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

I didn’t respond to her. I feared that my voice would give away my excitement. If I were able to see myself in a mirror, I would have looked sixteen, the effects of gravity on my body having been reversed. I was weightless.

Tears fell from Amelia’s eyes. She spoke through her sobs. “But you can’t betray us, betray our trust. I can’t survive with this kind of pain again.”

“I don’t know.” Fritz frowned and looked down. “This … It feels like too much to ask.” His voice shook. He didn’t seem completely comfortable with the idea, but neither did he have the energy to challenge Amelia directly.

“We want you to be our surrogate,” Amelia sobbed, then bit her lip and swallowed. “Of course, we’d figure out a way to compensate you.”

“I wouldn’t accept money.”

“Some kind of compensation,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right otherwise.” I could hear underlying panic in her voice. It was the fear that I might say no. Or that I might say yes and then change my mind. Amelia was desperate and her desperation made her vulnerable.

“Money isn’t…”

“We would be eternally grateful,” Amelia said.

“Of course,” Fritz said, “we’d be grateful.”

“Why would Delta want to?” Natalie chewed on her nails.

I placed my hand on Natalie’s shoulder. “The joy of bringing a life into the world.”

Her shoulder blades trembled. “I don’t believe that.”

“Natalie!” Amelia snapped.

“Don’t pretend that it’s any kind of favor to me.” Natalie stood and backed away from us.

“Stop it,” Amelia said to Natalie. “I apologize for Natalie’s behavior.” Amelia bowed her head. “You can’t know what a huge gift you’re giving us.”

“I want to be in a different family,” Natalie said.

Fritz held both hands up. “Enough.”

“Last week, Mom slapped me,” Natalie said loudly.

“Go to your room!” Amelia said.

Natalie ran to the stairs. We listened to the sound of her feet climbing two flights of stairs.

“Did you hit her?” Fritz said quietly.

“How dare you?” Amelia’s fury filled the room like smoke.

“I just don’t understand.…” he said.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Everyone’s nerves are frayed,” I said. “It’s so hard on all of you. Is it OK with you if I talk to her?” I looked at each of them, one at a time, waiting for a response. I took their silence as acquiescence.

Natalie’s door was ajar. I knocked softly.

“Come in.” She was lying on her bed, on top of the purple unicorn comforter.

I closed the door behind me.

“I hate this house,” Natalie said. “I want to live someplace else.” She lifted her legs up in the air, then alternated kicking them one at a time. “My mom didn’t actually slap me.”

“Of course she didn’t.” I was relieved, but at the same time I experienced a slight letdown. I wanted Natalie to need me. I wanted to be essential.

“My mom just wants a baby.” She rolled over onto her side so she could see me.

“I know.”

“She wants a baby so much more than she wants me. It’s ridiculous.” She made her mouth into a small O and blew out a tunnel of air. “I’m not that interesting.”

“Natalie…”

She sat up on her bed and hugged her knees into her chest. “She says she’s the only one in the family who carries her weight.”

“You’re a child.”

“She has to take care of everything.” She removed her bracelet. “Dad doesn’t work as hard as she does.” She pulled both ends of the elastic out, then let them snap back in. “My mom says she’s drowning.” She snapped the bracelet again. “She wishes I were more helpful.”

“Your mom is feeling bad lately, but it has absolutely nothing to do with you.” I studied the framed photograph of Natalie and her father on her desk. He was pushing her on a swing at a playground.

“I’m not making her happy.” She snapped the bracelet again and this time I was sure it would break. “She probably thought that I would at first.”

“Honey, you can’t expect to fix everything.” Natalie couldn’t, but I could. Astonishingly. I was in a position to make Amelia happy. The feeling of weightlessness from earlier returned.

Natalie held my gaze. “Sometimes I think some relative died and my mom and dad had to take me in. My mom acts like I ought to be someone else’s responsibility.”

She stood and walked to the window. Her third-floor bedroom, with its two large windows, faced a quiet street. In and among tree branches, it felt like a tree house.

She leaned her hands on the panes and pressed her face up to the glass. “I want to live with you,” she said.

“Natalie…” My pulse quickened. My shirt was damp with perspiration. I needed my relationship with Natalie to work alongside the surrogacy, not in competition. I thought about the most appropriate way to respond to her. She might repeat what I said to her parents. “I would do anything for you.”

“Let me stay with you,” she said.

“I’d love for you to stay with me. For a night or a weekend or even longer.”

“I mean live with you.”

“You don’t really want that. You … you just need time to process everything.”

“I’ve had a whole life with them,” she said. “I don’t need time.”

“Honey, it’s a rough patch,” I said. “Things will get better.”

“Please don’t be a surrogate,” she said. “You were my friend. And now they’ve taken you for themselves.”

I had increasing anxiety, recognizing that Natalie wasn’t going to accept the surrogacy easily. I needed to find a way to appease her. For my own peace of mind. I didn’t realize how much her unhappiness would weigh on me.

“Whether or not I’m a surrogate, it doesn’t change our friendship.”

She stared out the window. She was quiet for a few minutes.

My eyes landed on her green science folder. “How’s your science project going?”

She crossed to the desk, opened the science folder, and looked over her completed pages of work.

Natalie had spent time explaining each unicorn in her room to me, but hadn’t ever mentioned the large black unicorn lamp on her desk, and I hadn’t noticed it, perhaps because it was