Chosen Read Free Page A

swipe.
    In the quiet that follows, the clinking of silverware against plates, Paul puts his fork down and looks around the dining room. Hanging over the table is a chandelier that he recently saw in a trade magazine for $2,600, wholesale. It has feldspar finish with three loopy tiers, amber shell shades, and clear crystal trim. If a client asked his opinion, and more often now they do, Paul would never recommend it for an authentic period Tudor dining room like this.
    By accident, Paul meets John’s eyes in one of those awkward, mid-chew, looking-around moments that he hates at dinner parties when the conversation doesn’t come easily.
    “So—” John swallows his bite, though not quite all the way; Paul can still hear the mashed potatoes in his throat when he garbles, “Did you two ever get a baby?”
    “John!” Francie’s neck flares red. “Eva is due at the same time as our birth mother.”
    John puts down his napkin, swallows harder, and addresses her in low tones, though there are only four of them in the room—everyone can hear. “I can see that. I meant, before they got one the natural, old-fashioned way, did they—”
    “How a child joins your family is irrelevant, and I hope you won’t say anything about natural or old-fashioned with all your implications when our son arrives.” Francie never raises her voice, but her hand has a tremble to it as she reaches for her water glass.
    “I thought I remember you saying, last year, they got picked…” John falters on, genuinely confused, and Paul feels for him. These can be tricky waters.
    “We don’t. We didn’t,” Paul jumps in. “I mean, this will be our first.” He reaches over to palm Eva’s round, warm belly, coated under one of his thick cabled wool sweaters, and is rewarded by her own squeeze to his knee, Thank you.
    “It didn’t work out,” Eva says breezily, as though Amber’s baby was a weekend trip they were going to take that had been canceled. Paul remembers the reality, like living underwater: dark, rain-soaked days, chronic crying, Eva’s endless baths. It wasn’t the first baby they had lost, and tragically, it would not be the last, but when Amber’s adoption fell through, Eva took it on the chin. Not that it didn’t hurt Paul too. Sometimes he pictures their lost offspring like a heartbreakingly pathetic, underdog baseball team striking out, twelve little batters in a row. But now, late in the game, his hand still on her belly, he feels the roll of lucky number thirteen, their hopeful home run.
    “You were picked very quickly,” Francie says. “You and Paul had just joined the agency, after they hired Chloe Pinter. You never had to deal with the case manager before her. Remember her, John? She was awful! She let our portfolio sit, languish, for a year before telling us we weren’t getting good feedback from birth mothers. They thought we looked old!”
    “Terrible,” Eva murmurs.
    “Oh, well, all’s well that ends well,” Paul says, glancing surreptitiously at his watch just as the phone rings. John jumps up, a marionette jerked to life.
    “I’ll get it.”
    “Chloe Pinter has been a godsend, though.” Francie starts fresh, smoothing the red napkin in her narrow lap. “John always says someone had their thinking cap on when they hired that girl. I don’t know where the domestic program would be without her. This calendar year alone they have done fourteen U.S. adoptions. It’s unprecedented.”
    “Well, and good news for you too,” Eva says from where she is piling more cranberry sauce on her plate at the sideboard. “We can be mommy friends.”
    Francie sniffs, and Paul is horrified to see she’s almost crying. “You know”—she sniffs again and makes two little circles of emphasis with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, sharp points, as though she is shaking out a wet T-shirt by the shoulders—“this has been the hardest thing in my entire life. I have wanted this more than I have wanted