Belonging (37 page)

Jenna's thoughts drifted fleetingly
backward. When she was four years old, her parents had been killed
in a collision with a train. Miraculously she had emerged with
barely a scratch. With no family other than an eighty-year-old
great-aunt in Maine who was too old to be burdened with a small
child, custody had been given over to the state. Her memories of
that time were few: stark white walls, hard narrow cots, being
shuffled from foster home to foster home for over a year. She had
been too young to understand the whispered excuses...too quiet, too
withdrawn...but old enough to understand the loss of warmth, the
absence of love from her young life. Two people whom she had loved
and depended on had been wrenched from her, and there was no one to
replace them. No one who willingly gave what her tender
four-year-old self craved so desperately: a warm pair of arms to
hold her, the solid strength of a shoulder to lay her head
upon.

Not until Jerry and Marie Bradford had
entered her life.

She smiled across at Marie, her heart filled
with tender emotion for this unselfish woman who had given her so
much. She reached across the table and squeezed her mother's hand.
"And you brought love back into mine," she said softly. Their eyes
met and held, but suddenly a troubled light entered Jenna's.

"Mom—" She traced an idle pattern on the
tablecloth, trying to find the right words. "What you said
before... were you trying to say that children have a way of
bringing people together?"

Marie shrugged. "I suppose so. Some
people—the right people." She paused. "Not that I think it's a way
to cure a troubled marriage, but I know that my own marriage to
your father wouldn't have been nearly as meaningful without
you."

Jenna took a deep breath. "I suppose a lot
of people feel that way. People like—like Megan and Ward
Garrison." Her fingers closed tightly around her coffee cup.

Marie regarded her steadily. "There's
nothing wrong with that, Jenna."

"I never said there was," Jenna said
quickly. She hesitated, then blurted out, "Neil... he—he'd like to
have a baby right away."

For a long moment her mother's eyes remained
riveted on Jenna's carefully controlled features before drifting
to the white-knuckled grip of her hands around her cup. After all
these years, there was still so much that Jenna held inside—Marie
offered a quiet statement, "And that bothers you."

There was a tight little silence. "Yes and
no," she finally admitted, her tone carefully neutral. Fingers that
weren't entirely steady traced the rim of her coffee cup. "We—Neil
and I had decided to wait a while before we had a baby, but now
he's changed his mind." She hesitated. "And nothing would make me
happier...eventually. But right now...right now it brings back so
many memories, and I can't help but think of—" She broke off, stung
to the core by her suppressed pain.

"Robbie," her mother finished for her
softly. Again her hand reached out to cover Jenna's.

She nodded slowly, drawing both strength and
comfort from the touch of her mother's hand. "Tomorrow I'm going
to Plains City to see him, Mom," she said quietly. "Even if they
won't let me touch him or hold him." Her eyes seemed two huge pools
of longing in her pale face. "I have to do this, Mom. I have to."
She looked across at her mother, somehow not surprised to see a
kind of gentle comprehension reflected "in the soft, brown depths.
Instantly the years fell away—

***

It was a newspaper article that had first
caught Jenna's eye nearly five years earlier, "childless couple
seeks surrogate mother" was how the headline in the Houston
newspaper had read. Since her adoptive mother had been unable to
have children, Jenna was intrigued by the unique approach to the
problem of infertility. On reading the story, she discovered that
Megan and Ward Garrison, a couple who lived in northern Texas, were
actively searching for a woman to bear Ward's child. Married for
fifteen years and puzzled by Megan's inability to have a child in
all that time, both had undergone a battery of tests several years
earlier, only to find that Megan's fallopian tubes were blocked by
scar tissue and she could never become pregnant.

Jenna was working as an office nurse for a
physician with a family practice in Texas City at the time, and
both the receptionist and the bookkeeper could talk about little
else.

"You wouldn't catch me offering to have this
guy's baby," Vera, the bookkeeper, declared later that morning. She
flicked a disdainful finger at the newspaper. "My sister was sick
for weeks on end when she was pregnant—and she looked like a cow
from the time she was two months along!"

