SURPISE SURROGATE

Jennifer POV

Harrison was reading the back of a pancake mix like it contained information he hadn’t been authorized to know.

I watched him from my place at the kitchen island, my feet tucked into the slippers he’d bought me last Christmas. He had a whole stack of recipes saved on his phone, several of them involving ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, but he’d apparently reached his limit at boxed pancakes.

“You know you can just follow the directions,” I said.

“I am following the directions.”

“You’ve been studying them for six minutes.”

“Because you told me last time they were too thick.”

“They were too thick.”

“And now I’m trying to correct the problem.”

I smiled into my tea. This was what being married to Harrison Wyatt looked like on a Saturday morning: a man who managed complicated business deals before lunch but took criticism of his pancakes personally. He had already brought my medication upstairs, opened the bedroom curtains because I liked the morning light, and asked whether I wanted the television on. Now he was determined to make breakfast without consulting me, although consulting me had become the main activity.

“You could make them thin and still make too many,” I told him. “I’m only eating two.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“You said you were hungry.”

“I am. For two pancakes.”

He looked over his shoulder. “I married a difficult woman.”

“Very expensive wedding to figure that out.”

He laughed, and I let myself enjoy the sound. There were days when the house felt crowded with medical schedules, bottles from the pharmacy, and questions neither of us could answer. Saturday mornings were easier. We could still argue about breakfast, and he could still kiss the side of my neck while reaching around me for a plate.

The oncologist had told us I had at least a year. It wasn’t a promise, and I knew better than to treat it as one, but it had given Harrison something concrete to put on a calendar. We were planning a trip for the spring. His mother wanted us over for Thanksgiving. I had a hair appointment next Thursday, and the dress I’d ordered for a friend’s birthday was hanging in the closet with the tags still on it. My life had not become a waiting room simply because I was sick.

After breakfast, Harrison stood behind my chair and rubbed my shoulders while I checked my email. “You sure you don’t want me to cancel Monday?” he asked.

“Your meeting?”

“I can move it.”

“Why?”

“Because you have an appointment.”

“It’s bloodwork. I’ll be there longer trying to park than getting my blood drawn.”

“Jen.”

I turned to look at him. “I know you want to come. I appreciate it. But I’m allowed to go to an appointment without an escort.”

He considered me for a moment, then kissed my forehead. “Call when you’re finished.”

“I always do.”

He left me alone after that, which was another thing I loved about him. He worried, sometimes too much, but he listened when I told him what I needed.

What I hadn’t told him was that I had an appointment on Tuesday, too.

The message waiting in my inbox was from a woman named Janae Lawson. I’d contacted her through a surrogacy coordinator two weeks earlier. We hadn’t met yet. She was twenty-eight, a doctoral student, and the mother of a little girl. Her screening information was detailed, but the things I kept returning to were ordinary: she liked science museums, had a preschooler who asked a thousand questions, and hoped to teach at a university someday. She sounded like someone who already had a life she enjoyed.

I clicked open her reply.

Tuesday afternoon works for me. I can meet after my lab meeting. Just send the address.

I stared at the message longer than necessary, then typed back before I could change my mind.

***

The first time Harrison and I discussed having children, we’d been married less than a year. He’d asked how many I wanted while we were standing in the produce section of a grocery store. I told him two, maybe three, depending on whether the first one came out behaving like him. He said he wanted four. I asked whether he intended to carry any of them himself.

We’d laughed. We’d made plans. Years later, we’d sat in a fertility specialist’s office learning words like retrieval, fertilization, and viability. We had embryos in storage, little beginnings we’d paid to preserve while we tried to figure out the rest. Then came my diagnosis, and the conversations about pregnancy stopped being about when.

I knew Harrison had made his peace with not becoming a father. He’d said as much. He wanted me, and he didn’t want another round of procedures or disappointment. I believed him. That didn’t mean the desire he’d once had disappeared from my mind.

The surrogacy consultant, Ms. Bell, was careful with me when we spoke that Tuesday morning. Her office smelled faintly of lemon cleaner, and a stack of brochures sat untouched between us.

“You understand that using the embryos requires authorization from both genetic contributors,” she said. “Your husband would need to participate in the consent process.”

“I understand what the normal process is.”

“It’s more than a normal process, Mrs. Wyatt. It’s his decision, too.”

“I know.”

She waited, apparently hoping I’d add something sensible.

