The Offering (12 page)

“You're gonna have to want me from afar for a while.” I tapped the end of his nose, then gave him a peck on the cheek. “You're
gonna have to discipline yourself—take a cold shower, play with Marilee, or jog around the block. You know what you're always telling me—good things usually hurt.”

“Whaddya know—I was right.”

I shifted to look directly at him. “I never knew you got queasy around needles. How is that even possible?”

He gave me a rueful smile, then shrugged. “I don't care if it's one of my men getting stitched up or whatever. But when it's a woman . . . I think it brings back all those memories of my sister. I saw enough needles back then—”

To last a lifetime.
He didn't have to finish his thought; I saw it in his eyes. I squeezed his hand, understanding and loving him all the more.

Gideon didn't often talk about the sister who'd died from leukemia at sixteen, but her life and death had profoundly affected him. He'd been her older brother and he had tried so hard to help her, but he couldn't save her. And wasn't that what older brothers were supposed to do?

He never said as much, but I think that feeling of helplessness was the goad motivating him to become an elite warrior. Wherever he met evil, whether on the battlefield or in a dark urban alley, as a special operator he could use his wits and skills to defeat those who would terrorize and murder innocent people.

Gid released me, then slid his hands into his pockets and strolled over to revisit the fetal diagrams on the wall. When the doctor returned, he gave me a plastic bag, wished us well, and sent us on our way.

On the drive home, I opened the bag and found brochures, prescriptions, a few samples, and a small laminated calendar on which the days of the month were marked with symbols representing the specific hormone or drug I was supposed to take. After a month of Lupron injections and days of birth control pills, estrogen patches, and/or progesterone, I would report to the fertility center for the embryo transfer.

According to what I'd been told, Simone would be following a laminated calendar of her own, taking hormones to make her produce more egg-containing follicles than usual. If all went well, once the doctor had harvested as many mature eggs as possible from Simone, those eggs would be fertilized with Damien's sperm. The developing embryos would be watched for five days, and the best-developed embryos—
blastocysts,
they were called at that stage—would be transferred from a lab container into my uterus. After nine days, I would report to the doctor's office to have blood taken for another beta pregnancy test. If the embryo had safely implanted, I'd be officially pregnant.

And Gideon's stint of self-denial would be over.

T
he first month of the new year passed in a blur of needles, prescriptions, and calendar watching. I went about my usual schedule, caring for Marilee and working at the grocery, but I dreamed of syringes at night and picked at my fingernails during the day. By the end of January, I had bruises on my belly and bald fingertips.

Though I was fairly obsessed with fertility, I couldn't help worrying about Gideon. The papers were full of news about unrest in the world—tribal warfare in Kenya, bombings in Iraq, the Taliban wreaking havoc in Afghanistan. I tried not to read the papers, but those headlines drew me the way a fire truck attracts a crowd. Any one of those stories could be about Gideon's next mission and the place where he would next risk his life, and something in me had to understand what was going on.

For the next few weeks I watched Gideon with narrowed eyes, convinced that at any moment he and his duffel bag would disappear because he had to go save the world. But though he did spend more time than usual at MacDill, he didn't go anywhere else.

As we moved into February, I kept my cell phone with me, hoping to hear that we were ready for the embryo transfer. But though I expected to hear from Dr. Forrester or his nurse, they weren't the person who finally called.

“Amanda?”

For a moment I struggled to place the throaty voice, then the answer came. “Simone?”

“I am afraid I have bad news, my dear.” She turned the catch in her voice into a discreet cough and continued. “I hope you will not mind being inconvenienced another few weeks.”

I lowered the lid on the rice I'd been boiling and slid onto a stool at the kitchen bar. Had something gone wrong? Was she about to cancel our agreement?

“Simone”—I cleared my throat—“what happened?”

