The Surrogate

And more recently, Bentley had been bothered by Gus’s determination to find someone to blame for So

Not that Gus would harm Jamie Long, even if she tried to back out of her contract. The Hartma

Probably Jamie had miscarried or the insemination procedure had never worked in the first place and she had been dismissed.

Yes, something like that must have happened, Bentley assured himself. They had given her some money and sent her on her way. Any day now Gus probably would be calling to demand that he find another young woman to replace her.

Chapter Fifteen

IT HAD BEEN CHILLY when Jamie and Ralph began their walk, but now it was downright cold with a biting wind that cut right through her. And grayness had settled over the land, robbing it of beauty and making it seem inhospitable and cruel.

When she opened the door to her apartment, there were two boxes waiting for her-one of them quite large. True to her word, Amanda had sent her maternity clothes-jeans, knit shirts, sweaters, underwear, and two fla

She went to a window and focused the binoculars on a lone red-tailed hawk circling near the road and watched with fascination as it suddenly dove with breathtaking speed. Just when it seemed as though it would crash into the ground, the bird swooped upward with a small creature-a field mouse, probably-firmly held in a grasping foot. The powerful do prey on the weak, she thought philosophically. She wondered if the field mouse struggled or simply accepted its inevitable fate.

She put away the clothing and wrote a thank-you note to Amanda and slipped it under Miss Montgomery’s door. Then, more out of boredom than fatigue, she decided to take a nap. “Just an hour or so,” she told Ralph, who curled up beside her on the sofa.

She dozed until her di

Jamie selected an Amarillo station, more to hear a weather report than from any desire to know what was going on in the Panhandle’s largest city, and removed the domed cover from her di

After she’d put the di

When the film ended, Jamie turned out the light. But her mind refused to settle down.

Finally, she got up and paced up and down the living room, much to Ralph’s bewilderment. When the dog finally got so upset over her strange behavior that he began to whine, she stopped pacing and heated a cup of milk in the microwave. She had just taken the first sip when she heard a key in the lock. Ralph heard it, too. His crooked tail began to wag in expectation.

Mary Millicent had on the same black lace nightgown as before with a tattered quilt around her shoulders and men’s argyle socks on her feet. “You’re not in bed,” she noted.

“No, I’m having trouble sleeping,” Jamie explained.

“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

“What makes you ask?”

“I hear and see things,” Mary Millicent said with a girlish giggle. “The witch and the nurse talk in front of me sometimes. They think I’m just a crazy old woman and don’t pay me any mind. I always had trouble sleeping when I was pregnant. It gets your whole body out of whack.”

Mary Millicent placed a hand on Jamie’s abdomen. “Yep. Between four and five months, I’d say. Felt any quickening yet?”

“No,” Jamie said, moving away from the woman’s touch. Quickening. The nurse had asked her the same thing and then explained that the term meant a woman had reached the stage in pregnancy when she could feel the fetus move. Jamie had no choice but to talk to Nurse Freda about such things, but she didn’t have to discuss it with other people.

Or even to think about it.

“It’s time you met So

“So

“Might as well be,” Mary Millicent said.

“Where is he?” Jamie asked.

Mary Millicent shook her head and put a finger to her lips. Then she grabbed Jamie’s hand and pulled her along as she tiptoed across the room and carefully opened the door. Jamie closed the door behind them.

Hand in hand they walked down the long, silent corridor. When they reached the entrance to the tiny chapel, Mary Millicent pulled Jamie inside. For an instant, Jamie thought Mary Millicent was going to kneel in front of the softly lit altar. Instead the old woman pushed on one side of it.

Jamie watched in amazement as the altar and the wall behind it swung inward. Mary Millicent stepped inside and switched on a light, revealing a bare wooden staircase. She waved Jamie through the opening, pushed the hidden door back in place, and started up the stairs.

Jamie followed as Mary Millicent slowly climbed, pausing on each step. At the top of the staircase she found herself in an octagon-shaped room that smelled of disinfectant. Half of the room was cordoned off with heavy curtains, like those used in hospital rooms. This side of the room held a large reclining chair, a small table with a lamp, and a second flight of stairs that disappeared into an opening above.

Jamie held back, not sure she wanted to see what was behind the curtain, but Mary Millicent pulled it back, revealing a metal bed with railings. On the bed, lying on his back, was the slight form of a person with longish blond hair.

“Come meet So

Slowly Jamie approached the bed.

She stared down at the wasted body on the bed. His eyes were closed, his cheeks sunken, his chin covered with stubble, but his hair looked as though it had just been brushed. “Is he conscious?” she whispered.

“Sometimes he mumbles and moves his arms and legs,” Mary Millicent said, “and every once in a while he opens his eyes and looks at me, but I’m not sure he sees me.”