I make all the rules, he said.
I think my whole life, all I've wanted is to be part of whatever club my brother belongs to.
Wade is still questioning him when I focus my attention again. "How long have you known Zoe Baxter?"
"She sang at my wedding to Liddy. That was the first time we met, and she went on to date my brother."
"How did you two get along?" Wade asks.
Reid smiles sheepishly. "Let's just say we have different philosophies of life."
"Did you see Zoe often during her marriage to your brother?" Wade continues.
"Not more than a couple of times each year."
"Did you have knowledge of their fertility problems?"
"Yes," Reid says. "In fact, at one point my brother even came to me for help."
I feel my pulse start to race. I had not been present at Wade's sessions with Reid, the ones where he instructed him on what to say in response to these questions. If I had, I'd have known what was about to come.
"We met for lunch," Reid explains. "I knew that he and Zoe had done in vitro a couple of times, and Max told me that not only was it taking a huge emotional toll on them as a couple . . . but it was taking an enormous financial toll on them as well." He looks up at me. "Max had told Zoe that he'd find a way to pay for a fifth cycle of IVF, but he didn't know how. He couldn't remortgage his house, because he was a renter. He'd already sold off some of his business equipment. He needed ten thousand dollars to give the clinic, and he didn't know where else to go."
I do not look at her, but I can feel Zoe's hot glare on my cheek. I never told her about this lunch. I never told her anything, except that I'd find a way for her to have that baby, no matter what.
"What did you do, Mr. Baxter?"
"What any brother would have done," Reid says. "I wrote him a check."
Angela Moretti asks for a recess. Mostly because I think she's afraid that Zoe is about to come at me with her claws bared.
It wasn't like I was trying to lie to her, or hide the fact that Reid gave us the money for that last fresh cycle we did at the clinic. But we were buried in debt; I couldn't put another ten thousand on a credit card or find any other way to leverage the cost. I also couldn't stand the thought of telling her we'd run out of money. What kind of loser would that have made me?
I just wanted to make her happy. I didn't want her thinking about what we'd owe if and when we ever had that baby.
It's not like Reid ever asked me for the money back, either. I think we both knew it wasn't a loan, more like a donation. What he said to me, as he scrawled his name across the bottom of the check, was I know if the situation were reversed, Max, you'd do anything you could to help me.
When Zoe comes back to the courtroom, she doesn't make eye contact with me. She stares straight ahead at a spot to the right of the judge, while her lawyer gets up to cross-examine Reid. "So you're buying a baby," Angela Moretti begins.
"No. That money was a gift."
"But you did give your brother ten thousand dollars, which was used to create those embryos whose custody you're now seeking, correct?"
"Yes."
"And you have a right to these embryos because you bought them, don't you?" Angela presses.
"I have a moral responsibility to make sure they're raised properly," he says.
"That's not what I asked. You believe you have a right to these embryos because you bought them, isn't that correct, Mr. Baxter?"
In all the time we have been talking about Reid and Liddy having these babies, Reid has never brought up that check he wrote me. He's never said anything to make me feel like I owe him now because of what he did for me then.
Reid looks down, carefully working through his words before he speaks them. "If it weren't for me," he says finally, "these children wouldn't even exist."
When the judge decides he's had enough for one day, I jump up before Wade can stop me and I run out of the courtroom. I have to shove past a group of Westboro folks, who call out that they are on my side.
When did this become a war?
As soon as I burst out of the courthouse, a mob of reporters surges forward. When I hear Wade's voice at my back, my knees nearly buckle with relief. "My client has no comment," he says, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and steers me through the walkway toward the parking lot. "Don't you ever do that again to me," he hisses in my ear. "You go nowhere until I tell you you can go. I am not going to let you fuck this up, Max."
I stop walking and stretch to my full six feet. I jab a finger in his fancy-ass tailored shirt. "You," I say, "work for me."
But this isn't one hundred percent true, either. Because Reid paid for Wade, too.
