“I’m sorry,” she said. She’d followed me willingly enough, and now she met my gaze steadily, not fidgeting or flinching. I wondered if she was on heavy-duty antidepressants, or if she’d spent the last few months sitting on a beach, hanging out in a sweat lodge, doing yoga. Maybe she’d met up with my mother in New Mexico, sampled some of the Baba’s offerings. That thought made me even angrier.

“You’re sorry. That’s great. That’s a big consolation. I got a call from your fertility clinic because your surrogate was freaking out. She hadn’t heard from you, nobody knew where you were, and, in case you were confused, having a baby is not like ordering a pizza, then deciding you’d rather have Chinese. You can’t just decide you don’t want it.”

“I know.” No ducking, no tears, no excuses. . just that same strange, narcotized steadiness. “I didn’t do the right thing. But I’m back now, and I won’t run away again.”

“I don’t believe you. Why should I believe you?”

She didn’t answer me. Instead, she asked, “Have you met Annie?”

“I have. She’s been staying here. Helping with the baby.”

This, finally, caused a crack in India’s placid exterior. She blinked rapidly. “What?”

“We didn’t know where you were. I had people looking, but we didn’t know if you’d turn up in time, and even if you did, we didn’t know if you’d want to be a mother. Annie’s been staying here, and Jules — she’s the egg donor — and her girlfriend, Kimmie — they’ve been babysitting.”

Now India was blinking even faster. “What? I don’t understand. You met the egg donor? How could that be?”

“I needed all the help I could get. Annie and Jules have been great. They wanted to help me,” I said, letting her fill in the blank of and you didn’t all by herself.

“Listen,” she said. This time she put her hand on my arm. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking,” she continued, “that I’m going to be a terrible mother.”

“I don’t even think you planned on being a mother at all. I think you just wanted a baby to make sure you’d inherit my father’s money. I think that’s about the worst reason for having a baby in the world. I think you’re a bigamist, and I think…”

“I think,” she said, interrupting me, “that you have no clue what my life was like.”

“You mean before or after you were arrested? Or before you married my father without bothering to get divorced?”

She almost smiled. “It wasn’t that I didn’t bother to get divorced. I served David with papers. He never signed them. And by then, I’d changed my name. .” Her voice trailed off. “You’re not entirely wrong. Money did have something to do with it. But mostly…”

She paused. I waited.

“Mostly,” she said, “I wanted your father and me to be a family. To have something that was ours. I think that’s why I couldn’t handle the funeral. Why I left. .” Now her voice was cracking. She looked away, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I couldn’t stand to think that the baby would be mine, not ours.”

“And you’d be stuck with it,” I added.

“That was part of it,” she answered. “But I figured out a lot of things while I was gone.” She smiled. “And I got divorced.”

“You know, you probably weren’t even legally married to my father. Which means you probably can’t inherit.”

She shrugged, but didn’t answer. “I don’t care about the money. I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s true,” she said. “I came back for my baby.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe you. And, by the way, it’s not your baby, and she has a name. Rory.”

She lifted her chin. “She’s not yours. I’m the mother.”

“You don’t think,” I said, “that if I went to a judge and told him what you did, and told him what you were, that they’d give me custody?”

Instead of answering, India asked, “Do you want a baby?”

“Interesting that you’d care about that now, after you and my father decided to give me custody if something happened.”

Another faint smile flitted across her face. “Your dad always thought that you were the responsible one.”

That hurt, imagining my dad discussing me with his new wife; knowing I’d never hear him compliment me again. “I am responsible. And I’ll be responsible.” I gave her a hard look. “You should go.” I flicked my hand toward the doors, in case she’d forgotten where they were. “Go rent an apartment. Or move into a hotel. Wait for the will to be probated. You might not get it all, but I’m sure you’ll get something, and you can move to Majorca or wherever you want to go to catch your next rich husband. I can handle this.”

“I’m sure you can. That’s why your dad and I picked you. But it isn’t fair.”

She had to be kidding me. “None of this is fair!” I blurted.

