“Does it mean,” he asked, “that you’re not really married to the other guy?”

“That’s a little unclear. He’s dead now.”

“Oh.” He looked sympathetic, and I felt stabbed through with remorse. He wasn’t a bad guy, and he’d never done anything except try to help me. I had treated him poorly, and being young and mistreated myself wasn’t much of an excuse.

The papers I’d sent David, my petition for divorce, were in a drawer in the kitchen, still in the envelope I’d used to mail them. I felt my heart stutter, looking at my teenage handwriting, big and loopy, young and hopeful. I’d called a lawyer from the train that morning. In David’s apartment I called her again, and she said she’d meet us in her office in an hour. The rules, as she explained them when we arrived, were clear: I’d filed papers, but David had never signed them, which made me guilty of bigamy. “We can file for leniency,” she told us, and David had nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can to make this right.” My mind wandered while they talked. I wondered what would happen: if my marriage hadn’t been legal, then maybe Marcus couldn’t have left me anything. Maybe not even the baby was mine. I wondered, too, why David had never remarried, whether there’d been a string of teenage girls in the years since we’d parted or if maybe he was still in love with me.

Less than an hour, the lawyer had said, but by the time everything was signed and notarized it was closer to two, and then we were back out on the sticky sidewalk, underneath a low gray sky. The first hard thing was done. I was divorced. I’d made it over the hurdle. But worse was coming.

“Is my mother…”

He shook his head and took my hands. “I saw her obituary in the paper, maybe six or seven years ago.”

“Oh.” I tried to remember something good about her, the way she’d looked when she was young, how she’d smiled at me like I was the best thing she’d ever seen, the stories she’d whispered in my ear, curled up next to me in the bed that had once been hers. I knew better than to even ask about my half sisters. They’d been little girls when I’d lived here, and I didn’t think I’d ever told David their names.

He walked me to the bus stop and gave me an awkward hug. “I wish you well,” he said. “I always did.” I nodded, knowing I didn’t deserve his good wishes, knowing I couldn’t answer him without crying.

The bus pulled out of the station at six o’clock. By nine, I was back in the city. By nine-forty-five, I was walking up the five flights of stairs to my old single-girl apartment. I took off my shoes and lay on top of the narrow bed, fully dressed, without turning on the lights. Tears slid down my cheeks and pooled in my ears. Tomorrow I’d get up, get dressed, leave the last vestiges of my girlhood behind, go back to the grand apartment, and be a mother.


JULES

I’d tried calling Kimmie the night after Bettina had made her proposition, but her cell phone just rang and rang. The e-mails I sent over the next ten days went unanswered, which I knew because I was checking my BlackBerry approximately every five minutes, prompting Rajit to deliver a barrage of snide remarks about the charming new tic I’d developed.

“Did your boyfriend forget to call?” he smirked, thumbs in his suspenders, monogrammed cuffs flapping.

“My girlfriend,” I said coolly. It was out of my mouth before I’d known I was going to say it. Rajit’s mouth hung open for a gratifying instant.

“Oh, my,” he said, almost to himself. “Well. That’ll give me something to think about this weekend.” Normally I would have ignored him, but today I straightened myself to my full height, which was at least three inches more than Rajit’s.

“You’re disgusting,” I said pleasantly. “I just want you to know that. You’re a horrible human being, and I’ll bet your parents would be ashamed if they knew how you treated people.” Then I turned off my computer, shouldered my bag, and, head held high, walked out the door to a smattering of applause and a single wolf-whistle.

It was seven o’clock, still light, but getting cooler. I wondered how long it had been since I’d left the office before the sun set. Most of my colleagues wouldn’t make it home for hours. I took the subway uptown and dashed up the stairs two at a home, stationing myself in front of Kimmie’s building’s front door. I had a key, but it didn’t seem right to use it. After about twenty minutes I saw her round the corner in her black tank top, with her backpack bouncing on her narrow shoulders and her hair tucked up into a twist. I ran to meet her.

“Hey.”

She looked up, then quickly looked down and kept on walking. “Hi,” she said, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it.

I caught up so that I was walking alongside her. I’d lost my father. I’d probably torpedoed my job. I didn’t have any real friends in the city, just colleagues and acquaintances, same as it had been in college. I’d been so lonely, lonely for years until I’d met her. I couldn’t bear the thought of being that lonely again.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed her by her upper arms, and spun her around, and kissed her.

Her backpack slipped off her shoulders. My bag fell onto the sidewalk. Somebody hooted, and someone else yelled, “Get you some!” but I didn’t care. Her lips were stiff underneath mine, but they softened as I held her.

Then she pushed me away. “What was that about?”

“I don’t want to lose you,” I said. “I couldn’t stand that. I’m sorry I’m so… so slow about these things, but I just. . I really. .” I blurted out the only thing I could think of at that moment. “There’s a baby. From my egg. The baby’s half sister got in touch with me. They’re here, in New York.”

Kimmie bent down, picking up her backpack, brushing it off before slipping it back on. Then she smiled, showing me her tiny, even teeth. “You’re making a spectacle,” she said. She squeezed my hand. “What’s the baby’s name?”

