I thought handing my best friend the baby I carried would be the happiest moment of her life. Instead, she looked into his eyes and accused my husband and me of betraying her.PAY ATTENTION: Find it fast with our new search feature at Legit.ng! I carried a child for nine months so my best friend could finally be a mother. Source: OriginalSix hours after I handed him to her, she looked into his face and refused to take him home.But that came later.First there was the recovery room, my whole body aching after a long labor, and the baby in my arms weighing almost nothing though I’d carried him for nine months.PAY ATTENTION: From breaking news to viral moments.
Follow Legit.ng on Instagram!I kept waiting to feel relief. Pride. Something clean.Maya and I had been inseparable since seventh grade, when she lent me her only pen during a math test and never asked for it back.Five years of miscarriages had hollowed her out. Failed IVF cycles.It didn’t help that her husband Liam came from a family obsessed with carrying on the family line.
Maya used to joke that every holiday dinner eventually turned into someone asking when they were giving the family an heir.Her eggs were viable. Her body simply couldn’t safely carry another pregnancy.When the doctor finally told her she should never try again, I offered to carry for her.Maya, by the way, was the reason Evan and I had met in the first place. Source: OriginalThey’d grown up next door to each other and had been friends since they were kids.Back then, I’d thought it was sweet that my husband and my best friend had so much history together.Lying in that hospital bed, waiting for both of them to arrive, I had no idea just how much of that history I didn’t know.My husband Evan pushed into the doorway with two coffees and a granola bar he knew I wouldn’t eat.”Any word from them?” he asked.”Why are they late?””Liam’s stuck at the airport.”Evan set the coffees down and rubbed his eyes, blinking hard the way he had been doing lately. He’d blamed it on his contacts and some new eye drops.I had stopped asking.”You did an amazing thing today,” Evan said quietly.He kissed the top of my head.”The client in Denver had moved the meeting up,” he reminded me.
“I had to go.””Go,” I said. “Maya will be here soon. I’m fine.”The debts hovered between us like they always did now.The failed café. The credit cards.
Source: OriginalA collector had even called Sophie’s school the month before when Evan stopped answering his phone.”I love you, Rach.”Evan was gone before the baby stirred. I looked down at the tiny face, at the dark slits of his sleeping eyes, and tried to memorize the shape of him. He wasn’t mine.That was the whole point.But my body kept telling my brain a different story, and I had to keep correcting it.Nurse Patricia came in to check my chart, then leaned over the baby as he stirred in my arms.”There you are,” she murmured when his eyes opened.She looked at them for a second longer than I expected.”Nothing. Just striking eyes.” She smiled and adjusted the blanket around my shoulders.
“Try to get some rest while he’s quiet.””I’m trying.”When she left, my phone buzzed on the tray table. Source: OriginalLiam: Maya’s on her way to you. I’ll catch up.I read it twice. The wording sat oddly, the kind of sentence a lawyer might write.I told myself he was just stressed, that people typed strangely when they were excited.
Then I turned the phone face-down on the blanket, kissed the baby’s forehead, and listened for footsteps in the hall.I still thought the hardest part of the day was over.Minutes later, Maya pushed through the door alone, her cheeks blotchy, her hands shaking at her sides. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.”Where’s Liam?” I asked.No hug. No happy tears.She crossed the room and stopped at the edge of the bed.I lifted the bundle toward her. “Do you want to hold your son?”Her arms trembled as she took him and angled him toward the window light.
Something in her expression cracked. Source: OriginalShe leaned closer, as if trying to convince herself she was seeing it wrong.”Maya?”Maya placed him back on my chest with the care of someone returning a wallet she had picked up by mistake. Then she stood up and stepped away from the bed.I laughed, because that was the only sound my mouth could make.”You’re exhausted. Sit down.
It’s overwhelming, I know.””You and Evan really thought you could sell me your own baby?”I stared at her. “What?””Don’t.” Her voice was low, corrosive. “Don’t do that face.””Maya, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”I looked down at the baby. “What are you talking about?””The irises.
Look at them.”As if he’d heard her, the baby stirred and opened his eyes.”Evan’s eyes are brown,” I said. Source: Original”His contacts are brown.” Maya looked at me. “Rachel, I knew him before he started wearing them. His real eyes looked like that.”I stared at her.”He has aniridia.
I’ve known since we were kids. Before the contacts, his eyes looked just like the baby’s.””Wait, what?!”Maya looked down at him again. “I’m not saying I know what the baby has. But I’ve seen eyes like that before.
Evan’s.””That’s not… that isn’t…””He isn’t my baby,” I whispered. “He’s yours.”Maya stared at me. For a moment I thought she was going to sit back down and apologize and cry into my shoulder.But her mouth twisted.”Even if what you’re saying were true,” I said, my voice climbing, “how would that even work? How could Evan’s DNA be in your baby?
It was your egg. Liam was supposed to be the father. I saw the paperwork. I signed everything.Maya looked at me for a long, terrible moment.
Source: Original”Then maybe you should ask your husband.”Then she walked out.Liam appeared in the doorway two minutes later.He avoided looking at the baby, shoving his trembling hand into his coat pocket.”Please don’t do any tests yet,” he said. “No genetic panels. Nothing on the chart. We need to figure this out ourselves first.”A small, cold thought slid in behind my ribs.Liam hadn’t asked if Maya was all right.
He hadn’t asked what she’d said. He already knew.”I know. Just, please. Give us a day.
Keep the baby.”Then he was gone, too. Source: OriginalA few hours ago, I got home. Somehow.The nursery Evan had painted a soft green stood ready for a baby who was supposed to sleep somewhere else.I sat on the floor with the bundle in my arms and called my husband.The line went so quiet I thought the call had dropped.”Evan?””Wait until I get home, Rachel.””Is he yours? Just tell me.
Is this your son?”He hung up.I sat there in the dim green light, looking down at eyes that Maya swore looked like my husband’s.”I’m not waiting anymore,” I muttered under my breath. “Not when he already decided what I was allowed to know.”I picked up the phone before I could talk myself out of it.Maya answered on the second ring, her voice raw.”Don’t hang up,” I said. “I swear on Sophie’s life, I didn’t know anything. But Evan is hiding something.
He wouldn’t answer me.”There was a long silence.”Rachel.” Her breath shook. “There’s something I didn’t tell you either.” Source: OriginalForty minutes later she was at my kitchen table, still in the sweater she had worn to the hospital.The baby slept in a bassinet by my feet. Neither of us looked at him.”The morning your w
