The Offering (35 page)

I lowered my voice to a stage whisper. “They're not bad people. I would never have chosen them if I didn't think they'd be good parents.”

Mr. Pippen smiled again. “I'm only going to ask about your impressions, about things you may have encountered during the time you carried the baby. I would never ask you to lie.”

I leaned back, slightly comforted even though I had never been so keenly aware of the power of language. Every word I said—and every shade of meaning within those words—might be interpreted by a judge as a reason to approve or deny my request for custody.

Beneath the table, my kneecaps began to twitch.

A moment later voices filled the hallway, then a tall, gray-haired man walked into the room, briefcase in hand. He introduced himself as Girard Bouchard, then shook hands with me and Mr. Pippen.

I folded my arms as he took a seat across from us.

“I wanted to thank you for coming all this way,” Mr. Pippen said, “when we could have done this by video conference call.”

“I like to see the people I am addressing,” Mr. Bouchard answered, opening his briefcase. He lowered his chin and met my gaze dead-on. “I like to meet them face-to-face.”

I shifted, my nervousness rising a notch. Did this man expect to uncover something in my eyes?

“Do you need anything?” Mr. Pippen asked. “A glass of water, legal pad, anything at all?”

“Thank you, but I am ready.” My heart skipped a beat when he took out a pen and paper, then smiled. “I am eager to get going.”

“Then let's begin.”

Mr. Pippen nodded to the court reporter, who held up a Bible and asked me to place my right hand on it. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?”

I swallowed hard. “I do.”

She lowered the Bible, and my lawyer gave me a confident smile.

In all the years of my life I've only been involved in one deposition—and I could die happy never being involved in another. Mr. Pippen began by asking why I wanted to be a gestational carrier, if my husband approved of the idea, and why I chose the Amblours from the three prospective couples whose files I'd been given. I answered as best I could, explaining things in the fewest possible words. I was terrified that I might make a mistake about something as trivial as a date or a small detail—one error under oath could give the opposing attorney reason to call me a liar and question all my testimony.

After covering the preliminaries involved in my surrogacy, Mr. Pippen asked about the early stage of my pregnancy, and seemed to focus on the day I noticed spotting. Just when I thought the questions had become about as invasive as they could be, he asked when Gideon and I had been intimate—and he wanted dates, so I had to consult my pregnancy calendar. The questions were personal and pointed, but I knew I had to answer in order to support the DNA test results we had submitted to the court. My lawyer needed to establish that I had been pregnant twice—once, briefly, with an Amblour embryo, and a second time with Gideon's child.

Next Mr. Pippen delved into the details of my second pregnancy: why I had missed ultrasounds that might have revealed a just-developing embryo, how the ultrasound technician and the
doctor frequently remarked that the fetus seemed undersized, and how they excused their concern with Damien Amblour's assurance that the egg donor had been a small woman. Like a mosaic artist, Mr. Pippen laid out fact after fact, pressing each one into place until he had created a complete picture.

Then he asked me about the odd requests that came from the Amblours during my pregnancy. From the tone of his questions I gathered that he wanted to present the Amblours as wealthy eccentrics who might not make stellar parents. So I told him about the recordings I'd been asked to play for my tummy. I talked about Simone's insistence that I not eat shellfish or red meat for the duration of the pregnancy. How they asked me not to pump my own gas. How Simone sent boxes of natural products and hired the Happy Housekeepers to clean my home. And how Damien even had the chutzpah to ask that I not be intimate with my husband for the remaining months of the pregnancy if Gideon ever traveled on a mission to Asia.

Mr. Pippen's forehead creased, though he and I had discussed this before. “Why would he make such an odd request?”

A blush heated my cheeks, just as it had when Gideon told me what Damien was thinking. “My husband explained that Mr. Amblour must have assumed that Gideon would be unfaithful to me if he ever went to Asia, and that he might pick up a sexually transmitted disease that could be passed on to the child.”

“Quite a few assumptions in that request, weren't there?”

“Yes.” I leveled my gaze at the opposing attorney. “And none of them were valid.”

Mr. Pippen shot me a small, triumphant smile. “Did you comply with the intended parents' requests?”

I nodded, then remembered that I needed to speak for the court recorder. “Yes. Whenever possible, I did.”

“Even though you weren't legally required to obey their wishes? Is it fair to say you did it out of the goodness of your heart?”

Mr. Bouchard waved his pen. “Objection as to form.”

My lawyer adjusted his smile. “I'll rephrase: Did you comply with their wishes because you wanted to please them?”

“I did it because I wanted them to be happy and because I thought I was carrying their baby. So even though those requests weren't listed in the contract, I did my best to put the Amblours at ease. They'd been through a lot with surrogates before they met me, and I didn't want them to worry this time.”

Mr. Pippen walked to the window, then glanced at me over his shoulder. “What was your impression of the Amblours after you met them the first time?”

I shrugged. “I liked them. They seemed like a nice couple.”

“What was your impression of Damien Amblour?”

I drew a deep breath, knowing that my next words might be critically important. “I thought him nice enough, but he seemed to be fixated on having a biological son. Several times he mentioned how much he wanted an heir from his bloodline to take over the family estate . . . and that's not something I could relate to.”

“Yet Mr. Amblour was focused on this aspect of family life?”

“He certainly seemed to be. From what I gathered, his desire for a genetic heir was their chief reason for pursuing a gestational carrier. Otherwise, he and his wife would have adopted.”

Mr. Pippen dipped his head slightly, then turned to face me. “What did you think of Simone Amblour?”

I smiled. “I felt a little sorry for her. She was a lovely lady, but she seemed insecure in her marriage. I couldn't help feeling that she believed her husband might divorce her if she couldn't produce a baby for him.”