“It isn’t fair,” she continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “that you won’t get to enjoy your twenties. That you’ll be stuck taking care of a baby who isn’t yours. When your father and I chose you as the guardian, we had no idea. .” Her voice was trembling, but she made herself finish. “We had no idea this would happen. We only picked someone because the clinic said we had to, and we thought if anything happened, it wouldn’t be for years and years. It was never our intention for you to have a baby to deal with at this point in your life.” She wiped her eyes. “That’s why I left my first husband. I was pregnant, and I didn’t want to be stuck. But you probably know about that already.”

I shook my head. My inquiry into India’s affairs had revealed that she’d been raised by her grandparents, rejected by her mother, and married at eighteen, but not why she’d left her first husband. If she’d been pregnant and had an abortion, maybe that was why she wanted this baby — Rory — so badly. Not because she wanted to lock down my father and her inheritance, but to make up for the baby she hadn’t had when she was young.

I smoothed my hair again, buying time, thinking that India and I actually had more in common than I’d been willing to acknowledge. We both had mothers who’d let us down. We’d both gotten stuck with too much responsibility too soon. Of course, I’d gone to Vassar and she’d gone to a justice of the peace to marry her high-school drama teacher, but still. Minor details.

“I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, and I know you don’t like me.” She was crying in earnest now, tears streaming down her tanned cheeks, not even bothering to try to wipe them. “But I loved your dad, and I swear to you. .” She rested her hand against her heart. “I’ll do the best job I can.”

It would have been the easiest thing to say, Okay, fine, you take it from here, to tell Annie and Jules that the plans had changed, to tell Darren that my life had magically untangled itself, that I could be, again, just a regular girl, unencumbered, my nights and weekends free. Surprisingly, the thought made me sad. I liked the baby, the apartment full of women, even Annie’s little boys, the one time they’d come for the weekend. I liked feeling needed… and admired a little, too. No, that’s not her baby. It’s her half sister. Her father died before she was born, and now she’s raising her. Isn’t she amazing? More than that, I felt like I was on my way to building the thing I’d been missing after my mother left: a family of my own.

“So what do you say?” India asked. She looked at me hopefully. “Do you think you could give me a chance?”

“I think,” I said. “I think maybe the more hands, the better. I think I’ve got a good plan in place. But I think you can help.”

Her smile vanished. “Help? What do you mean? I’m going to be the mother.”

“I think that this baby is going to have a lot of mothers.”

A line between her eyes deepened as she frowned.

“Come upstairs,” I said, walking back into the lobby, giving Ricky a wave and punching the button for the elevator.

She stood behind me silently as we ascended and, without a word, followed me into the apartment, then down the hall. Rory was just starting to wake up, kicking her legs, curling and uncurling her fingers and her toes as she wriggled around. India froze in her tracks about three feet from the crib, making a noise like she’d been hit. “Oh,” she said. Her mouth was open, and I wondered what she was thinking of: my father, or the baby she hadn’t had. “Can I…”

“Fine.”

She reached into the crib and gently lifted Rory into her arms. “Hi, baby,” she whispered. “Hi, little baby. I came back for you.”

“Watch her head,” I said pointlessly. India had Rory’s head tucked into the crook of her elbow, and she was doing Annie’s little bouncing move, like she’d been born knowing it, born with that baby in her arms. I sighed, feeling the strangest mix of sorrow and relief, and I worried, for a minute, that maybe I’d start crying, too. But I had a future, my whole life ahead of me, babies of my own, if I wanted them.

She looked at me, eyes brimming, above Rory’s head. Her bald spot was gone, and in its place was a thick tuft of glossy dark hair, the same hair as my brothers, and my dad. “Thank you,” she whispered.

I could have said something snotty, like Whatever, or It wasn’t like you had a choice. But she seemed at once so broken and so happy, standing in the room she’d decorated with the baby in her arms. . and so all I said was “You’re welcome.”


2017

I waited by the doorway outside the primary school with the rest of the first-grade moms and sitters and the single stay-at-home dad, making small talk until the bell rang and the six-year-olds, all pleated skirts and scabby knees and oversized backpacks, came racing out into the sunshine.