“Rory.” I walked close enough to her that our hips bumped as we made our way back toward her apartment, holding her hand, toward the tiny metal-walled elevator, the hallway that smelled like air freshener and chicken soup. The evening would unfold in its ordered, wonderful familiarity. We’d cook something, noodles and stir-fry or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. We’d spoon ice cream into mugs and snuggle on the couch, watching the shows we’d taped, and I would tell her about Bettina’s call, about the grand apartment, about the baby. In bed with her, I’d feel safe in a way I’d once been at the dining-room table with my father, working on my homework, knowing that he was there to help. I smiled, wondering what I’d done to deserve her, to deserve such happiness.


ANNIE

My train got into Philadelphia just after eleven o’clock in the morning. It was noisy in the echoing station, where the floors were made of marble and the ceilings soared thirty feet high. The air that August morning was still and sticky, smelling like hot pretzels from a stand set up in front of the information board. I stepped off the staircase, and there was Frank, standing next to one of the curved wooden benches, waiting for me. Instead of his work clothes, he wore a clean pair of khakis and a short-sleeved jersey shirt, with sneakers, instead of heavy workboots, on his feet. PHILADELPHIA AVIATION ACADEMY, read the logo on his shirt.

I walked toward him slowly, wondering what it meant that he was here. Normally Nancy picked me up, with the boys in the car, and took me home. The house would be clean, the bed I’d shared with Frank would be neatly made, but there would be no sign of him. We’d agreed, in a terse conversation, to keep things as normal as possible. Frank would spend time with the boys during the daytime, when he wasn’t working, and he’d stay for dinner, if he was home. Then he’d slip out once they were sleeping and go to his parents’ house for the night.

We hadn’t told the boys anything, because there didn’t seem to be much to say: we were in limbo, separated but still technically living together, married but leading separate lives. For the time being, I’d told Frank Junior and Spencer that the baby I’d had in my tummy was in New York with her parents, and that I was helping to take care of her while she was still little. They had accepted this without question or comment. I suspected that Frank Junior thought that because the baby was a girl, she would naturally require more care than he had.

Frank stood up when he saw me. “Hi,” he said shyly, looking me over as I approached him. I set my duffel bag by my feet and sat down on the bench, and he sat beside me. “You look pretty.”

I touched my hair, wondering how I really looked to him. I hadn’t gained much weight with the pregnancy — being too upset to eat for much of the third trimester had helped with that — and I was only a few pounds away from being back to where I’d been when this whole thing had started.

“Were the boys good for you?”

He grinned. “Spencer used the potty all day.”

“He did?” I was delighted. He used the potty for me, but I usually put him in a pull-up before I left for the city, and I’d assumed that’s what Frank was doing, too.

“How is the baby?” Frank asked.

“She’s beautiful. An angel.” I felt my throat thicken, a hint of the sadness that came over me when I nursed and held the baby that wasn’t really mine, that there were no daughters in my future.

“Rory,” he said. “I like that name.”

“Me, too.”

“So,” he said, and settled his hands on his legs. “You like New York?”

“It’s fine. I miss the boys when I’m away. But the money will help.” Bettina had insisted on paying me a thousand dollars for the day and night I was up there, much too much money, I told her, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“I miss them, too. At night.” He pressed his lips together like he wanted to suck the words back into his mouth. Then, he said, “I miss us being a family. I miss you.”

I didn’t answer. I’d done the hardest work of my life, the thing none of the clone-girls in that story I’d read had done. I had broken free from my destiny. I had taken myself to the city, found money and a place to live. I could stay — Bettina hadn’t come right out and said it, but I knew if I offered to work as a nanny, she’d hire me, and I could bring the boys to New York and find a place for us there. I could have people like I’d had back in high school, people to talk to, to eat with. The whole world lay open before me. . and now Frank probably wanted me to turn away from it, to come home and be what I was before.

“You weren’t wrong to be upset with me,” said Frank. Startled, I turned to look at him. His eyes were narrowed, his body stiff. “I wasn’t being the husband you deserved.”

This was unexpected. “Maybe I was wrong, too,” I said.

Frank shook his head. “You were trying to help us. And if I hadn’t been so stubborn about letting you work. .” He dropped his voice until I could hardly hear him over the drone of the crowd, the noise of people coming and going. “I guess maybe you were lonely.”

I nodded, almost unconsciously. Frank kept talking. “We can sell the house, move to Philly. Spencer’s starting nursery school in the fall, so you’ll have some time. You can go to college, if you want.”

I felt a pressure inside of me building, a sob or a shout, I wasn’t sure yet. “You love that farm. It’s all you ever wanted.”

“I want you more. And I got a new job,” he said.

“With the airlines?”

“Nah. Teaching.” He took my hand. “I did so well in my classes they asked me to stay on. I’m still part-time at the airport, but it’s good money. Good benefits, too.” He paused, like he was steeling himself. “I looked it up online. Community college has classes online, or in Center City.”

I looked down at our fingers entwined. I’d thought about giving him back my engagement ring — it had cost almost two thousand dollars and was by far the most expensive thing outside of his truck that Frank had ever bought — but I hadn’t taken it off yet. I wondered if I would have made different choices, if I could have gone back in time, knowing what I knew now. Part of me thought I would have undone the surrogacy in an instant, wiped the slate clean, done anything to keep my marriage intact. Another part of me thought that I’d done just the right thing, that the pain of leaving him was the cost of a new and better life.

“Come home,” said Frank, his grip on my hand tightening. “Stay with us.”