Sing You Home Read online

  "Well, if she ditches me, it sure as hell would fit the pattern of my life. Depend on someone, and they fuck you over." Lucy looks up at me. "Language," she says, at the exact same moment that I do.

  "Your drumming session was pretty interesting," I say, remembering the impromptu rock concert in the cafeteria. I had spent an hour in a closed session with my principal after that fiasco, trying to explain the merits of music therapy with suicidal kids, and why having to sterilize the pots and pans and soup ladles once more was a small trade-off for mental health.

  "I've never had anyone do that for me before," Lucy admits.

  "What do you mean?"

  "She knew she was going to get in trouble. But she didn't care. Instead of making me do what I'm supposed to do, or be what everyone wants me to be, she did something totally crazy. It was . . ." Lucy stumbles, trying to find her words. "It was fucking brave, is what it was."

  "Maybe Zoe's getting you to feel more comfortable being yourself."

  "Maybe you're using the hour I would have spent in music therapy to play Freud."

  I grin. "You know all my tricks."

  "You're about as hard to read as Elmo."

  "You know, Lucy," I say. "School's out in less than two months."

  "Tell me about it--I'm counting the days."

  "Well--if you have any plans to continue music therapy over the summer, it's something we'll need to arrange in advance."

  Lucy's gaze flies up to meet mine. I can tell she hasn't considered this--when school breaks in June, so do all school activities, including school-based counseling sessions.

  "I'm sure Zoe would agree to meet with you over the summer," I say smoothly. "And I'm happy to use my key to let you guys into the school for your sessions."

  She jerks her chin up. "We'll see. It's not like I really care one way or the other."

  But she does, desperately. She just won't say so out loud. "You have to admit, Lucy," I tell her, "you've already come a long way. You couldn't wait to get out of the room during that first session with Zoe, and, well, look at you now. You're angry because she had to reschedule."

  Lucy's eyes flash, and I think she's going to tell me to go do something anatomically impossible, but then she shrugs. "She kind of crept up on me. But . . . not like in a bad way. Like when you're standing on the beach right down by the ocean, and you think you've got a handle on it, and then when you look down again you've sunk so far that the water's up to your hips. And before you can get freaked out, you realize you actually don't mind going swimming."

  Beneath the barrier of my desk, my hand steals to my belly again. Our baby will be the size of a plum, a nectarine, a tangelo. A harvest of the sweetest things. Suddenly I want to hear Zoe's voice asking me for the thousandth time whether or not yogurt containers can be recycled, or whether I wore her blue silk blouse last week and took it to the cleaners. I want ten thousand ordinary days with her; and I want this baby as proof that we loved each other so fiercely that magic happened. "Yes," I agree. "That's exactly what she's like."

  Angela Moretti had said she'd call us when she had more news, but we didn't expect it to be just days after our first meeting. This time, she said, she was willing to drive to us, so Zoe and I made a vegetable lasagna and started drinking the wine before Angela even arrived, out of sheer nervousness. "What if she doesn't like lasagna?" Zoe asks, as she's tossing the salad.

  "With a name like Moretti?"

  "That doesn't mean anything . . ."

  "Well, who doesn't like lasagna?" I ask.

  "I don't know. Lots of people."

  "Zo. Whether or not she likes pasta is not going to make or break this case."

  She turns, her arms crossed. "I don't like this. If it was something simple, she would have just told us over the phone."

  "Or maybe she's heard you make a hell of a lasagna."

  Zoe drops the salad tongs. "I'm a wreck," she says. "I can't handle this."

  "It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better."

  She moves into my arms, and, for a moment, we just hold each other in the kitchen. "Today at the nursing home during group session we were playing the handbells and Mrs. Greaves got up and went to the bathroom and forgot to come back," Zoe says. "She was my F. Do you have any idea how hard it is to play 'Amazing Grace' without an F?"

  "Where did she go?"

  "The staff found her in the garage, sitting in the van that takes the residents to the grocery store on Thursdays. They found the bell in the oven about an hour later."

  "Was it on?"

  "The van?" Zoe asks.

  "The oven."

  "No. Thank goodness."

  "And the moral of this story is that you and I might have a massive lawsuit to fight, but we haven't lost our handbells."

  I can feel her smile against my collarbone. "I knew you'd help me find that silver lining," Zoe says.

  There's a knock at the front door. Angela's already talking by the time I open it. "You know what Wade Preston and a sperm have in common? A one in three million chance of becoming human." She hands me a thick sheaf of papers. "Mystery solved. Now we know what Max wants to do with the embryos--give them to his brother."

  "What?" It's Zoe's voice, but it sounds like a punch.

  "I don't get it." I skim through the papers, but they are written in legalese. "He can't give them away like they're a Yankee swap."

  "Well, he's sure as hell gonna try," Angela says. "Today I received a motion from Ben Benjamin, the local lawyer who's working with Wade Preston. He wants to implead Reid and Liddy Baxter as third-party plaintiffs. Max joins them in the petition and says his brother and sister-in-law are the intended recipients of the embryos." She snorts. "Ten guesses who's paying Wade's fat bill."

  "So they're buying the embryos?"

  "They'll never call it that, but, in effect, that's exactly what's happening. Reid and Liddy fund the lawsuit; they position themselves as the recipient potential parents, and suddenly Wade's got his retainer and a traditional Christian couple to wave like a banner in front of Judge O'Neill."

  Very slowly, I'm piecing this together. "You mean Liddy's going to have Zoe's baby?"

  "That," Angela says, "is their plan."

  I'm so angry I am literally shaking. "I'm having Zoe's baby."

  But Angela isn't listening. She's looking at Zoe, who seems to be paralyzed. "Zoe? You okay?"

  I know this much about my spouse: when she yells, it will blow over quickly. It's when her voice is just above a whisper that she's furious; and right now, Zoe's words are virtually inaudible. "You're telling me that my child, the one I want my wife to carry and that I want to raise myself . . . is going to be carried and raised by someone I cannot stand? That I have no say in this?"

  Angela takes my glass of wine out of my hand and drains it in one swallow. "They're going to ask the judge to give the embryos to Max. Then he'll be able to do whatever he wants with them--but they're telling the judge that he plans to give them to Reid and Liddy, because they know damn well it will sway the court's decision."

  "Why can't Reid and Liddy have their own freaking children?" I ask.

  Zoe turns. "Because Reid's got the same infertility issues that Max did. It's genetic. We went to a clinic for answers--and they went to Clive Lincoln."

  "The embryos were created during Max and Zoe's marriage. If she still wants them, how could any judge give them away to a stranger?"

  "From their viewpoint, Max believes that the best future for these potential children is a two-parent, heterosexual, rich Christian family. And Reid and Liddy aren't strangers. They're genetically related to those embryos. Too related, if you ask me. Reid is the embryos' uncle, and his wife is going to give birth to his niece or nephew. Sounds like the Deliverance family reunion."

  "But Reid and Liddy could use a sperm donor. Or go through in vitro, like Max and Zoe did. This is Zoe's last set of viable eggs. It's the last chance we have to both be biologically connected to a child," I say.

&n