Chapter 3: The Woman Who Didn't Know
I stared at her name on the screen.
*Diane.*
For three seconds I didn't move.
Then I told Jamie I'd call her back, switched lines, and pressed the phone to my ear.
"Hello?"
"Nora." Her voice was smaller than I'd ever heard it.
Diane had always been a woman who filled a room — opinions ready, posture straight, the kind of person who corrected your grammar at Thanksgiving.
This voice belonged to someone else.
"I need to talk to you.
I know I have no right to ask."
"You can talk," I said.
I kept my voice flat.
I didn't trust myself with anything warmer.
"Jamie told me some of it." A pause.
"I need to hear it from you.
All of it.
What you actually did.
What those two years actually cost you."
I sat down on the edge of the couch.
"You really didn't know?"
"He told me it was a work bonus." Her breath caught.
"Two bonuses.
He said the company had a good year.
I never questioned it.
I just — I accepted it.
I let him take care of it and I didn't ask." Another pause, longer.
"That was wrong of me.
I should have asked."
Something cracked open in my chest.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But something.
"I carried two pregnancies for other families," I said.
"The first one was hard.
The second one nearly broke me.
My back still isn't right.
I had to see a specialist for my hormones for eight months after." I stopped.
"Ethan was in the spare room by the third trimester.
Said I was keeping him up."
Diane made a sound I couldn't name.
"He told me you'd grown apart," she said.
"That you'd both changed.
That the marriage had just — run its course."
"He left me for Kayla two weeks after the second surrogacy payment cleared."
Silence.
"Nora, I'm so sorry."
"I know you are." I meant it.
"But sorry doesn't tell me why you're calling."
She took a breath.
"Because I went through his things this morning.
After Jamie called me.
I went to the house — he gave me a key years ago — and I found something in his desk drawer.
Something I think you need to see."
I stood up without thinking.
"What did you find?"
"A folder," Diane said.
"With your name on it.
And Kayla's.
And a third name I don't recognize." Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"Nora, there are contracts in here.
Signed contracts.
And the dates on them — the first one is from before you agreed to the first surrogacy."
The room went very still.
"He planned this," I said.
It wasn't a question.
"I think so," Diane whispered.
"I think he planned all of it."
I looked at the wall across from me.
At the small framed photo of our daughter that I'd kept up because taking it down felt like admitting something I wasn't ready to admit.
"Diane, don't touch that folder.
Don't move anything."
May you like
"Okay."
"I'm coming over."
