The bar at six in the morning smelled like the night before. Eve Halloran put the cold cloth in her right hand and the dry one in her left and went down the line of glasses, every one of them in its place, every one of them touched. The bar had been like this four years before. It had been like this every morning since. She did not know, yet, that by midnight none of these glasses would be hers to touch.
The smell of coffee from the breakfast room reached her at glass twelve and she had to stop. She stood there until the wave passed. Twelve weeks. The clinic had said it would lift by ten. She had stopped counting against what they said.
A small white envelope sat at her station. Her name in the manager's hand. Inside, a single line. Tomas knows. Take an early. We'll do without you till noon. — D.
She had told Donna about the appointment two months ago, in writing, from the agency portal. She had asked twice for confirmation that the request had been logged. Now it was logged.
Tomas behind her, polishing the espresso wand. "Ten?"
"Ten."
"Big day?"
"Routine." The word left her mouth and she didn't fix it.
He didn't ask. He never did. She liked that about him.
Sloane's text came in at nine forty.
Stuck in committee. Won't make it. Send the printouts when you have them. xS
Eve read it standing on the green line, holding the metal rail with one hand and the edge of her coat with the other. She read it twice. Sloane had missed the eight-week. Sloane had missed the optional consult. Sloane had attended exactly one appointment, the first, and had treated Eve, in that appointment, with the care of a woman choosing a curtain.
Of course, Eve typed, and sent it before her thumb could decide anything else.
The Northbridge clinic in Brookline had been built to look like a place where nothing went wrong. Pastel walls. Abstract canvases that resembled either water or weather depending on the hour. A check-in screen called her by her first name and said Welcome back. The receptionist smiled at her with the practiced ease reserved for people whose paperwork has not produced a problem.
The tech who came for her was younger than Eve and had a sweater on under her scrubs. She was zipping it down as she crossed the waiting room, winter coming in too hard, the building never warm enough by the elevators.
"Halloran. Twelve weeks?"
"Yes."
"Carrier or biological?"
"Carrier."
"Right. Come on back."
The gel was warm. The screen was black with white edges. Eve had learned, in the first trimester, not to look at the screen until the tech invited her to look. The tech was the person whose job it was to know what she was seeing. Eve was the surface the screen was made on.
"Okay." A long quiet. "Okay."
The tech tracked left, tracked right. She froze a frame. She lifted the wand off Eve's stomach and put it back down. She froze another frame.
She turned to the chart screen and tapped through Eve's record. She frowned at it. She tapped back. She frowned at the second screen.
"One sec."
She left.
The room went quiet in a particular way. The gel cooled. The HVAC pulled a low single note out of the ceiling. Eve held still on the table because she had taken her dignity off with her sweater and folded it on the chair, and her hands had nothing to hold.
The door opened. Not the tech.
"Ms. Halloran." A woman in a navy blazer with a Lead Coordinator badge and a smile that didn't move her eyes. "Why don't we get you dressed. We'll call you with the read."
"Is something —"
"Standard caution. We'll call you." The smile lifted half a millimeter. "Today, tomorrow."
The Coordinator stayed in the doorway until Eve was sitting up, until Eve had the paper drape across her lap, and then she stayed in the doorway after that, the way an usher stays at an exit.
The tech did not come back.
The Pemberton had a quiet hour between three and five. Eve walked into it through the side door because the front door went past Donna's office and Donna's office was where Tomas was standing, his hands in front of him, holding a folded sheet of paper as if it were heavy.
"Eve."
He had set his shoulders for breaking news.
"Donna asked me to pass this on. She said the corporate office faxed it through after lunch. She said she didn't have a choice."
The sheet was a termination letter, dated today, signed by an HR director Eve had never met. The reason was a non-disclosure breach. There were no breaches she had committed because there had been no disclosures she had made. The clause cited was paragraph fourteen of an agreement she did not remember signing under that paragraph number, and beside the clause was an attachment number that pointed to her surrogacy file with Northbridge.
