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

eye contact. I felt the pounding of my heart in my body. Then he looked away. Natalie joined us in the kitchen and sat on the floor, petting Itzhak while Fritz drank his beer. He didn’t touch the tea.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I heard the front door open, the wind shrieking, and then silence after the door slammed shut. Amelia appeared in the kitchen. She had dark circles underneath her red, swollen eyes and appeared thinner than the last time I’d seen her.

Without a word, she crossed to the sink, turned on the faucet, and vigorously splashed water onto her face, spilling it onto her dress and the floor as well. She dried her hands with a paper towel, but didn’t bother to wipe up the puddle on the floor.

Amelia carefully dabbed her lips with the paper towel, then her forehead and then her cheeks. “I have a right to say goodbye to the baby.”

“What do you mean?” Fritz took a large sip of his beer.

“I believed that I was her mother.” Amelia’s voice shifted into a higher register. “I bonded with the baby. My heart has been ripped from my chest.” She rolled the wet paper towel into a small ball.

Fritz crossed toward Amelia and put his hands on her shoulders. “You have us, babe.”

She pushed him away as if his hands burnt her skin through her dress. “I’m dying.”

Seated on the floor next to Itzhak, Natalie twisted a rubber band around her hair to create a ponytail.

“Amelia,” Fritz said. “You need a therapist or a counselor.”

“It’s deep grief.” Amelia pulled on her ear, like a baby with an earache.

“You need spiritual guidance.” Natalie stood and sat back down on one of the counter stools.

Amelia turned to look at Natalie as if noticing her for the first time. “Hmm?”

“Maybe our rabbi,” Natalie said.

“We don’t have a rabbi.”

“At the synagogue.”

“We don’t have a synagogue.”

“Any synagogue will do.”

Amelia looked at her daughter as though she were speaking another language. The frayed hem of Amelia’s dress and the scuff marks on her boots did not comport with the charismatic, glamorous woman I’d met several months earlier. The roots of her hair were gray and greasy. Her shine had completely worn off. She wasn’t trying and failing. She had stopped trying altogether.

Amelia had yet to recognize my presence. I was used to feeling invisible, but even so, her lack of acknowledgment elicited a hollow feeling in my gut.

I considered excusing myself, out of a sense of propriety, but I owed it to myself to embrace the opportunities I’d created.

“I don’t want a baby if this is what happens to you.” Fritz spoke in a dry voice. “I don’t know you.”

“Then I suppose we go our separate ways.” Amelia opened up one of the kitchen cabinets. She looked at the expiration date on a box of crackers and tossed it into the trash. I questioned whether the crackers were actually expired.

“Jesus Christ.” Fritz downed the last of his beer and deposited the bottle under the sink with a loud crash. “Do you have any concern for your daughter’s feelings?” I imagined that he said the line “concern for your daughter’s feelings” often and by rote because it made him sound responsible and caring.

Fritz crossed to the fridge for another beer.

Amelia picked up a bottle of Fernando Pensato olive oil and studied the label, again looking for an expiration date. She poured the bottle of expensive olive oil into the sink. It splashed onto her blouse, but she seemed oblivious to it. She smelled the opening of the empty bottle and wrinkled her nose, confirming to herself that she’d been right in pouring it out.

“You have no compassion,” she said to Fritz. “You have no empathy.”

I stood and clasped my hands together. “Can I try to help you both? I want to help you have a child.”

Amelia startled at the sound of my voice. She turned to me with a bewildered expression. She had the glassy eyes and blotchy cheeks of someone with a high fever. “What are you going to do?”

“Whatever you want me to do.” In order to achieve my dream, I needed to believe that this was true—that I was willing to do anything in order to help their family.

“What are you talking about?” She put her head in her hands and looked to the heavens in a dramatic gesture.

“Carrying the baby?” Fritz’s eyes locked on mine, and then he turned to Amelia. “I think she means carrying the baby.”

I heard faint bells in the distance. “I mean anything.”

“Carrying the child. Surrogacy.” Amelia steadied herself with one hand, her fingers clutching the kitchen island so hard, they turned white.

“Yes, surrogacy.” I didn’t have enough saliva in my mouth to swallow easily. “Or anything else.”

I looked for answers in Amelia but just saw confusion and rigidity.

“I don’t even understand what surrogacy means,” Natalie said, swiveling on her chair.

Amelia furrowed her brow. I could tell she wasn’t in the mood for explanations.

“Well,” Fritz began tentatively, “a surrogate is a woman who helps people have a baby.”

“How?” Natalie asked.

“She carries the baby for someone who can’t,” he said.

“In her stomach?”

“Yes.”

“That’s weird,” Natalie said. “Like she’s a mom but she’s not a mom.”

“Shut up, Natalie!” Amelia said.

I couldn’t bear to hear Amelia speak harshly to her daughter. I walked over to where Natalie was seated and stood behind her protectively. Her frame looked so vulnerable from behind. I could practically feel Amelia’s words penetrating her.

“Delta, I need to understand.” Amelia’s hand wandered through her hair like a butterfly, without any real direction. “Are you offering to be a surrogate for our family?”

“I love your family so much.” Everything I wanted was in front of me, but I sensed that one mistake could undermine all of it.

Amelia held me by my forearms, her fingers covered in olive oil. “If you’re offering to be a surrogate for our family”—she looked into my eyes—“my answer is yes and my gratitude knows no bounds.”

A current of air lifted me up off the