have an announcement?” he said, gesturing toward Amelia.
She smiled nervously. “Sort of…” She trailed off and mumbled, “But it isn’t what you think.”
“Mom, Dad,” I started, “I don’t know if you remember, but Greer and I had embryos frozen before she died.”
Dad took a sip of his scotch, and I could tell he had no idea what was coming next. Mom shifted her head. Her antennae were on high alert.
“Well, I just heard that those embryos had been considered abandoned…”
I trailed off, and Elizabeth said, “Oh, Parker, darling, that must be devastating for you.”
Mom nodded in agreement. “So hard, sweetheart.”
Dad and Mr. Saxton did not seem to share their emotions.
“Well, no,” I said, realizing this train was going to go off the tracks quickly. “Actually, I have decided not to destroy them. I am going to have them.” I cleared my throat again. “Using a surrogate.”
Mom’s face went white, Dad’s scotch stopped midair, and total and complete silence fell over the table. It was horrible. But it was worse when they all started talking at the same time.
Mom was saying, “Parker, no. Absolutely not. That is ridiculous,” as Elizabeth said, “I know it’s a new day, but this is a little much,” and Dad chimed in, “I think you’ve taken this mourning a little too far. Man up and move on,” and Mr. Saxton was saying, “Son, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into.”
Then they were all chattering wildly, more to themselves than to me, and all I could really catch was, “lost his mind?” and “no idea how much work!” and “babies need mothers.”
Amelia and I shared a glance, and I wasn’t sure what to do now. Should I interrupt? Slip out? While I was formulating an escape route, Elizabeth broke through the chatter. “So what does this have to do with Amelia?”
Bomb number two, ready for detonation.
“Well, Mom,” she said quietly, “I am going to be his surrogate.”
Elizabeth slammed her hand on the table and stood up so quickly her glass fell over. “You most certainly are not, young lady. I will not have it.”
No one else at the table reacted, but I knew from five minutes’ prior experience that that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. At that exact moment—perfect timing as always—Mason bolted through the door, making a lot of noise, in a pair of gym shorts, a T-shirt, and filthy tennis shoes. He grabbed a plate off the sideboard, heaped food onto it, and, with half a roll stuffed in his mouth, said, “What? Is this a funeral or something?”
That was all it took to set them off again.
“Why is no one saying anything?” Elizabeth asked. “I can’t be the only one who thinks this entire plan is lunacy. This is worse than when you two decided to free the trapped flies.”
“Well, Mom,” Amelia said, “it couldn’t possibly be worse than that.”
It couldn’t be. There were flies everywhere that entire summer, like a plague had come down.
Elizabeth pointed to Mom. “Well, say something, for God’s sake, Olivia.”
Mom shrugged. “Well, it isn’t ideal. But it makes me feel slightly better that it won’t be some stranger carrying my grandchild. It will be Amelia. That’s something.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms. “Oh no, you’re right. Perfect. Just let her sacrifice herself for your son. Who cares about her future, right?”
Now Mom was getting huffy. Lord help us all. Elizabeth and Mom had been best friends since birth, but that made them more like sisters than friends. So they fought like nothing you had ever seen—and about the stupidest things. Like the summer they chose to back different candidates for president of Garden Club, and they fought for months and almost drove Amelia, me, and our dads crazy.
Mom said, “No, Elizabeth. I’m not saying I don’t care about Amelia. You know Amelia is the daughter I never had,” she snapped. “I’m just saying that if Parker is dead set on this ridiculous scheme, then it makes me feel better to know that Amelia will be involved.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Elizabeth asked, turning her fury back to Amelia. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to carry a baby and then give it up? Do you have any idea how attached you are going to be to that baby, and how much it is going to break your heart to give it away?”
“But it isn’t mine—” Amelia started.
But Elizabeth interrupted. “It doesn’t matter, Amelia. It absolutely does not matter. Once they live inside of you, they are yours. It will kill you.”
“I am totally amenable to your raising it with me,” I interjected, smiling.
Amelia smirked at me. “That is not in the contract, my friend. If you’ll recall, I have no interest in raising babies.”
I had always thought she had no interest in babies because she knew she couldn’t have them. Evidently, I had been wrong. Well, there went that idea. Back to interviewing nannies.
Elizabeth and Mom were glaring at each other. Dad and Mr. Saxton looked embarrassed, and Amelia looked on the verge of tears. This was my moment. I had to appeal to their emotions; this was my one shot, and it had to be good.
“You guys, look. I understand that it’s unconventional. But I lost the love of my life. I have the opportunity to have a piece of her back, to make good on our promises to each other, even though she’s gone. And Amelia coming alongside me in that journey is the greatest act of love I have ever seen from one friend to another.” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. Tears sprang to my eyes. “My life has been impossible without Greer. I have to find joy again. And I think this is how I can.”
Mom and Elizabeth looked at me blankly. Dad said, “This is the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard. When your life is ruined, don’t come crying to me.” Then he stood up and said, “Charles, shall we?” Mr. Saxton looked at Amelia and said, “Did you even consider what this would do to Robby’s poll numbers?”
I’ll admit, I had to stifle a laugh at that one as they retired to Dad’s study, as usual. Mason grabbed his plate so quickly I was surprised the food didn’t fall off, said, “Bro, you’re on your own with this one,” and ran off behind them. I’d figured this would be a lot for them—the two most hands-off fathers of all time and a man in his late thirties who still let his mom cook all his meals—to take in. But I didn’t need their approval.
“Amelia, please,” Elizabeth pleaded again.
She just shook her head. “Mom, look. I have spent my entire life thinking that I would never feel a baby growing inside of me. And now, here I am, single, alone, jobless, and, frankly, needing to find my place in the universe. I can’t explain how I know I’m supposed to do this. I just do. I’m thirty-five years old, and this is a decision I’m allowed to make.”
Mom and Elizabeth shared a look that wordlessly said we were both ill-behaved children.
This wasn’t over. Far from it, in fact. I knew that. But we had done it. We had told the truth. I had taken a stand for my wife today. I had fought the good fight. And now it occurred to me that I had forgotten one major piece of this puzzle: I had told my family. Now I had to tell Greer’s.