Free Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner Page B

His ID badge was in his pocket. He hated that badge, which let the angriest passengers use his name. It was always the last thing he put on and the first thing he took off. “I don’t know. It’s interesting.”
    “They pay a lot. I could look into it. What do you think?”
    He looked at me closely. “You want to do that? Have a baby for someone?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe find out more about it.”
    “You mean it?”
    “Why not?” He frowned at the boys, at Spencer in particular, who had a pink crayon in his hand and was scribbling dreamily in his coloring book. “Sit up straight, men.” The two of them stiffened their backs, imitating the posture Frank had brought home from the service. I turned back to the sink. He didn’t look happy. I understood why: he wanted to be the one to provide for us, to give us the things we wanted . . . and I suspected that seeing me walking around with my belly all big from another man’s baby would bother him, even though there’d be no sex involved, no cheating. But it had been so long since I felt like I was doing my part, and since I didn’t feel guilty pulling out my debit card at the grocery store or at Walmart.
    “I’ll see what I can find out,” I said. My hands were cold, the way they got when I was nervous or excited, or when I was telling a lie. My heart was breaking for Frank, but I was also excited, thinking about the money and how we could spend it, imagining, for the hundredth time, the moment of placing the baby into another woman’s arms, or even a man’s arms, although I doubted that would happen. My cousin Michael was gay, and he and his boyfriend were two of the kindest, gentlest men I knew, but Frank felt differently, thanks to all his years in church hearing about sinful this and sinful that, and I knew not to push my luck. I imagined, too, the look on Nancy’s face; the two of us walking together at the Franklin Mills mall, Nancy getting ready to pull out her platinum card as someone we knew from high school spotted us: Oh, Annie, I heard about what you’re doing and I think it’s just amazing. So generous. Maybe I’d take a few college classes, too, show Big Sister that she wasn’t the only smart one in the family. Maybe I’d take all of us on vacation, my parents, too, someplace that didn’t have a squash court, or maybe we’d stay on-site the next time we went to Disneyland.
    I kissed Frank by the door, handing him the lunch I’d packed.I gathered Spencer in my arms and loaded him into his stroller. He was getting too tall for it, his feet dangling almost to the ground, but he was still too little to manage the trip to the bus stop and back. I helped Frank Junior put on his backpack, then walked both boys down the hill to the bottom of our driveway, where we waited, counting the cars that drove along our quiet street until the school bus wheezed to a stop. Back at home, I put Spencer down in front of Sesame Street with a bowl of raisins and pretzels, a sippy cup full of apple juice, and the remote control, which, sad to say, he knew how to work better than I did.
    The farmhouse had a little room off the kitchen that had once been a cold pantry. Someday, I’d planned on turning it into an office, with shelves for canned goods and cookbooks and a desk where I could look up recipes. I’d painted the walls a creamy golden-white called Buttermilk, and cut out pictures of built-in desks and refinished flea-market chairs, but that was as far as I’d gotten.
    I turned on our computer and browsed around the clinic’s website, which I already knew almost by heart. It was full of video links and fancy flash effects, words that came swimming up to the top of the screen like they were surfacing from the bottom of a deep pool. CARING. COMPASSIONATE. DISCREET . The word MONEY never showed up, but money was what I sensed. For starters, the clinic looked more like the day spas I saw in magazines than like any