“We wanted to start a family, but your medical history was an impediment. You’d had several miscarriages during your first marriage, and it was determined that you had an incompetent uterus.” He leans in and gives me a sympathetic look. “Are you sure you want to hear all of this now?”
My nails are digging into my hands, and I lick my upper lip, tasting the salty perspiration that has formed there. The word incompetent rings in my head like a braying taunt. An incompetent brain. An incompetent uterus. Can my body do anything right? “Yes, go on.”
“That’s why we hired a surrogate to carry Valentina.”
I lean back. I think of Gabriel’s insistence that I ask for a DNA test. “It was my egg, right? Not the surrogate’s?”
His eyes widen in surprise, and he cocks his head. “Yes. We used your egg and my sperm. But you were very jealous of the woman who carried her. Began to believe I was in love with her. That we were plotting against you. That’s when you started on medication.”
My mind is going in a million different directions, and I can’t keep up with the images bombarding me. I’m imagining another husband somewhere, a blank face, a woman carrying my child. It’s too much. I put a hand up. “Please, stop. You’re right. I need some time to process this.” I put my head in my hands, trying to stem the nausea I feel. After a few deep breaths I look at Julian again. “Does the surrogate have contact with Valentina?”
He raises his chin and gives me a look that scares me. “No.”
“Where is she?”
He stands and walks to the window. “This isn’t doing you any good right now. Let’s take things one step at a time.” He turns to look at me. “I’m going to ask Valentina’s nanny Lucy to keep her a few days more. I think it’s too soon to bring her home. You need a little more time.”
I look down at my hands, clasped together in my lap. Without raising my eyes, I say, “What happened to the surrogate, Julian?”
He continues to stare out the window. “When you’re ready. I promise I’ll tell you everything when you’re ready.”
I think about this. “What if I’m never ready?”
He walks back to where I’m sitting and stoops in front of me, placing a hand on my knee. “I think it would be better if you could try to remember on your own rather than my telling you everything. Sometimes hypnosis helps. When you feel ready, we can try that.”
I straighten my back and look him in the eye. “I’m ready to start. It’s been two years. I don’t want to waste another day.”
??36??
Addison
Nothing here is familiar. I keep waiting for something, anything, to trigger my memory, but that hasn’t happened. I’ve gone through photo albums, looking at Valentina, the daughter I don’t remember. Her nanny will bring her home this afternoon, and I will see her for the first time since I’ve arrived. I’m nervous, worried she’ll realize that she’s a stranger to me. Julian assures me that the therapy I’ll begin next week will help me to recover my memories, which is why he hasn’t tried to fill in all the blanks for me. I agree with him that it’s more important for me to try and remember the rest on my own than to have him narrate every detail of my life. It’s the only way I’ll be able to determine if my memories are accurate or if I’m thinking I’m remembering details based on what he tells me. I’m grateful, though, to have a short reprieve before I discover things that I suspect will be very difficult to handle.
I’ve become more comfortable in the house now, and my favorite room is the library. Mahogany bookcases filled with beautiful leather-bound classics line the walls, and a burgundy Oriental carpet covers the floor. I could sit for hours in the peace and quiet of this grand room, burrowing into one of the deep leather chairs with a downy throw around my legs. When I am here, the memory of what I’ve left behind in Philadelphia is a tiny bit less painful.
Even though it’s only been a few weeks since I arrived, it feels like years. I miss Gabriel so much I feel like I can’t breathe at times. When he called me last night, Julian didn’t say anything, but I could tell by his manner that he would prefer him to leave me alone. If the future holds a life here with my husband and child, the time to break all ties with Gabriel will have to come, but I’m not yet ready to do that. Before we hung up, I told him that I loved him and always would. And that I hated myself for the hurt I’ve caused him.