She drew a ragged breath. “I have just returned from Dr. Forrester's office. My ultrasound showed six enlarged follicles, so I was filled with hope, but only one of them was a good size; the others were too small. The doctor felt that proceeding with the harvest would only be wasted effort, so he canceled my procedure. I am so sorry, Amanda. I know you were hoping we could move ahead.”

“No, no, it's okay,” I said, responding to the desperation and disappointment in her voice. “What does this mean? Are you and your husband going to stay in Florida, or are you going home?”

“We have not decided, but I think Damien is ready to search for an egg donor. He has asked the doctor to investigate suitable candidates even now, so—”

“I'm so sorry, Simone. I know—” I hesitated, thinking of Amelia, and realized I had no idea how Simone felt. “I imagine you're disappointed.”

“Ah, well.
C'est la vie.
” Her brittle laugh sounded more like a cry of anguish. “I should have known I would have problems.”

I turned toward the living room, where Marilee was banging out a song on a barely functioning practice keyboard. I wanted to focus on my conversation, but it was hard to concentrate on anything with so much noise in the background. “Why would you have problems, Simone?”

“Because I am old.” She released another humorless laugh. “I
am forty-two, and the doctor reminded me that fertility drops significantly after age thirty-five. I am well beyond that.”

My thoughts raced as I considered the possibilities remaining for the Amblours. The last month had been difficult enough for me and Gideon—my stomach was tender from all the injections, and more than once I had awakened in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. My inner thermostat had stopped working, I suffered from mood swings, and I'd given blood so many times my arm was beginning to look like a junkie's. But I'd go through all of it again if it meant we could continue working with Simone and Damien. I had endured too much to give up after earning only two hundred dollars.

My hand tightened around the phone. “You're not going to quit, are you?”

She hesitated, then sighed. “Damien will not quit, no matter what. Sometimes I think that if I fail in this, he will find another woman who can give him what he wants.”

I dropped my jaw, then snapped it shut, grateful she couldn't see the horrified surprise that had to be evident on my face. I'd heard rumors about French men and their mistresses, but I never imagined that a man would cast his wife aside because she couldn't give him an heir. Then again, wasn't that exactly what Henry VIII had done? Maybe things hadn't changed all that much over on the Continent.

“I'm sure Damien is as committed to you as he is to having a child.” I injected confidence into my voice and smiled into the phone. “I know this is going to work; I can feel it. We may have suffered a setback, but we're far from out of the race, right?”

Again, silence, then a soft laugh with a trace of hope. “You and your American optimism. No, we are not out of the race. Damien will find an egg donor, and we will begin again. But I am sorry for you. I know you have made sacrifices and your husband, too. I know you are a young couple, very much in love, and it must be difficult for you—”

“We're all right, Simone, we're fine. And I'm so sorry the egg harvest failed. I know every woman wants to have her own biological child, if it's at all possible.” I spoke on presumption, rattling off sentiments I wanted to share with Amelia, but hadn't yet been able to. The words sounded hollow to my ear.

“Thank you,” Simone answered, her voice stronger than it had been when we first began to talk. “And now I must go. We will be in touch, or Natasha Bray will call you. Right now, I need to rest.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” I smiled into the phone again. “And don't worry. We'll simply move into another month. I'm sure everything's going to be fine.”

“By the way”—Simone paused—“do I hear an electronic piano?”

I groaned. “It's a cheap little practice keyboard. Marilee brought it home from her school, but I'm afraid it frustrates her more than it helps.”

“That little song is from a four-year-old?” Surprise rang in Simone's voice. “She plays so well.”

I couldn't help smiling at this bit of unexpected praise. “She plays even better on a decent piano. Gideon and I aren't quite sure where she inherited her ability, but we're grateful for her talent.”

“You have been given quite a gift.” I could almost see Simone's wistful smile. “You are blessed.”

I agreed with her, and as I hung up I thought about Amelia and how desperately she also wanted children. Then, without explaining why, I went into the living room and wrapped my daughter in a heartfelt hug.

