Chapter 2

The pregnancy was brutal.

Not just physically — though the morning sickness lasted five months and the sciatica made me walk like a woman twice my age. It was the emotional architecture of the arrangement that slowly, methodically, dismantled me.

I was carrying their child. That was the agreement. Griffin's sperm, my egg — because Margaux's eggs were "nonviable," she claimed, and donor eggs hadn't taken. It had to be mine. The contract was clear: I was the gestational carrier. Upon delivery, full parental rights would transfer to Griffin and Margaux Ashford. In exchange, I'd receive two hundred thousand dollars and the satisfaction of knowing I'd given a desperate couple the miracle of life.

What the contract also contained — buried in paragraph 47, subsection (c), in language so dense it required a law degree to parse — was a clause that stated if the intended mother was found to have misrepresented her medical condition, the surrogate retained full legal and custodial rights to any biological offspring.

I didn't know about that clause. Not then. My lawyer, a tired public defender doing me a favor, had skimmed the document and called it "standard." Griffin's attorney, a shark from a white-shoe firm, had presumably read every word and assumed it would never matter.

Because who would ever find out?

For the first four months, Margaux played the role of devoted intended mother flawlessly. She came to every appointment. She brought me organic ginger tea and prenatal vitamins that cost more than my weekly groceries. She held my hand during the first ultrasound and wept at the sound of the heartbeat.

"Our baby," she breathed, squeezing my fingers. "Elara, you're an angel."

But by month five, the mask began to crack.

It started with small things. She stopped coming to appointments. Her texts went from warm and effusive to clipped, one-word responses. When I mentioned the baby's first kick — a moment so sacred it made me weep alone in my tiny apartment — she replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

Then came the Instagram post.

My friend Priya sent it to me at 2 a.m., her message a string of shocked emojis followed by: "Did you know about this?"

It was a photo of Margaux at a wellness retreat in Tulum. She was in a bikini, her flat, toned stomach gleaming in the sun. Beside her, a smoothie. Behind her, a sign that read: "Fertility & Feminine Wellness Intensive — Reclaim Your Womb."

Reclaim your womb.

I stared at the photo, my swollen belly pressing against the edge of my kitchen counter. She was at a fertility retreat. The woman who told me her body rejected every pregnancy was at a retreat designed to enhance fertility.

My hands trembled as I scrolled through the comments.

"@MargauxAshford You look incredible! When's the baby announcement? 😍"

Her reply: "All in good time! My body is finally ready. 🌸"

My body is finally ready. She said it as if she were the one carrying a child. As if my body — exhausted, aching, stretched beyond recognition — was merely a temporary inconvenience, a rental car she'd return once she reached her destination.

I screenshot everything.

The next morning, I called Griffin. He answered on the sixth ring, his voice distracted.

"Elara. Everything okay with the baby?"

Not "everything okay with you." The baby.

"I saw Margaux's Instagram," I said carefully. "The fertility retreat."

Dead silence.

"It's just a spa thing," he said quickly. "You know Margaux. She's into wellness. It doesn't mean anything."

"It said 'Reclaim Your Womb,' Griffin."

"It's marketing," he snapped, his tone shifting from casual to defensive in a heartbeat. "You're overthinking this. You need to focus on staying healthy and not stressing yourself out. Stress is bad for the baby."

He hung up. I sat in my kitchen, one hand on my belly, the other clutching my phone, and felt the first, cold tendril of a terrible suspicion wrap around my heart.

What if she was never infertile at all?