This makes me want to smash my fist into something, anything. Wade's face is tempting, but instead, I flatten my hand against his chest and give him a shove, enough to make him stumble. I head to my truck and I don't look back.
I think I know where I'm going even before I get there. There is a spot in Newport near Ruggles Avenue where there are some rocks, and on days when the surf is firing, it's got the most incredible break I've ever seen.
It's also a place where you might get totally pounded.
My shortboard is in the back of my truck. I strip down to my underwear and get into the wet suit that I always keep in the backseat, just in case. Then I work my way down through the rocks and into the water, careful to keep from getting axed on the inside.
There aren't any groms bobbing in the water--it's just me, and the most beautiful curls I've ever seen.
I don't know why the problems I have on land look different in the ocean. Maybe it's the way I'm so much smaller than what's around me. Maybe it's knowing that, even if I get trashed, I can paddle out and do it all over again.
If you haven't surfed, you can't understand the pull of the sport. No matter what Pastor Clive does or says, it's the closest I've ever felt to God. It's the strangest combination of absolute serenity and mad exhilaration. There you are, in the lineup waiting until you see a wave take off. You pump your arms, paddling like crazy, until like magic the foam becomes a wing underneath you and the wave takes over. And you're flying. You're flying, and then, just when you think your heart is going to burst outside your skin, it's over.
A swell rises underneath my board, and I turn to see a tube forming behind me. I pull myself upright and sneak into the shoulder end, riding the barrel as the wave shuts down around me, and then I am falling, tumbling, underwater, not sure which way is up.
I break the surface, my lungs on fire, my hair matted down, and my ears throbbing from the cold. This, I understand. This, I am good at.
Very intentionally, I stay out after sunset. I wrap myself in a blanket and sit on the edge of the rocks and watch the moon take a few turns riding the waves. My head is pounding and my shoulder aches from a nasty fall and I've swallowed about a gallon of salt water. I cannot even begin to describe how thirsty I am, how much I'd kill for a beer. But I also know, if I get into my truck, I'll head right to a bar and have that beer, so instead I wait until it's past last call at most places, and then allow myself to drive back home.
All the lights are off at Reid's house, which makes sense, since it's nearly three in the morning by the time I pull into the driveway. I turn the key in the lock and leave my shoes on the porch so that I won't disturb anyone while I'm creeping inside.
I sneak into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and see her sitting at the kitchen table like a ghost. Liddy's white cotton nightgown swirls around her ankles like sea foam as she stands up to face me. "Thank God," she says. "Where have you been?"
"I went surfing. I needed to clear my head."
"I tried to call you. I was worried."
I saw her messages on my cell. I deleted them, without listening. I had to, although I can't explain why.
"I haven't been drinking, if that's what you're getting at," I say.
"I wasn't. I was just . . . I wanted to call the hospital, but Reid said you were a b
ig boy and could take care of yourself."
I see the phone book, open on the table, and feel a pang of remorse. "I didn't mean to keep you up. You have a big day tomorrow."
"Can't sleep anyway. Reid took some Ambien, and he's snoring to beat the band."
Liddy sits down on the floor, her back aligned against the wall. When she pats the spot beside her, I sit, too. For a minute we are quiet, listening to the house settle around us. "Remember The Time Machine?"
"Sure." It was a movie we saw a few years back, a particularly cheesy one, that was about a time traveler who gets lost in space and stuck 800,000 years in the future.
"Would you want to see the future, even if you knew you couldn't change it?" she asks.
I consider this. "I don't know. I think it might hurt too much."
When she leans her head against my shoulder, I swear I stop breathing. "I used to read these mystery books when I was a little girl, where you could choose a different path at the end of every chapter. And depending on what you picked, the outcome changed."
I can smell her soap--mango and mint--and the shampoo she uses, which sometimes I steal out of her bathroom and use myself.