The agency had a clause, on page nineteen, that allowed the intended parents to designate any third-party knowledge of the carrier's status as a breach of confidentiality. She had circled that clause six months ago with a borrowed pen. She had asked the agency lawyer, on the phone, what counted as disclosure. He had said the clause was standard, was rarely invoked, was meant to protect everyone. She had signed.
She did not raise her voice. She didn't have one to raise. She took the letter and her tip envelope from the under-bar lockbox and folded both into her bag. The cash inside was already counted against her sister's pharmacy at the end of the week.
Tomas held the door for her. As she went past him he set his hand on the back of her hand, just the back of it, the way you set a hand on a wing you're trying not to break — and for a few seconds someone had registered her existence in a room.
"Call me," he said. "If you need."
She nodded. She didn't trust her voice yet.
She walked. She walked as she did when she was going to think, except she didn't think.
She stopped at the corner deli on Comm Ave and bought a paper container of soup she would not eat, because the bag in her hand was something to carry, and because the woman behind the register knew her face and gave her a nod that did not require a sentence.
By the time she reached Allston it was almost eleven and her bag had grown heavier in a way that had nothing to do with what was in it. The takeout bag swung against her thigh. She put the key in the lock as she had for three and a half years.
It didn't turn.
She tried it again. She tried the deadbolt above and the deadbolt below.
A voice came through the door, near the floor — the speaker short and standing close.
"Hello?"
A woman. Mid-twenties. Pajamas. Holding something warm.
"Excuse me — who are you?"
"I —" Eve stopped. "I live here."
A pause. "I've been here since Tuesday."
The hallway smelled the way it had always smelled — radiator dust, somebody's curry from 3B. The pinhole of light at her feet wavered and then a different pinhole opened: the door across the hall.
Mrs. Olesko in her housecoat, who had been Eve's super for three apartments and four years, who had brought her soup once when Joanna was dying and had never spoken of it again. She held a folded letter in both hands at a respectful distance, as she held all things.
"They came at noon, dévushka. They came with this." She turned the letter so Eve could read the embossed top of the firm. "They said you would understand. They said it was already done." Her eyes were tired. "I did not let them in alone. I stood with them. They said I was within rights, and they showed me the page. The girl came at one with her cat. I am sorry."
Eve looked at the letter. Letterhead from a firm she had never engaged. A clause cited that gave the contract holder relocation authority over the carrier in the event of risk to the pregnancy. The risk to the pregnancy was not specified. It did not need to be. The clause did not require specification. It required a clause.
Mrs. Olesko folded the letter back into its envelope and held it out, both hands, the same respectful distance. "Your things are above the sink," she said softly. "They asked me to be careful. I was careful."
Eve took the envelope. She did not say thank you. She didn't know how to say thank you to the woman who had stood with the people who took her apartment.
She went down the stairs because she could not yet do the elevator.
Outside, the air had teeth. She stood on the sidewalk and her phone began to vibrate in her pocket the way a phone vibrates when it has a list to recite.
Northbridge Surrogacy Solutions: Your account has been closed at user request. If you did not request closure, please contact —
CommonState Bank: A hold has been placed on account ending 4471 pending review of suspicious activity. Please call —
iCloud: Document access removed. The owner of "Northbridge_Carrier_Agreement_Halloran_signed.pdf" has revoked your permissions.
She tapped the third notification. The file opened. Twenty-three pages of nothing. The pages were there. They were blank.
She tapped the second. The bank's number rolled. A robot told her to call during business hours.
She tapped the first. The number rolled. The line picked up.
"You've reached the case file of Eve Halloran. The operator is unavailable. Please leave a message."
The voice was hers. It was a recording she had given them at intake six months ago, when they had said it was for client warmth, and she had been told to say her name and the words case and unavailable in a tone of professional kindness, which she had done, because she had been hired for her tone.
A black SUV passed slowly on the wet street and kept going past her at the speed of someone reading a sign.
She stood with her bag at her foot and the takeout container cooling against her shin, and listened to her own voice say her own name and the words she had once said for warmth, and the message ran out, and the beep came, and after the beep there was only the sound of a line that knew her and would not answer.