The Offering (28 page)

I might have missed the baby less if the Amblours had kept their promise. In the months after Julien's birth, I didn't hear a
word from Simone or Damien—not a picture, email, or card. I tried to tell myself their forgetfulness was a mixed blessing and that I wouldn't long for the child if I couldn't visualize him or know how he was growing up. Still, the Amblours' silence surprised me.

In November, nearly a year after Gideon's death, I quietly marked the date that was supposed to usher in our new life. If he had lived, Gideon would have finished his military service and come home to celebrate with a barbecue. The next morning he would have slept late, then gone out to search for the right place to open his music store. Then we would have met for lunch and gone out together to look at prospective houses—
all
of them located more than an hour away from MacDill Air Force Base. Marilee's decorated dollhouse would come to life as I implemented all the plans and dreams I had compiled over the months of my pregnancy.

But with Gideon gone, no one in the family even mentioned his retirement date. They had either forgotten or they were keeping quiet to spare me pain.

As if they could.

Another year passed. A somber Valentine's Day, a reserved Mother's Day, another birthday. I looked in the mirror after my thirtieth and saw a widow with a thin, shadowed face in which dull blue eyes occupied most of the available space. No wonder. I felt like a soulless, barely animate creature of mud and clay.

I might have remained in that unfeeling state for many more months, even years, if Amelia hadn't meddled in my private affairs.

Amelia and Mario continued to work at Mama Yanela's grocery, but for the two years following Gideon's death they focused on the pursuit of parenthood.

After spending several months on an adoption waiting list, they followed a friend's suggestion and took in a foster child, a three-year-old boy named Sydney. Even at three, Sydney was prone to
inexplicable fits of rage, but after a few months with my cousins he seemed to settle down. Amelia began to smile again, and I often saw Mario walking with little Sydney on his shoulders, the boy's hands entwined in Mario's collar-length hair.

I was happy for them, and selfishly grateful that they'd taken in an older child—because Sydney slept in a regular bed, Mama Isa had no need to ask about Gideon's cradle. With Gideon gone, the cradle had become even more precious to me. It sat in storage, waiting for the day I would give it to Marilee for my grandchild.

After a year of loving and caring for their foster son, Amelia and Mario filed a petition to adopt Sydney. Their inquiries led a social worker to contact the boy's birth parents and ask that they formally relinquish their rights. Reminded that they had a son, the parents—both of whom had been in and out of jail on drug charges—decided that they wanted to care for their child.

And blood, apparently, trumped every other consideration.

Instead of celebrating Sydney's adoption, Amelia and Mario had to surrender the boy to a social worker, who picked up the screaming, kicking toddler and placed him in a dilapidated house with virtual strangers.

I had never seen Amelia so devastated. As the social worker left with Sydney, Amelia went to pieces while Mario held her, helpless to do anything but rub her back. Later that night they sat at Mama Isa's dinner table and clung to each other as if they expected another official to barge through the door and tear them apart.

I don't know if I could have continued to pursue adoption were I in Amelia's situation. I might have given up and tried to enjoy my childfree status. But Amelia refused to surrender her dream. She asked her social worker to hold their adoption file six months, then put them back on the active waiting list. They needed time to grieve, and during those six months they managed to fortify themselves and recommit to their goal.

I don't know how they did it.

As 2010 drew to a close, the sparkle returned to Amelia's eyes.
She and Mario would be back on the list in January, potential parents once again.

But on the first Saturday in December, as Tumelo sprayed fake snow around the grocery's front windows and the family braced for tragic holiday memories, discouragement filled Amelia's expression again. I understood why when I noticed the tabloid newspaper in her hand—the cover story was an article about a New York actress who had traveled to China to adopt a baby girl. Amelia had investigated Asian adoptions, too, but she and Mario simply couldn't afford the international fees.

“Hey.” I waved for her attention, then crooked my finger to call her over.

She shook her head. “Not now,” she said, keeping her voice low as she walked by. “Later, we'll talk.”