“I intend to tell him,” I said. “I just don’t intend to tell him yet.”

“Those are two different issues.”

“I know that, too.”

She folded her hands. “Then I can’t arrange a transfer on those terms.”

I thanked her for her time and left with the brochures still on the table. Outside, I sat in my car until the air-conditioning got cold enough to make me reach for the dial. The sensible thing was to go home, tell my husband everything, and let him decide whether he wanted to do this. I knew that. I also knew what he’d say if I asked him while he was still organizing his life around keeping me comfortable.

He would say no. Maybe because he didn’t want a child without me. Maybe because he didn’t want to ask a stranger to carry one. Maybe because he was afraid of hoping for anything else.

I couldn’t pretend any of those reasons were unreasonable. I just couldn’t put the thought away.

A few days later, a separate contact introduced me to someone willing to review our old storage paperwork and discuss a transfer despite the missing new authorization. The conversation left me uneasy. I asked questions. I heard answers that were too smooth. I went home knowing that proceeding would be wrong by Harrison, even if everyone involved managed to put a signature on a form. I did not suddenly become unaware of that because I wanted the result.

That evening I sat at the desk in the guest room and began a letter to my husband.

My Harrison,

I hope you know how much I loved being your wife. Even on the days you got on my nerves, I wouldn’t have traded our life for anything. You gave me a marriage I was happy to wake up in, and I don’t want you to spend the rest of yours thinking you owe sadness to me.

I stopped there. It sounded like something a person wrote when she expected to die next week, and that wasn’t what I was doing. I was writing because my handwriting had gotten less steady and I wanted him to have something from me while I could still sit at a desk and think clearly.

I wrote about the road trip where we’d gotten lost, about his terrible habit of buying me gifts on grocery runs, about the house we’d picked together. Near the end, I wrote a line about our child and how much love I’d always wanted that child to know. I didn’t explain. I told myself I’d be sitting beside him when he read it, and that by then the words would make sense.

I folded the pages, placed them in an envelope, and wrote his name on the front. Then I tucked it into the drawer where we kept passports and important papers.

***

Janae Lawson arrived at the café carrying a canvas tote bag and an iced coffee. She looked around, spotted me, and walked over with an easy smile.

“Jennifer?”

“Janae. Thank you for coming.”

“Of course. Sorry if I’m two minutes late. My advisor decided our meeting needed an encore.”

“You’re right on time.”

She sat across from me and set her drink down. Her hair was pulled back, and she wore a university sweatshirt with a pair of gold hoops. I liked her immediately, which was convenient but not nearly enough reason to trust someone with something this important.

We ordered lunch. She asked about my treatment without making the conversation sound like an interview. I asked about her daughter.

“Kinsley’s four,” she said. “And very sure she’s the manager of our household.”

“Does she pay any bills?”

“Not one. Terrible management.”

I laughed hard enough to reach for my water. Janae grinned and waited while I caught my breath.

She told me she was studying neuropsychology and wanted to become a professor and researcher. When I asked what she actually did all day, she gave me a patient explanation of memory, cognition, and how researchers study the brain. Halfway through, she paused.

“I promise I know how to have normal conversations, too.”

“I asked.”

“People say that until I start talking about the brain.”

“I think it’s interesting.”

“Then we’re going to get along.”

We spoke for almost two hours. Eventually, she set down her fork and asked the question I’d been waiting for.

“Does your husband know you’re looking into this?”

“No.”

Her expression changed, not dramatically, but enough. “Okay. Why not?”

I told her about our fertility treatments, his response to my diagnosis, and the surprise I wanted to plan. I told her the doctors expected I had at least a year, and that I wanted to wait until a pregnancy was established before asking Harrison to picture himself as a father again.

“You’re talking about waiting until after a transfer,” she said.

“Yes.”

“That’s a big decision to make for somebody.”

“It is.”

“I’m not saying that to be rude.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

Janae looked out the window for a moment. “I need to know exactly what the paperwork says, and I need my own attorney looking at it. I also need to understand what happens if your husband doesn’t want to be involved.”

“You should.”

“And if we do this, I’m not keeping a pregnancy secret forever.”

“Neither am I. Five months. That’s when I’m planning to tell him. I want to have a proper announcement.”

She watched me closely. “You’re serious about the party?”

“Extremely.”

“Even with everything going on?”

“Especially with everything going on.”

