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to, which is supposed to be very good. They wear uniforms with ties and everything.”
    “Yes, it would be better if he stayed home with us,” Asha agreed, feeling a load lift off of her. He was thinking about Manoj when he thought about the money. He wasn’t planning to barter his children’s future away to buy them a house.
    They walked silently for a while; then suddenly Pratap asked, “Do you think it’s strange that you’re carrying these people’s baby for money?”
    “Yes,” Asha said. “Very strange.”
    “You know, it seemed OK when we all talked about it, but now that you’re pregnant, it feels . . . it just feels odd,” Pratap said. “Remember how much I touched your belly when you were pregnant with Manoj and Mohini? Now I can’t do any of that.”
    “I can’t do any of that, either,” Asha said.
    “I don’t know if I’d want you to do this again,” Pratap said. “So I want to be careful with the money we get and make some correct decisions. Raman wants Kaveri to do it again.”
    “Kaveri said she wasn’t sure,” Asha said.
    Pratap nodded. “Raman told me that after the baby was born, Kaveri cried all the time for a couple of months. They never told anyone about it. But she was very upset.”
    Asha felt a shiver creep up her spine. That woman in the surrogate house who got attached to the baby, the one Kaveri warned her not to be like, what if that woman was Kaveri herself? Was that why Kaveri warned her not to get attached? Because she knew how hard it was to let go?
    “Do you think it’ll be hard on me to give it up?” Asha asked Pratap.
    “I hope not,” Pratap said. “And if we’re careful from the start and make sure that we both know that it is not ours, it should be fine.”
    If only he could hear himself, Asha thought. Like it was that simple.
    “Yes, we’ll be careful,” she said.
    Pratap smiled and put his arm around her, and for that moment, Asha felt safe, forgetting for a few breaths her problems and the strange life inside her.

PART II:
    FIRST TRIMESTER

CHAPTER FIVE
    The conception date was January 10, 2013, which meant the due date was October 3, 2013. Asha was now, based on the pregnancy calculator, five weeks pregnant.
    According to the website Priya was consulting, the embryo was in three layers. The outer layer would become the brain, nerves, and skin. The placenta was fully functional.
    She and Madhu lay in bed. “You know, no matter how many times you look at that website, the baby’s size remains the same,” Madhu said as he flipped channels.
    Priya had lost the battle regarding having a television in the bedroom, and Madhu had lost the battle of having a laptop in bed. They both had sound arguments that each had chosen to agree to disagree about. Priya believed that when you went to bed, it was time to read, have sex, or sleep. Madhu, on the other hand, didn’t read (Sush could still not believe that Priya had married a nonreader; it was a scandal) and liked to catch a cozy rerun while in bed. They had come to terms with this arrangement, and neither was bothered by it anymore.
    “I don’t think you appreciate the amount of pressure I’m under here,” Priya said.
    “Well, don’t kill yourself,” Madhu said, and leaned to kiss her. “I need to get some sleep.”
    “Aren’t you jet-lagged?” Priya demanded. She had been cranky and drowsy at work the entire day and was now wide awake.
    “Jet lag is for sissies,” Madhu said, and within ten seconds she could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
    She smiled, watching him sleep. He fell asleep so easily and peacefully.
    Instead of reading on her iPad, she browsed the Internet, garnering unnecessary information about surrogacy and its emotional toll, reading arguments again and again about how it was actually a good thing to impregnate a poor Indian woman with your embryo.
    “Madhu?” Priya nudged him. “Madhu?” she called out a little louder.
    “What?” Madhu asked, burying his