The Offering (37 page)

I'm sure I frustrated the real estate agent, but I couldn't seem to find anything that would work for us. Or maybe I simply felt uncertain because my future remained unsettled.

I didn't even know if or how I'd be employed once Julien came home. If the adjustment period went well and I wanted to remain at the grocery, I would need child care. I could always stop working, but our new house would devour a large percentage of the money I had stashed away. So I would soon find myself in a familiar situation—desperately in need of a college degree—unless I found some other line of work.

Could I learn more about the grocery business? And would Tumelo consider leaving his stake in the grocery to me so I could eventually pass it to Julien? But what if my son grew up and decided he didn't want to work in a Cuban grocery?

How long would I have to confine myself to only
dreaming
about my son? I nibbled my nails to nubs, prayed until I began to sound like a broken record, and waited to hear from my lawyer.

Joseph Pippen left for France on Wednesday, April 20. He planned to personally visit with the Amblours and their lawyer, and if he couldn't prevail upon them to surrender my son, he was going to present a petition before a French court. Though I had begged him to give me a date when we might know
something,
he gently refused. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he told me the last time we talked. “I'll know something when I know something, and then I'll call you. Some things cannot be rushed.”

The Saturday before Easter I sat at Mama Isa's long kitchen table and numbly watched Amelia take charge of the children as they colored eggs for the Easter egg hunt. Five-month-old Johny was too young to understand what was going on, but he sat in his baby seat and waved his arms as Marilee dipped eggs into the brilliant dyes and held them before his wide eyes.

I crossed my arms and felt my mouth curve in a wistful smile.
Next year Julien should be sitting at this table with them, his small fingers struggling to hold the flimsy wire that came in the box of egg dye. Marilee would help him, and both of them would entertain little Johny. . . .

I looked over at Amelia, who was glowing with happiness. Earlier she had shown me the pastel blue suit she bought Johny for Easter, and I teased her about going overboard for the holiday.

“I don't care.” She smiled away my comment. “I may have only one kid, so I'm going to do everything I want to do with him. He may be the most overdressed baby in church, but I'll always have a picture of him in his first Easter suit. And that,
prima,
will be priceless.”

I had never seen Amelia so content. I was happy for her, but a wasp of jealousy buzzed in my ear as I watched her give Marilee another batch of hard-boiled eggs. God had answered Amelia's prayers, but my arms were still empty.

I tried to hide my resentment, but my expression must have hinted at the turmoil within me. When the children had finished decorating their eggs and Elaine began to clean up, Amelia picked up her son and pulled me aside. “I know seeing me with Johny is hard for you,” she said sotto voce, “but you need to use this time to think about things.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What things?”

She gave me a warning look, then shifted her baby to her other hip. “You once told me that I would love Johny because love has nothing to do with genetics.”

My blood sparked with irritation. “So?”

“You were right. Love doesn't have anything to do with biology, yet you are set on having that boy simply because he has Gideon's DNA. Have you forgotten that those other people love him desperately?”

My irritation veered sharply to anger. “Maybe
I
love him desperately. Why shouldn't I? He has my DNA, too. He should grow up with his
real
mother.”

“And what do you think the French woman is, artificial?”

I took a half step back, stunned by her comment, then shook my head. “Don't confuse the issue with word play. He's my son, I love him, and here's the bottom line—that little boy is all I have left of Gideon.”

And then, in one of those rare silences in which time slows and the world stands still, my daughter's silvery voice rang out: “What about me, Mommy?”

And an avalanche of guilt crashed over me.

Remorse tightened my throat when I looked into Amelia's eyes and saw myself reflected in them: a resolute, wounded woman intent on obtaining her rights at any cost.

My darling daughter smiled up at me, love mingling with uncertainty in her brown eyes. I squirmed under the touch of her loving gaze as my conscience reared its knobby head. I was Marilee's only remaining parent, but in my all-consuming obsession with Julien I had relegated my daughter to Mama Isa's care and focused my attention on a child I didn't even know.