After dinner, she came into my room at Mama Isa's, dropped onto my mattress, and tugged at the tufts on my chenille bedspread. “I wonder”—her forehead creased—“if it just wasn't meant to be.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

“Maybe I'm not meant to be a mother. Maybe God knows I'll be a lousy mama, so he's keeping children from me. Or maybe my kid would have died from cancer, been hit by a car, or grow up to experience something tragic.”

Like dying on a secret mission in a foreign country? Gideon's death may have been tragic, but his life wasn't a mistake.

“Or maybe I would have been distracted by my kid and I would have hit someone else's child while I was driving,” she went on, unaware that my thoughts were drifting, as always, toward Gideon. “Maybe there's a purpose in all this frustration. Maybe God has good reasons for preventing me from being a mother.”

“I don't know why God does all the things he does.” I gentled my voice. “I don't think he wants to keep us from suffering. Maybe he allows us to suffer. Maybe he
plans
for us to suffer, 'cause I know
he's not asleep when terrible things happen. And if nothing bad ever happened to us, what would we be like? Spoiled rotten, probably. And lazy.”

Amelia laughed, but I heard no real humor in her voice. “You're tired, cuz. You never make sense when you're exhausted.”

“I'm always tired.” I stretched out across the bed and propped my head on my bent arm. “You'll be a good mama when the time comes. I watch you with Marilee, and sometimes I think you're a better mother than I am. You have so much more energy.”

“You'll get your energy back.”

“And you'll get your baby.”

She barked a short laugh. “Yeah. Like, when I'm fifty, and too arthritic to chase after the kid. Of course, if I were rich and famous, I could buy a baby anytime I wanted.”

I sighed, knowing she was still annoyed by the actress who'd traveled such an apparently easy road to adoption.

“I mean”—she turned to face me—“why should it cost so much to do a loving thing? They pay foster parents to take care of children. Why can't someone arrange it so ordinary people don't have to mortgage everything they own in order to adopt an orphan? I'm not asking for a handout, just something to make things easier. It shouldn't cost so doggone much to share your love with someone who needs it.”

But good things usually hurt.

As Gideon's voice echoed in my brain, I shook off the haunting memory and tried to focus on Amelia. I had already offered to cover her adoption fees—partly because I had more money than I needed, and partly because I still felt guilty for not offering to carry a baby for my cousins. But Mario said he could never take money from me; it would be like taking from Gideon.

“You keep everything you have,” he had urged me. “Marilee will need to go to college, and you may want to buy your own place someday. I couldn't take a dime from you, no matter what.”

“I'm sorry,” I told Amelia, letting my head fall on my pillow. “Sometimes life hurts.”

Amelia leaned over and kissed my forehead, a Lisandra family gesture I'd come to appreciate. “Thanks, cuz. You, me, Mario—we're going to be okay.”

“Oh, yeah? When will that be?”

“Soon, I hope.” She stood and stepped toward the doorway. “Mama says dessert will be ready in ten minutes. Are you coming?”

“I'm stuffed.” My pillow muffled the words, so I lifted my head. “Will you watch Marilee and make sure she doesn't eat herself sick? Dessert is her favorite thing.”

“I'll watch her.”

She slipped away and I closed my eyes, content to let the world continue without me.

I asked my father-in-law for two days off during the early part of December—I wanted the sixth off because it would be the second anniversary of Gideon's death. I asked for the seventh off because I knew I'd need time to recover from the sixth.

I woke on Tuesday the seventh with a pounding headache, a hangover from my mourning and melancholy. A thick quiet hung over the house, so I opened my bedroom door and padded to the kitchen. Jorge had already gone to the store; Mama Isa would have followed him after taking Marilee to school. I was home alone, and I would have the sprawling house to myself for at least a few more hours.