She shook her head, smiling a little. “Well, I hope you plan on feeding people.”

“Of course.”

“Good. I don’t attend events with just cupcakes and sparkling water.”

By the time we left, we’d agreed to speak again after she’d reviewed the documents and had time to think. I liked that she hadn’t rushed to reassure me. She had a daughter, a career to build, and a body that would be doing the actual work. She had every right to ask hard questions.

***

The weeks that followed were filled with appointments, paperwork, and more waiting than I had expected. Janae spoke to independent counsel. There were medical screenings and conversations about expenses, care, and what would happen after delivery. The transfer moved forward through a provider who accepted authorization I knew Harrison had never given for this arrangement. I signed what I was asked to sign. I hated how easily I could make myself look away from the part that frightened me most.

At home, Harrison and I kept living our lives. He took me to dinner on a Thursday because I’d been craving pasta. We watched an entire season of a cooking competition over one rainy weekend. I fell asleep halfway through a movie and woke with his hand resting over mine.

Meanwhile, I opened a folder on my laptop and named it Our Surprise.

I saved pictures of little outfits and ordered a soft yellow blanket embroidered with the word Wyatt. I bought a pair of tiny sneakers that looked ridiculous beside Harrison’s size-thirteen shoes. I contacted two event venues about a private celebration in the spring, asking about food, decorations, and whether we could keep the purpose of the gathering secret from one particular guest.

One coordinator called to ask whether I wanted a separate room for the gender reveal.

“I want the whole thing to be a surprise,” I told her. “My husband won’t even know we’re having a baby until the event.”

She went quiet for a beat. “That will be quite a moment.”

“I think so.”

I could already imagine him standing there with his family and friends, looking around in confusion while I handed him a gift. He’d open it, see the little shoes, and ask me what on earth was happening. I’d tell him. We’d have questions to work through, and probably an argument once the guests went home. I knew that part wasn’t going to be easy. But I pictured him eventually holding our child, and the image was powerful enough to keep me planning.

The day of the transfer, Janae wore a loose blue sweater and brought a paperback she’d been trying to finish for a week. I asked whether she was nervous.

“A little,” she said. “Mostly I want everybody to stop asking if I’m nervous.”

“Fair.”

“You can ask me what I’m reading instead.”

So I did. We talked about the book while we waited, and when the staff called her name, I wished her luck and let her go without making a speech. Afterward, she texted that she was home, comfortable, and planning to spend the evening doing absolutely nothing.

Then came the waiting.

I checked my phone too often. I tried not to. I went to treatment, made dinner plans, answered emails, and discussed venue menus with a woman who kept recommending a dessert station I didn’t want. Harrison caught me smiling at my phone one afternoon.

“Who keeps entertaining you?” he asked.

“Somebody with better jokes than yours.”

“Impossible.”

“Very possible.”

He leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed me. “As long as they’re not stealing my wife.”

“Not a chance.”

That much was true.

***

At eight weeks, after the initial blood tests and follow-up assessment, Janae asked if she could call instead of texting. I stepped into the bedroom and closed the door. Harrison was downstairs taking a work call.

“Hey,” I said. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s good.” I heard her smile before she continued. “The appointment went well. They confirmed it. I’m eight weeks.”

For a moment I didn’t speak. I’d rehearsed this call in my head so many times that I thought I’d be ready for it, but hearing the words was different.

“Jennifer?”

“I’m here.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. They gave me the paperwork, and I’ve got another appointment scheduled.”

I laughed, then pressed my free hand to my mouth. “Oh, Janae.”

“I know.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine. Hungry, actually. Which seems to be my main hobby lately.”

“Let me send you something for lunch.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

She laughed. “Then I’m not going to argue.”

We stayed on the phone for another few minutes, discussing the next appointment and how she wanted to handle updates. When we hung up, I opened the folder on my laptop and stared at the venue photos. I had months to finish planning. Months to choose the right cake, invite our people, and figure out exactly what to say to my husband when I handed him those little shoes.

Downstairs, I heard Harrison call my name. He wanted to know whether I’d seen his car keys.

“On the table by the door,” I called back.

“Found them. Thank you, baby.”

I looked at the confirmation Janae had sent me, then at the yellow blanket folded inside the shopping bag beside my desk. I was going to tell him. When Janae reached five months, I would put the truth in his hands and stand there while he made sense of it.

For now, I had a celebration to plan.