worry. We’ll do whatever you need done to protect you.
“Now, before we go too much further, I must tell you that you will meet my husband after I report to him. He might want to see you this afternoon, in fact. Not that he doesn’t trust my judgment, you understand. He’ll be looking at you from an entirely different perspective, a doctor’s first, a father’s second.
“If it all goes well, we’d like you to leave with us tonight, and he’ll arrange for you to be examined by his close friend tomorrow, go through the required tests to be sure of everything, and then enjoy being at Wyndemere with me until the magic is done in the laboratory. Again, don’t ask me any questions about it. He’ll go into the details. He’s very good at explaining complicated things in a way that almost anyone can understand. I suspect, however, that you’re brighter than average.
“So. Enough about all this. Tell me about yourself,” she said, and finally poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Tonight?” I said, astounded.
“There is success with what he calls stage one. My husband believes time is the enemy. It makes us older and weaker, susceptible to disease, and if there is something that needs to be done, time might get wind of it and speed up, making it too late.”
“My father hates wasted time, too, but for a different reason.”
“Men think in almost a different language,” she said, and smiled.
“But leave tonight?” I said. “It’s very quick. I barely have time to give what your husband tells me any deep thought.”
“Nothing will happen during the next few days, anyway, except you’ll get a free medical exam. I’d hate it, but you could turn around and come back immediately or soon afterward. And you’d be paid something significant for doing just that. But let’s not talk about the money. It makes it all so much… less than it is, don’t you think? Cheapens it, in a way. My mother-in-law does that with so many things. Her first question always is, how much did it cost? Sometimes I feel like putting tags on everything in the house that’s mine, describing the cost. I know it sounds funny for me to say that knowing what something costs cheapens it. There are some things you cannot put a money value on, like friendship or love or… having a baby.”
“Yes. Yes,” I added, more emphatically.
It was as if I had found a new argument for my mummy to reject my father’s declaration that money was life. There was definitely something more important: self-respect. Money didn’t always give someone that. And when he said people respect rich people more, I thought to myself, Not respected: envied or feared. There was a big difference. It surprised me that he didn’t see that or maybe refused to see it. Samantha appeared to understand, despite her innocence.
Leo returned close to an hour later and found us talking and laughing in his living room. He looked very pleased.
“I’ll be taking Emma to lunch,” Samantha told him. “She’s never been to Fontaine’s.”
“Me, neither.”
“It’s all girl-talk time, Leo. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, smiling. “You girls do your thing.”
“Dr. Davenport will be here about three, if that’s all right with you,” Samantha said. “I phoned him a few minutes ago to confirm.”
“I’ll keep my appointment with the president, then,” he replied.
All three of us laughed. Leo looked at me with twinkling eyes. He looked happy he had arranged for all this.
Should I be? I wondered.
Was something wrong with me? I was feeling better than I had in months.
A weatherman or woman might say, There are storms beyond your imagination on the horizon.
But for now, thinking of the money, all I could see were clearer skies.
NINE
The moment we left for lunch, I felt pangs of panic.
Was I deceiving myself? I can’t go through with this. I will have a baby? Me? Someone who’s never had sex? A virgin giving birth? Mother of Jesus? And someone else’s baby as well? Is this what science had created? And just because it was in a clinic run by respected doctors, that didn’t make it less weird to me.
I wasn’t sure if it was a nightmare or simply foolish fantasy. Samantha either noticed my nervousness now and simply ignored it or was so excited and pleased that I was the one who would carry her baby that she wouldn’t let herself notice anything negative. She struck me as the latter, because from the way she described