“I'm sorry, honey,” I told her, my voice hoarse as I bent to look at her. “Of course I have you, and you are Daddy's favorite girl. Soon we'll all be together—you, me, and your brother. Everything will be fine then, you'll see.”

I had been neglectful, but I would make it up to Marilee. As soon as my baby boy came home.

After the big Easter-egg-decorating party, the women of the Lisandra clan gathered in Mama Isa's kitchen to clean up spilled dyes and shards of eggshell. I joined them, but ducked into the hallway when my cell phone rang. I pulled it out and felt my heart shift into overdrive when I recognized Mr. Pippen's number.

I ran for the relative quiet of my bedroom. “Hello? Mr. Pippen?”

“Congratulations, Amanda. We scored a home run.”

A full minute passed before the significance of his words
registered, then I blinked in numb astonishment. “Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“The judge placed great weight on the DNA report. In his ruling, he stated that since the Amblours were motivated to pursue surrogacy in order to have a biological child, they could not credibly make a case for keeping a child who was not genetically related to them. He's ruled that the boy be returned to you.”

Shock waves radiated from a nexus in my chest, tingling my scalp and numbing my toes. “Julien's coming home?”

“I'm holding a court order stating that Julien Louis Amblour be remanded to the custody of his biological mother in less than ten days. I'll meet with Bouchard tomorrow to establish how we want to handle those arrangements. Would you like to fly over to meet him, or would you like someone to bring him to you?”

“Could you bring him?” I spoke without thinking, and an instant after saying the words I knew I'd spoken too soon.

“I'm afraid I need to return to the U.S. sooner rather than later, and I'm sure the Amblours will want to take every one of the ten days they were granted.”

“Of course they will. Just a minute, I have to think. This is happening too fast.” I pressed my hand to my head and closed my eyes, struggling to put my jumbled thoughts in order. If someone brought Julien to me, he'd either have to travel with Simone, Damien, or an escort, and none of those options would be exactly comforting for a two-year-old, especially if Simone and Damien were distraught. Better, then, for me to go to him. A trip to France might benefit me in other ways, too—I could see Julien in his environment, spend a couple of days absorbing the culture, and then bring my son home and introduce him to the family.

“I want to get him. I'll go to France.”

“Very well. I'll let you know the details after I've talked to the Amblours' attorney.”

I gripped the edge of a bookcase to steady my swirling head. “Are you sure that's the end of it? They won't appeal?”

“They might, but the boy would live with you while they went through the appeal process, so I'm reasonably sure they won't. They'll realize that even the possibility of the child's going back and forth is not in the boy's best interests.”

“Mr. Pippen”—I struggled to find words to describe the sense of elation tingling my toes—“thank you.”

“It's been a pleasure. Talk to you soon.”

I shut off the phone and exhaled in a rush, then looked up to find Amelia, Johny, and Mama Isa peering at me from the doorway.

Amelia arched a brow. “Was that—”

I nodded. “Sometime in the next ten days, I'm flying to France to get my son.”

Mama Isa lifted her hands and shouted while Amelia danced through the hallway with Johny on her hip. I followed them to the kitchen, where Elaine, Marilee, and Yanela joined in the celebration.

I sank into a chair and lowered my head into my hands. I had won an amazing victory, yet Mr. Pippen's report left me feeling strangely numb. Perhaps the news hadn't fully sunk in, or perhaps the victory didn't feel completely satisfying because Gideon wasn't around to share it.

But my heart warmed to see the others' happy faces. Tonight the entire family would gather around this table and rejoice because one of our own was coming home.

I opened my eyes and saw a black velvet sky; I curled my fists and felt dew-damp grass beneath my fingers. Night noises chirped and whispered around me, along with the steady tick of a cooling car engine. I groaned and lifted my head, silencing the shrill scritch of the crickets as completely as someone pressing the Stop button on a recorder.