I had eaten practically nothing the day before, so I toasted a couple of bread slices, then spread them with strawberry jam. I popped a little tub into the individual-serving coffee machine, then leaned against the counter as the fragrant brew began to stream into a mug. After breakfast, maybe I'd take two painkillers and go back to bed. Or turn on the TV and flip through the channels so I could again be amazed at how few programs were actually worth watching.

When the coffee finished dripping from the dispenser, I picked up my mug, set my toast on a paper towel, and carried both into
the family room. Still in my pajamas, I sat cross-legged on the sofa and ate my breakfast as the crew of
Good Morning America
giggled their way through the final hour. Since when had the morning news become so entertaining?

I looked up when movement outside the jalousie windows caught my eye. The mail carrier, one of the few who still walked a route, was putting mail into Mama Isa's narrow box. I waited until he walked back down the driveway before I opened the front door and pulled out a handful of envelopes. I dropped everything on the foyer table, but one envelope drew my attention. The letter had been addressed in a slanted, thick handwriting, it bore a foreign postmark, and the stamp was . . . French.

I picked it up and felt its weight on my palm. A letter from France with my name on it.

The sight of a familiar name—Domaine de Amblour—strummed a shiver from me.

I carried the letter into the family room, fell onto the sofa, and ripped at the envelope. As I opened the enclosed velum card, several items fell into my lap—two photographs and a hank of dark brown hair, tied with a blue ribbon.

I read the note:

Dearest Amanda:

As we look forward to celebrating Julien's birthday again, we cannot help but be grateful for what you did for us. So we send our love and prayers, with every wish for your health and happiness.

Sincerely,

Simone, Damien, and Julien Amblour

The first picture was a family photo—Simone and Damien and their little son, who sat between them on a garden bench. The sight of the boy elicited a sense of déjà vu that bloomed into prescience when I studied the second photo, a close-up of Julien Louis Amblour.

I looked into the boy's brown eyes and felt something cold trickle over my backbone, leaving in its aftermath an odd feeling of unease—Mama Isa would have said she felt someone walk across her grave. I held my breath as other remembered images pushed and jostled for space in my brain. Two-year-old Julien looked exactly like Marilee had at that age: the same dark eyes, the same turned-up nose, same facial structure. The same color hair. Same build. Matching rosebud lips.

With pulse-pounding certainty, I knew that if I were to stand this child next to a two-year-old Marilee, they would appear nearly identical. The only difference lay in his hair—Julien's was curly, Marilee's straight. But they certainly looked alike.

Alike enough to be siblings.

Brother and sister.

Dear Lord
—I caught my breath—
what have I done?

I spent the afternoon pacing through the house, Julien's picture in my hand and a thousand questions in my head. Could a mix-up occur in surrogacy? With so many safeguards was it even possible? In the history of surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, spectacular mistakes had been made. I remembered reading about cases in which women were implanted with the wrong embryos—it happened to one woman in Michigan, another in Great Britain. Another American woman gave birth to twins, one white and the other black.

Yes, mistakes did happen with in vitro fertilization, but mine wasn't strictly an IVF case. I had been implanted with an embryo that did not originate from within my body, yet this child looked almost exactly like my firstborn. In order for that to happen, the first embryo would have to die and the second would have to be conceived later, when my body began another cycle.

Was such a scenario theoretically possible? I'd been taking so many hormones during those months, my reproductive system could have been off balance. Gideon and I had refrained from sexual intimacy while we waited for the embryo transfer, but after the
pregnancy test we had been told we could enjoy normal relations, so we did. Which meant this child, if he were ours, had been conceived during one of those encounters.

I stumbled to my desk drawer and pulled out all the stuff I'd dumped inside when we moved. I shuffled through scraps of paper and folders, searching for the old calendar I had used to keep track of dates, drugs, and injections.

Finally I found it. The embryo had been transferred on March 18. I received a positive beta pregnancy test on March 27. Julien was born on December eighth, only a few days past his due date. Nothing unusual about that, except I gave birth to a smaller-than-usual baby. He'd been only eighteen inches, only five pounds. More like a honeydew melon than a full-term infant.