Page 97 of The Surrogate Mother
My mouth falls open. “She shotherself?”
He looks down at his hands. “I thought she was going to shoot me. I thought she was going tokillme. I figured that was it. But then… she turned the gun on herself. Put it below her chin and pulled the trigger. I guess when she realized her mother was dead, she just… I don’t know… lost it.”
In spite of everything Gertie did to me, I feel a jab of sorrow over her death. She was my assistant for years—I knew her only as a sweet older woman. I have to believe that couldn’t have all been an act. I’ll miss her smile and her cookies.
I’m not so sure Gertie’s death was the reason Monica shot herself though. I saw the look on her face when Sam tried to protect me. She was heartbroken over her mother, but that wasn’t what pushed her over the edge. She shot herself because she knew I had won.
“I just need you to know,” he says quietly, “nothing ever happened between me and Monica.Nothing. I never touched her. I swear to you.”
“I believe you.”
His shoulders sag. “You do?”
“Of course I do.”
He rakes a hand through his hair. “Well, you’re the only one then. The police looked at me like I was a piece of shit, your mother threatened to take me “for everything I’ve got,” whatever that means because I’ve got nothing, and Monica’s stepmother actually slapped me in the face. Apparently, nobody thinks it’s plausible that I wouldn’t have slept with her.” He shakes his head. “Is it really so ridiculous that I wouldn’t want to cheat on my wife?”
I manage a smile. “Apparently, yes.”
“She really set me up. Told everyone I was her boyfriend or her husband. I had no clue—I feel like a moron for letting it happen.”
“Well,” I say, “she was pretty good at manipulating people. You were the one who didn’t want to go through with the whole thing in the first place. I was the one who talked you into it.”
“I know, but…”
I reach out for him, and he grabs my hand in his again. “I heard everything you said to Monica in our bedroom. I know you weren’t sleeping with her. And…” I swallow, feeling an ache in my dry throat. “I know you jumped in front of me to stop her from shooting me.”
He ducks his head down as he squeezes my fingers. “You’re my whole life, Abby. If anything ever happened to you…”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know what you mean.” The thought of losing Sam was what propelled me forward to hurl myself in front of Gertie back in our bedroom.
He shifts in his seat. “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about the drugs. I should have known you’d never do anything like that.”
I nod, although the sting is still there. I wish he had believed me.
“I never thought you killed Denise,” he says. “Honestly. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I didn’t believe that.” He shakes his head. “You know, Monica was the one who told me to buy that letter opener for you. I ran into her when I was picking you up at the office and asked her for anniversary gift ideas. I can’t believe she was planning it even then…”
“She and Gertie were planning it foryears…”
When I think of it, I feel sick. All those years when I thought Gertie was a sweet old woman who was doing her best, all she was doing was targeting a husband for her daughter. She knew early on that Sam and I were having fertility problems, and she knew how badly I wanted a baby. She planned to get me out of the way, then have my money and my husband for her daughter.
And then a thought occurs to me. My brain was so foggy when I woke up, I didn’t even think of it. “Sam, the baby…” I feel like I’m choking. “Is the baby… dead?”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “No, they managed to deliver him safely. He’s in the neonatal ICU. Doing okay.”
“Oh.”
I exhale, thinking of our tiny baby, hooked up to monitors in an incubator. I dreamed of that baby for so long. I already love him a little bit, even though I’ve never even seen him. But after what Monica did to us…
“It’s okay,” Sam says suddenly.
“What’s okay?”
His brown eyes are sad. “If you don’t want him. I get it.”
“Sam…”
“No, really,” he says. “After everything that happened, I’d understand if… well, you know. Anyway, we’ll work something out.”