Marsha, the mother of a ten and a
six-year-old and infinitely more mature than Vera, held a different
viewpoint. "Your sister also had twins," she pointed out. "And some
women love being pregnant—"

"Not me!" snorted Vera.

Marsha had simply smiled and shaken her
head. "Wait until you're married," she said with a smile. "You
might feel fat and ugly and you might be so sick you feel like you
could never hold your head up again, but the minute you hold that
tiny bundle of life in your arms, it's all but forgotten."

Vera cast a wary eye at the older woman.
"That might be," she sniffed a little indignantly, again waving a
hand at the newspaper, "but if you ask me, this is a little weird.
I'd say that any woman who volunteers for this is doing it
strictly for the money!"

"I'm not sure," Marsha said thoughtfully.
Her eyes skimmed over the article. "It says here that the man is an
engineer, and I doubt if they make all that much money. And though
it says all hospital and legal expenses will be taken care of, it
doesn't specify how much the fee is."

"It would have to be one heck of a lot
before I'd do it," Vera snorted.

Jenna and Marsha exchanged a glance that
seemed to indicate Vera needn't worry about the possibility. Marsha
glanced down again at the newspaper. "It also says that any woman
applying will be tested physically and psychologically." She
frowned, then said slowly, "I guess that makes sense. I suppose
that they would want to make sure she really knew what she was
getting into, and after all—" she shrugged "—if a person went to
all that trouble and expense, I guess they'd want the mother to be
reasonably intelligent."

"Good Lord." Vera looked disgusted. "Imagine
having to apply to have a baby—just like applying for a job!"

"It wouldn't be easy giving up a baby,"
Jenna put in pensively. "I suppose if you looked at it in terms of
a job right from the start, it might make it a little less
traumatic when the time came to hand over the baby."

"And that's not all," Marsha added. "It says
here that single women are preferred. Apparently both the couple
and their lawyer seem to think a woman who's never had a baby
wouldn't be as likely to have second thoughts about giving it
up."

"Well, they can count me out!" Vera's voice
rang out loudly. "I might be single, healthy and intelligent, but
there's no way I'd get involved in anything like this!"

There was a pause, and then two pairs of
eyes simultaneously turned to Jenna.

"Don't look at me!" She held up her hands
and laughed. "I tend to agree with Vera. It's a little too bizarre
for me." The plight of these two people was rather sad; she felt a
small stab of pity that they were so desperate for a child of their
own, and the fact that they were willing to go to such lengths even
made her admire them to a degree.

But beyond these thoughts, the realization
of the heartache these two people were going through didn't hit
home until several days later, when she walked in on her mother
watching a local talk show that featured this same couple. More
out of courtesy for her mother than any vested interest, she sat
down to watch.

Seeing the actual faces of those two,
instead of merely reading names in a newspaper, made the situation
all the more real and all the more heartrending. Her first
impression of Megan Garrison was that of a woman in intense pain.
She was very blond, and small-boned and fragile-looking. Her
husband, Ward, was as dark as she was fair, good-looking in a rough
sort of way. There was something in the quiet tautness of his tone
that caught Jenna's attention as they pleaded their cause, but it
was his wife she responded to. She listened as they related how a
previous attempt at locating a surrogate had ended in heartbreak:
after carrying the baby to term, the woman had changed her mind at
the last minute. And adoption was all but ruled out; the waiting
list was seven years long at the least—they had been waiting years
already.

Jenna's heart turned over in her chest as
she heard the woman say, "I die a little inside with every day that
goes by, and I see the hope that someday I may hold a child in my
arms grow dimmer and dimmer. And hope is all I have—" Her voice
broke tearfully, and long painful seconds ticked by before she was
able to speak again. "Hope is all I may ever have."

The desperation, the fear, the despair, the
realization that the woman had only this one small thread to cling
to, touched something deep inside Jenna's soul. She longed to reach
out and comfort Megan as her husband was doing, to wrap her arms
around her and tell her that it was only a matter of time before
her hope became a reality.