I hoped Gideon's duffel bag would remain in our closet for a while, but he and his Special Forces unit left the morning after Valentine's Day. As usual, Gideon didn't tell me where he was going or when he'd be back, but he kissed Marilee, then held me close and whispered, “I'll be waiting at the river.”

“I know.” I choked back a sob. “I'll look for you under the tree.”

I didn't know exactly where he was headed, but I knew I'd be lost until he came home again.

After Gideon left, I barely felt the needle pricks of my daily injections because tension wreaked havoc on my body. My stomach churned with anxiety and my chest felt as if it would burst with every breath. My attention span shrank to nothing, I couldn't remember where I left things, and I put Marilee to sleep in our bed so I wouldn't have to look at Gideon's empty pillow.

A rise of panic threatened to choke me in mid-February when I joined a horrified world in watching a video of a bound American reporter being beaten by his terrorist captors. I sent Marilee out of the room when clips from the tape began to play on the news, and I wept at the sight of the man who was being tortured simply because he was American. The entire time I watched, I kept wondering if this man was the reason Gideon had to leave us—was this reporter someone so significant that Gideon's team had been tasked to find and rescue him? Was he CIA? The kidnapping had occurred in Kenya, though the terrorists had reportedly come from Somalia.

As March roared in like a lion, we learned that the reporter had been rescued. Amelia and I sat in my living room as a newscaster announced that journalist Ben Huggins was on his way home, thanks to a military team that had gone in to rescue him.

“You know he was no ordinary reporter,” Amelia remarked, lifting a brow. “The government doesn't send soldiers to snatch up members of the media who get into trouble overseas.”

“I was thinking he might be a spy,” I answered. “Either that or he's related to someone in Congress.”

I was just about to change the channel when the newscaster added that one of the soldiers in the rescue team had been killed in the operation.

I flinched as though a spark had arced between me and the television, but Amelia shook her head. “It wasn't Gideon,” she said,
her voice flat and final. “We would have heard if something had happened to him.”

Knowing she was right, I turned off the television and tried to concentrate on the battle facing me—it was finally time to get pregnant with the Amblours' baby.

As anxious as a girl on her first date, on the morning of March 18 I took Marilee to Mama Isa's and then drove myself to the fertility clinic. According to Damien, the Amblours had located an egg donor, a pretty little Kansas coed with an IQ of 150. After a month of hormone treatments, several of the young woman's eggs had been successfully harvested, flash-frozen, and shipped to Florida. Six days ago, the eggs had been fertilized with Damien's sperm. The fate of the Amblours' child or children now rested with Dr. Forrester. If all went according to plan, it would soon rest with me.

Sometimes, I mused as I parked the car, it took a village to
conceive
a child.

I signed in at the reception desk, then took a seat in the crowded waiting room. Though my thoughts were ping-ponging from one concern to another, I picked up a magazine and pretended to be engrossed in an article. I was so intent on pretending, in fact, that I didn't look up when someone else entered the office. I didn't realize the other person had come to be with me until she sat and touched my arm.

I couldn't have been more shocked if she'd hit me with a Taser.

“Simone!” I dropped my magazine. “I didn't know you'd be here.”

She folded her hands and looked at me, her face pinched in an almost guilty expression. “I didn't have to come,” she said, her eyes crinkling at the corners, “but I couldn't stay away. I won't invade your privacy; I only want to sit here in the waiting room while you undergo the procedure.”

I blinked at her, uncertain how to respond.

“I want to be nearby when my child is conceived,” she went on. “Damien thinks I am being silly, but really, is it too much to ask?”

“I don't think so.” I shrugged, not caring where she sat. I didn't
want her in the exam room, but if she wanted to wait out here, why shouldn't she?

Though I knew the Amblours had viable embryos, I thought I'd make small talk while we waited. “Did everything go smoothly with the extraction?”