“Objection.” Mr. Bouchard's face contracted into a prim and forbidding expression. “A
feeling
isn't fact.”

“Let me rephrase.” Mr. Pippen folded his hands. “Did she actually tell you that her husband would divorce her if she couldn't give him a son?”

“She never said that outright. But she implied it.”

“Did she say why they hadn't been able to have biological children?”

“She was never specific about the reason for her miscarriages, and I didn't want to pry. Simone wasn't a young woman—I thought she must have been around forty—and he was much older. I felt sorry for her when they had to resort to an egg donor.”

“But the egg donor wasn't of crucial importance, correct? They were content as long as the child would be related to Damien Amblour?”

“
He
was content—that's what I understood.”

“Did Mrs. Amblour express this thought to you?”

“Not in so many words, but yes.”

“Objection.” Mr. Bouchard smiled. “The witness is making yet another assumption.”

Mr. Pippin's smile matched his. “I'll move on.” He looked back at me. “Tell me, Mrs. Lisandra—did Simone Amblour ever say or do anything to make you personally uncomfortable? Something that made you question her judgment?”

I shifted in my chair. “Only once.”

“Would you tell us what happened?”

I pressed my lips together, then told the whole truth: “On my daughter's birthday, the Amblours sent a grand piano to our house. I thought the gift wildly inappropriate and much too expensive, but my daughter loved it. So I thought I had to keep it in order to avoid breaking my little girl's heart.”

“Why did you think it inappropriate?”

“Because Marilee was only five and wouldn't really appreciate it. Plus, I knew I could never reciprocate. Who sends a grand piano to a five-year-old?”

Mr. Pippen gave the other lawyer an easygoing grin with a good deal of confidence behind it. “Do you still have this piano?”

“We sold it when we moved.”

“So you no longer felt that you should keep the instrument?”

“No. I was done with the Amblours by then, done with everything. My husband had just been killed, and I . . . I closed down for a while. I moved in with relatives.”

My lawyer consulted his notes for a moment, then leaned on the table and looked directly at me. “Mrs. Lisandra, did you and your husband ever talk about having other children?”

“We did—Gideon wanted a son.”

“So why didn't you have a baby of your own?”

“Because”—I glanced at Mr. Bouchard, who had begun to write on his legal pad—“because we weren't financially prepared to have another child. Our daughter attends a school for gifted musicians. It's a great school, but the tuition is high.”

“Is money one of the reasons you decided to investigate surrogacy?”

“It was one of several reasons; I wanted to help another couple, I knew I carried babies easily and loved being pregnant, and I knew we weren't financially ready to have another child of our own.”

“But if you
had
gotten pregnant—let's say you found you were pregnant before you got involved with the Amblours—would you have kept that baby?”

“Of course. Marilee would have had to change schools, though. I don't see how we could have afforded another child
and
my daughter's tuition.”

“Are you employed, Mrs. Lisandra?”

“I work at Mama Yanela's Cuban grocery.”

“Have you tried to find a job offering better pay?”

“Yes, but I haven't been successful. I've always wanted to be a social worker, but I got married and dropped out of college before graduating. I'll have better luck when I get my degree.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lisandra.” Mr. Pippen gave the French attorney a stiff nod. “We reserve the right to question the witness when you have concluded, Mr. Bouchard.”

Prickles of unease nipped at the backs of my knees as the opposing lawyer made another note on his legal pad, lowered his pen, and looked across the table as if he'd like to fillet me for lunch.

The Amblours' attorney adjusted his expression and flashed a revised smile that seemed about as genuine as a Louis Vuitton bag made in China. “Do you need a few minutes, Mrs. Lisandra? I understand there is coffee in the break room—”

“I'm fine. I'd like to get this over and done.”

“Then we will proceed.” He checked his notes for a moment, then pressed his hands together. “Did you like the Amblours when you first met them?”

I nodded, then remembered to speak. “I did.”

“You liked them even before you met them, correct? You liked Damien and Simone so much that you chose them from the three couples presented to you?”

“That's right.”

“You did not see any problems in their home or marriage during that initial screening period, did you?”

“No.”

“As you looked through their folder, did you surmise that they were a wealthy couple?”

I blinked. “I'm pretty sure only wealthy couples can afford to work with the Surrogacy Center.”

“So the reason you singled them out had nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Amblour is from a distinguished and affluent family?”

“I knew nothing about his family at that point.”

“You did not notice that they seemed to be the most prosperous couple represented in the three files you were given?”

My voice went dry. “The folders didn't contain financial statements.”

The attorney shot me a twisted smile. “Very well. Did you see any problems in the Amblours' home or marriage during your first meeting with them?”

“No.”

“What about when they came to Florida for the embryo transfer? You spent time with them during that trip, correct?”

“I did.”

“Did anything about the Amblours or the state of their marriage alarm you then? Did you see anything that gave you even a moment's hesitation about carrying a child for them?”

“No, I didn't.”

“What about when they visited Florida before the baby's birth? In the months between the embryo transfer and the birth of Julien Louis Amblour, were you given any reason to doubt the Amblours' ability to be good parents?”

“No.”

“After the birth, then. Did anything make you reconsider your choice to surrender the infant you carried to Damien and Simone Amblour?”

“Well . . . maybe one thing. They had told me they were going to stay in Florida awhile—that their doctor advised them not to travel with a newborn until he was a week old.” I tilted my head, surprised the memory surfaced so easily. “I went to see them, hoping to say a final good-bye, but the Amblours had already flown home. They flew when the baby was only a couple of days old.”

“So you didn't see the child when you went to see them?”

“No.”

“Did you see him at all?”

“I saw them take him from me, but only for a minute, and I saw him briefly a few hours later, when I left the hospital.”