The Photographer - Mary Carter (best romance ebooks .txt) 📗

Lucia were struggling financially. The Straubs might find themselves coerced into supporting Lucia’s whole family.

I also researched surrogacy laws. From a conversation with Amelia, I’d already gathered that paid surrogacy wasn’t legal in New York. I’d have a significant advantage as an “altruistic surrogate,” if the Straubs were to go that route. A whole layer of logistical complication could be eliminated, though they wouldn’t have an enforceable contract. In New York, a woman who gives birth is presumed to be the legal mother at birth and she has preferred parental status. If I were the surrogate, they would have to trust me.

Later that night, I opened up one of the folders on my hard drive. It contained photos of the Straubs’ kitchen, the ones I took when I was babysitting Natalie and Piper. I couldn’t help dwelling on the high ceilings, the exquisite finishes, the various touches of brass, copper, nickel all working in unison with glass to create a shimmery vision. I remember when I first saw that kitchen. It appeared to be made out of crystal because it sparkled so much.

I pulled up the photos of myself that I’d used for my website. Five years earlier, Lana had shot them as a favor to me. They were by far the best photos of myself that I’d ever had taken. The close-ups emphasized my bright blue eyes, creamy skin, and silky hair. The long shots highlighted my hourglass figure. I’d enjoyed designing my website, primarily because it had been an opportunity to showcase the photos. Once finished with my website, I’d sought out other occasions to use them. I considered it a waste to leave such extraordinary pictures sitting unused on my computer, so I placed my image in advertisements I found online and created photos of myself skiing or hiking or scuba diving. The activity was amusing, but since I didn’t know the other people in the frame, and I’d never been to the locations, it was hard for me to believe in the pictures. Whereas, I discovered that inserting myself into my clients’ photos wasn’t such a stretch for my imagination, and, as a result, I found it much more gratifying.

When I layered my image into the Straubs’ kitchen, it was a way to spend time with the Straubs, all of whom I missed terribly, and a way to fully inhabit their home and their life. I found stock photos of pots and pans online and layered them into the scene too, along with cutting boards, knives, vegetables, and fruit. I already had photos of Natalie and Piper watching Mean Girls. And now I had photos of myself cooking. I cut back and forth between the images to create a short slideshow. One would have inferred that I was their mother, or possibly Natalie’s big sister. Then I cut to photos of Natalie and Piper sound asleep in Natalie’s room. That came afterward in the sequence. Then, at the end of the evening, I cut to photos of me and Fritz. We were making love in the Straubs’ bedroom. I had already taken independent photos of Fritz, me, and the Straubs’ bedroom. I just had to layer our bodies on their bed. Fritz’s naked body posed a bit of a challenge, but I combined a few different images, some I had taken myself and some from Amelia’s Instagram account—pictures of him in his swimsuit. As luck would have it, the light in all of these was coming from the same direction, hitting him at the same angle. I had more than one AI “undressing” app on my computer. All I had to do was input Fritz’s image in a swimsuit, and after a couple of minutes, I’d get Fritz completely nude, front, back and side views. The computer’s best guess of what he’d look like naked was close, but inferior to my best guess, so I tweaked the computer-generated image, changing the skin tone and muscle tone slightly.

I was pleased with my creation.

I inserted a photo of Amelia and me together in the cooking section. She was reading a recipe to me and I was mixing the ingredients in a bowl. It looked to be my home and I was cooking with my dear friend Amelia. I found it comforting to play the slideshow for myself and watched it several times. I especially liked the section with me and Fritz in the Straubs’ bed, our bodies pressed together. When I looked at the photos, I felt connected to a world and a life. I thought about replacing Fritz’s body with Amelia’s—an image of me and Amelia, our bodies pressed against each other. That would also be an uplifting vision, but I instinctively felt it would be a little harder to achieve.

I was about to go to sleep when I realized that I hadn’t included Jasper. I experienced a stab of guilt: I hadn’t thought about my son, and now it wasn’t clear how to incorporate him. Where had Jasper been the whole time? I finally decided that he had been sleeping the entire evening. That was plausible. He was only five years old, after all. So I created a bed for him in Natalie’s room, and layered his delicate little body onto that bed. It was Natalie and Jasper, as opposed to Natalie and Piper, who were asleep in Natalie’s room. It was as if Piper had gone home after the movie, and Jasper and Natalie were asleep in their beds.

I texted Amelia again Saturday morning and didn’t hear back. I felt increasingly unmoored and didn’t know what to do with myself. I needed contact with the Straubs. I hadn’t seen them or spoken to them for a week.

Ian was now my only source of information. I made plans to meet him for dinner at a gastropub in the West Village. After dinner, we bundled up and walked down Greenwich Avenue through the crowd of pedestrians. After several blocks, we came to a red light and