I looked down the length of my body and saw a child's form and figure—pudgy knees, small sneakers, flat chest. And even as I obeyed an
impulse and rolled onto my stomach, I knew I was having the dream again. What did they call this? Lucid dreaming. Dreams in which the dreamer is fully aware of his dream state.

Dr. Hawthorn was wrong to blame this dream on pregnancy. I didn't experience it as often as I had during those nine months, but it kept returning in all its crisp vividness.

Reluctantly, I lifted my head and saw the overturned car, heard palmettos rustling their fans, and smelled gasoline. Again I saw my father's outstretched hand, the fingers twitching in spasm.

Obeying the familiar script, I crawled onward, gravel cutting into my knees as I called for my father. A shard of broken taillight sliced my elbow, but I crept forward, determined to changed the dream's outcome if I could. “Daddy?”

I lowered my head, peered into the darkness of the car. My father's bloody face appeared above his white shirt, then he said my name and attempted to smile.

“You need to get away from the car,” he said, his voice forceful without being frantic. “Go sit on the grass and wait there.”

“I don't want to leave you, Daddy. I won't leave you. Not this time.”

“You have to, honey. You have to obey me, right now.”

“I can't leave you. And this time things will be different because I'm not going anywhere.”

“Mandy, listen to me.” His voice held a silken thread of warning. “You have to go. This is the way it's supposed to be.”

“But I don't want to. I want to keep you with me.”

“Get away, honey. Gideon and I are waiting at the tree by the river. And stop worrying—your questions have been answered and your future firmly settled. You're going to do the right thing.”

What was he saying? I was supposed to control the script in a lucid dream, and I had already done the right thing. I had pursued our son and won the right to bring him home.

Surely Daddy was proud of me.

I reached out to take my father's hand, but it melted into empty air. “Daddy?”

Something in the night—a noise?—jolted me awake. I sat up and gulped deep breaths, waiting for the material world to focus. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I recognized my desk, the nightstand, the stack of boxes on the closet floor. I listened, but quiet filled the house. I heard only the distant hum of freeway traffic and the soft tapping of windblown rain on the window.

Rooted again in reality, I lay back down, clutched my comforter, and wondered about the dream. Did God still speak to people in dreams? Amelia thought they did, and Mama Isa would agree. And I would never be able to forget the nightmare I had before learning that Gideon had been killed.

So if God did communicate through dreams, had he spoken to me? Or had he passed on a message from my father?

I exhaled softly. Neither, probably. My imagination had embroidered a recurrent dream, nothing more. Yet Dr. Hawthorn said dreams are the venue through which our subconscious sends us messages—was my subconscious trying to make me feel better about breaking Simone's heart?

Maybe my dream sprang from a guilty conscience. I'd do almost anything to avoid hurting Simone and Damien, but I couldn't see any way around causing them pain. I tried to imagine some sort of compromise in which they could occasionally visit Tampa, but a clean break might be less painful than a couple of awkward annual visits.

I rolled toward the wall, recalling what my dream father had said: that my future was settled and I was going to do the right thing. What on earth could that mean?

Maybe I was missing something obvious . . . maybe I needed to call someone who could help me see through my confusion. But who loved me enough to welcome a bizarre call in the middle of the night? Amelia loved me, but she wouldn't want me to call and wake the baby. Mama Isa loved me, too, as did Elaine, but they wouldn't want to hear about my nightmares at this hour.

A tear slipped from my lashes and rolled down my cheek.
Gideon would have listened to anything, then he would have held me in his arms until I felt safe again. And if he'd been alive . . . I could have called my dad.

I swiped the tear from my face, then turned on the bedside lamp, padded across the room, and pulled my purse from the back of the desk chair. I found my cell phone and punched Mom's name in the contact list. While I waited and listened to the ring tone, I told myself I was being silly; Mom would listen, then she'd probably tell me to take a sleeping pill and go back to bed.