"I used to skip to the back of the book and read all the endings and pick the one I liked the best . . . and then I'd try to figure it out backward." She laughs a little. "It never worked. I could never make things happen the way I wanted."
The first time Liddy saw snow, the time I was with her to witness it, she held out her hand to catch a snowflake on her palm. Look at the pattern, she said, and she held it out to me so I could see. By then, though, it was already gone.
"Reid told me what he said today in court."
I look down at the floor. I don't know what I'm supposed to say.
"I know that Reid can be--well, a bully sometimes. I know he acts like he owns the whole wide world. I know it better than anyone else, except maybe you. I also know that you're wondering why you're doing this, Max." Liddy comes up on her knees and leans closer, so that her hair falls forward. She puts her hand on my cheek. Then, slowly, she kisses me. "You're doing it for me," she whispers.
I am waiting to wake up from this hellish, wonderful dream; certain that at any minute I will find a doctor peering over me and telling me that last wipeout left me with a massive concussion. I grab Liddy's wrist before she can pull it away from my face. Her skin is warm, buttery.
I kiss her back. God, yes, I kiss her back. I cradle her face in my hands and I try to pour into her everything I've never been allowed to say. I wait for her to pull away, to slap me, but in this alternate world there is enough room for both of us. I grab the hem of her nightgown and inch it up, so that her legs can wrap around mine; I yank my shirt over my head so that she can kiss the salt from my shoulder blades. I lay her down. I love her.
Afterward, when reality settles in and I can feel the hard tile under my hip and the heaviness of her draped across me, I find myself in a total fucking panic.
All my life, I've dreamed of being like my brother, and now I am.
Like Reid, I want something that doesn't belong to me.
When I wake up on the kitchen floor, I am alone and wearing my boxers and Reid is standing over me. "Look at what the cat dragged in," he says. "I told Liddy you had nine lives." He's dressed impeccably, and he's holding a mug of coffee. "Better hop in the shower, or you're going to be late for court."
"Where is she?"
"Sick as a dog," Reid says. "Running a fever, apparently. She wanted to stay home, but I told her she's the next witness."
I grab my clothes and hurry upstairs. I should get ready, like Reid said, but instead I knock on the closed door of Liddy and Reid's bedroom. "Liddy?" I whisper. "Liddy, you okay?"
The door opens a crack. Liddy is wearing a bathrobe. She pulls it tight at the collar, as if I haven't already seen everything underneath anyway. Her cheeks are flushed. "I can't talk to you."
I wedge my foot in the door so she can't close it on me. "It doesn't have to be like this. Last night, you were--"
"A sinner," Liddy interrupts, her eyes filling with tears. "Last night I was married. I'm still married, Max. And I want a baby."
"We can figure it out. We can tell the court--"
"Tell the court what? That the baby should go to the couple with the wife who's cheating on her husband? The wife that loves her husband's brother? That's not quite anyone's definition of a traditional family, Max."
But I barely hear the last sentence. "You love me?"
She ducks her head. "The guy I fell for was willing to give the most important thing ever--his child--to me for safekeeping. The guy I fell for loves God, like me. The guy I fell for would never think of hurting his brother. Last night didn't happen, Max. Because if it did--then you're not that guy anymore."
She closes the door, but I just stand there, unable to move. Reid's footsteps echo down the hallway as he approaches. When he sees me in front of his bedroom door, he frowns and looks at his watch. "You aren't ready yet?"
I swallow. "No," I tell him. "I guess not."
On the witness stand, Liddy can't stop shaking. She tucks her hands underneath her legs, but even then, I can see shudders going through her. "I always talked about being a mother," she says. "In high school, my girlfriends and I would make up names for the babies we'd have. I had it all planned out even before I got married."
When she says the word married, her voice breaks.
"I have the perfect life. Reid and I have this beautiful home, and he makes a good living as a portfolio manager. And according to the Bible, the point of marriage is to have children."
"Have you and your husband tried to conceive?" Wade asks.
