How I became the billionaire’s surrogate

Chapte Ten.

At the center of the table, Margaret Anderson began to cry, no warning, no pretense. The dinner had been set up by Elena as a chance to mend fences between the morellis and the andersons, a carefully managed event meant to feel civil, like a charity gala run by someone used to handling delicate emotions. Aria sat there with Adrian, expecting silence, even frostiness, the quiet standoff one sees when people don't want to look at what they've lost. But Margaret didn't hold back, and her tears rolled down without pause, thick and sudden, that wasn't acting. Valerie had done that before - she'd stage emotions like fashion shows.

This felt deeper, born from places no one could predict, tearing away at Margaret's calm like old paint peeling off wood. "Margaret " Elena rose quickly, startled, her voice trembling slightly. "One look just like her, plus " margaret's whisper slipped out between fingers clenched over her lips. She stared at Aria as if she'd stepped into a memory where time had stopped, "The jawline matches. The eyes, same color, plus she's exactly like Diane. " "Diane, and " Aria said quietly. Margaret nodded slowly, eyes wide with disbelief.

For twenty-three years, Margaret had been Diane's closest companion, they'd shared dorm rooms in college, married each other's siblings' kids, gone through sicknesses together. When Diane fell ill, fast, brutal ,no doctor could stop it. No one knew why,it was Margaret who had been at her side in those last weeks, holding her hand through the nights that Aria herself had never even been allowed to see. "She handed me something, " Margaret said to Aria, a couple of days later, in the Anderson living room while having tea. "An envelope. She forced me to promise not to open it until she said that I would know when the 'right' person needed it." A moment of silence. "I was still clueless at that moment. I believe I understand now." The envelope was not thick at all. Inside: a tiny brass key, and a handwritten note in her mother's meticulous handwriting. The note contained an address in Brooklyn and three numbers, a combination. Aria kept the key in her hand and remembered her mother's hands that she always thought were warm and soft, her mother's hands touched her through distances which now seemed impossible to measure. She went on her own. She told Adrian that she was going to a fashion preview, and he, as usual, not questioning her, accepted.

The habit of him monitoring her movements had not developed here that would come later, and for other reasons. The storage place was in Greenpoint, located between a printing shop and a laundromat, the teenager who was bored and not looking up, just pointed her towards the corridor. The unit was compact and smelled of cedar and old papers. There was a fire-resistant safe,the combination from the note fit on the first try and inside the safe were three things.

First: a ledger. Aria's mom was very thorough; she was a person who would record everything. The ledger was full of notes for about fourteen months, dates and sums names jotted down in the neat shorthand of a woman who was aware that she was creating a document that someday might have to speak for itself.

Second: a bank account book. The sum, even after years of being compounded with interest, was so significant that Aria didn't even move her hands. Save her mother's been saving her entire life since before Aria was born. Not from the father's account, which he absolutely controlled, but from a separate, secret life, carefully maintained, quite apart, with the quiet discipline of a woman who had figured out something about her marriage that no one else was supposed to know.

Third: a journal. Aria found a place to sit on the floor of the storage unit, putting her back against the cool, metal wall, then started reading. She was home at seven. Adrian was working in his study. She noticed the light under the door and, held to the hallway outside by the journal that she had pressed against her chest, she stood there for a long time, mother's handwriting residing behind her sternum like a second heartbeat. She had now learned that she had plenty of money to escape, enough to rent a flat somewhere, enrol in a fashion school and even create a business from scratch.

The very contract that she had just agreed on three weeks back could see her getting five million dollars in three years. Her inheritance could give her a version of freedom right now.

She was standing in the hallway, reflecting on the last few pages of the journal in which her mother had inscribed, in her typical careful and precise manner, the words of someone who, at that time, had not yet realized that she was writing about her own death. Then she remembered the name her mother had written and circled twice, in the ink that was so dark that it seemed as if her hand was trembling when she wrote it. Leaving was not an option. At least not until she figured out what had been done and who did it and why. She went to her room where she sat with the journal till midnight, and when she finally put it down, she felt both lighter and heavier just like when the thing you are afraid of turns out to be true. Her mother had not died of natural causes. Aria had always, at some level, known that. Now she was sure of it. She locked the journal in the wardrobe safe, the very one Adrian had installed for the contract documents and lay down in the dark thinking: not yet. Let them think they are safe. Let everyone think I am exactly what I appear to be.

She had signed a contract. She had three years. She intended to use every single one of them wisely and to the fullest.