When it was over Jenna turned to her mother
with a murmur of sympathy on her lips, only to find her doe-soft
eyes swimming with unshed tears.

Jenna rushed to her side. "Mom, what is it?"
Her tone was anxious as she pressed a handkerchief into her
hand.

Marie attempted a watery smile. "I'm all
right." She dabbed at her overflowing eyes and leaned her head back
tiredly. Concerned, Jenna sat on the arm of the chair and searched
her mother's face.

"I'm fine, really," Marie said again. She
set aside the handkerchief and turned to Jenna with a sigh. "It's
just that seeing that couple brought back so many memories." She
lapsed into silence, but again her eyes grew red.

Jenna sat very still. She knew that she had
been adopted because of her mother's fierce desire for a child, but
for a moment she was almost stunned at her mother's heartfelt
reaction to the plight of two people who were, after all,
strangers. Instinctively she said, "You know exactly how that woman
feels, don't you?"

"Oh, yes—exactly." Marie dashed at her eyes,
and Jenna patiently handed the handkerchief back to her. "I wanted
a child so badly I could taste it. Everywhere I looked—the grocery
store, the drugstore, the doctor's office—there were mothers with
children, mothers about to have a baby. And there I was, helpless,
frustrated, hating myself for being jealous and wanting what they
seemed to take for granted." A pained expression flitted across her
face. "No one knows how worthless the inability to have a baby can
make a woman feel—except perhaps a woman who's been through it
herself." A pensive smile curved her lips as she looked up at
Jenna. "But your father was wonderful through it all. He was the
one who suggested adoption." She reached up a hand to cradle
Jenna's cheek in her palm. "You'll never know how much of a
blessing you were. Like a day of sunshine after a storm."

Jenna's throat felt raw. She tried to speak,
but the sound refused to pass through her throat. She could only
grip her mother's hand more tightly. Her eyes turned toward the
television screen, where a newscaster's voice now droned on and
on. She chastised herself for being the most insensitive clod ever
to have been born And yet these two people weren't the only ones
involved.

"I hate to say this..." She hesitated. "But
finding someone to bear a child for them seems so—so drastic." She
slipped onto the carpet in front of the chair, laced her arms
around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. "Another woman is
going to have to give up nine months of her life for these people.
How many women would be willing to do that?"

"Oh, Jenna." The raw emotion in Marie's tone
brought Jenna's eyes to her mother's in a flash, and they were held
there by a depth of intensity she'd never glimpsed before. "What
are nine months compared to a lifetime of loneliness? Some women
can go through life without a husband or child, but there are
others who can never be fulfilled unless they can share their love
with a husband and family. Women like Megan Garrison—and me." She
paused, her eyes now shining luminously. "It would take a very
special woman," she said softly. "A woman who isn't afraid to give
all of herself." She shook her head, a wistful smile on her lips.
"I can't imagine being able to give anything more precious than the
gift of life."

The gift of
li
fe. Almost with a sense of awe Jenna
absorbed the words. Her parents had taken her into their home and
their hearts, freely bestowing all the warmth and love they were
capable of giving. She knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that
their love for her was no different from what they might have felt
for a natural child, had they been able to have one. And during the
past few minutes, somehow all the long lonely years her mother had
struggled through were poignantly brought to life inside Jenna. She
could feel the same intense longing, the empty ache inside, that
both her mother and Megan Garrison lived with day after day. But
there was one difference.

She rushed to find a pencil and pad. Her
fingers shook as she scribbled down the name of the Garrisons'
Dallas attorney. It might be too late, or they might not want her,
but by heaven, she was going to try. Her heart fluttered almost
painfully in her chest as she looked up at her mother with shining
eyes, her heart nearly bursting with emotion.

She, Jenna Bradford, was determined to have
the child these two people wanted so desperately. For herself, for
Megan Garrison—and for the woman before her, who had given her own
life so much meaning. The woman who had taught her how precious
love really was.