"Yes. For years." She looks down at her lap. "We were just going to look into Snowflakes Adoption. But then Max . . . Max came to us with another idea."
"Do you have a strong relationship with your brother-in-law?"
Liddy's face drains of color. "Yes."
"How did you react when he told you he wanted to give his pre-born children to you and your husband?"
"I thought that God had answered my prayers."
"Did you ask him why he didn't want to raise the children himself? Maybe at a later date?"
"Reid did," she admits. "Max told us that he didn't think he'd be good at it. He had made too many mistakes. He wanted his children to grow up with a mother and a father who . . . who loved each other."
"Have you had much interaction with children?"
For the first time since she's gotten into that chair, she brightens. "I run the Sunday School program at our church. And I organize a youth ministry camp during the summers. I love kids."
"If the court saw fit to give you these pre-born children," Wade asks, "how would you raise them?"
"To be good Christians," Liddy says. "To do the right thing." As soon as she says it, her face crumples. "I'm sorry," she sobs.
Across from me, Zoe shifts. Today she is dressed in black, like she's in mourning. She stares at Liddy as if she's the Antichrist.
Wade pulls a crimson silk handkerchief from his suit jacket pocket and hands it to Liddy to wipe her eyes. "Your witness," he says, and he turns to Zoe's lawyer.
Angela Moretti stands and tugs on the hem of her suit jacket to straighten it. "What can you give these embryos that their biological mother can't?"
"Opportunities," Liddy says. "A stable Christian home."
"So you think that money is all it takes to raise children?"
"Of course not. They would live in a loving household."
"When was the last time you spent a few hours with Zoe and Vanessa?"
"I . . . I haven't . . ."
"So you don't really know what kind of love their household is filled with, do you?"
"I know it's immoral," Liddy says.
"So it's Zoe's sexual orientation that makes her an unfit mother? Is that your testimony?"
Liddy hesitates. "I didn't say that. I just think that Reid and I--we're the better opt
ion for these children."
"What kind of contraception do you use?" Angela asks.
Liddy blushes. "I don't use any."
I have a sudden flash of last night, her head turned so that her throat was exposed, her back arched beneath me. "How often do you and your husband have sex?"
"Objection!"
"I'll allow it," the judge says. Dirty old man.
"Answer the question, Mrs. Baxter."
"Thursdays," Liddy says.
Thursdays? Once a week? Like clockwork? If Liddy were my wife, I'd be in the shower with her every morning. I'd grab her when she walked by me at the dinner table and pull her onto my lap--
"Do you time intercourse so that you might be able to get pregnant?"
"Yes--"
"Have you ever been pregnant?"
"Yes . . . several times . . . but I've miscarried."
"Do you even know if you can carry a baby to term?"
"Does anyone?" Liddy asks.
Atta girl.
"You realize that if you get these embryos and they're transferred to you, you may still not have a live birth."
"Or," Liddy points out, "I could have triplets."
"You said that, in the Bible, the point of marriage is to have children?"
"Yes."
"So if God wanted you to have children, wouldn't you have had them already?"
"I . . . I think He has a different plan for us," Liddy says.
The lawyer nods. "Of course. God wants you to become a substitute mother by depriving a biological mother of the same right."
"Objection!" Wade says.
"Let me rephrase," Angela says. "Do you agree that what you want most in the world is to have and raise a child?"
Liddy's eyes, which have been trained so carefully on Angela Moretti, slide toward me. My mouth feels like it's full of broken glass. "Yes," she says.
"Do you agree that not being able to have a biological child is devastating? Heartbreaking?"
"Yes."
"And yet, isn't that exactly the fate to which you consign Zoe Baxter, if you take her embryos?"
Liddy turns toward Zoe, her eyes full of tears. "I would raise these babies like they're my own," she whispers.
The words pull Zoe out of her seat. "They're not yours," she replies, quietly at first, and then more forcefully. "They're mine!"
The judge bangs his gavel. "Ms. Moretti, control your client!"