Eclipsed Hearts

Chapter 5: Too good to be true

Elena packed a bag on Sunday morning.

Not everything just enough, three changes of clothes, her toiletries, her laptop, the charger she could never find when she needed it and always found when she didn't. She moved through her childhood bedroom with the focused efficiency of someone who needed to be doing something physical before her thoughts swallowed her whole, folding things that didn't need folding, checking zips twice.

Her mother appeared in the doorway halfway through.

You don't have to leave, Diane said, her voice was careful, soft in the way it got when she was trying not to trigger something.

Elena didn't look up from the bag. I know.

Elena! Diane called out

I know I don't have to, she zipped the bag and finally looked up. I want to, She held her mother's gaze for exactly as long as it took to communicate that this was not a negotiation, and then she picked up the bag and moved toward the door.

Her mother stepped aside.

Elena paused in the doorway just for a second, just long enough for something complicated to pass across her face that she wasn't ready to name yet. Then she walked down the stairs, through the kitchen that still smelled faintly of the repast food, past her father's armchair, and out the front door.

She did not look back.

The subway ride to her apartment on the other side of the city felt nothing like the ride she had taken four days ago. That one had been weighted with dread, pressing her down into the seat. This one was different not lighter exactly, but more deliberate. She was choosing a direction. She was moving toward something instead of just away, and even if that something was only her own small apartment with its leaky bathroom faucet and its window that faced a brick wall, it was hers.

Or it was hers for nine more days.

She pushed that thought to the back of her mind and watched the city slide past the scratched subway window.

The apartment greeted her with the particular silence of a place that had been empty for almost a week a slightly stale quality to the air, the small signals of paused living. A mug she had left on the counter the morning of the phone call still sitting exactly where she had placed it, a cardigan draped over the back of the couch.

She stood in the middle of the living room for a moment and breathed it in.

Then she opened every window, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop and her legal pad and her brutally honest bank app and spent two hours doing the math she had been avoiding.

It didn't improve with attention.

Her rent was due in nine days, her account held fifty-three dollars and some change, her last paycheck, the one from Harmon & Associates, issued two days before she was fired would clear tomorrow and bring her total to approximately four hundred and twelve dollars. She had a credit card with a hundred and sixteen dollars of available credit remaining.

She closed the banking app.

She opened it again and closed it.

The numbers did not change.

She was still sitting there, staring at nothing in particular, when the front door opened and Jade walked in oversized tote bag on one shoulder, hair wrapped, takeout containers balanced in both hands, looking like she had just survived something.

You're back, Jade said, dropping everything onto the counter and crossing the room to pull Elena into a hug that Elena hadn't known she needed until it was happening. I'm so sorry, El, I'm so sorry about your dad.

Elena held on for a second longer than she normally would have. Then she let go, cleared her throat, and gestured at the takeout.

What did you bring?

Dumplings and noodles and something I can't pronounce that the man swore was amazing. Jade began unpacking containers onto the counter, we are eating real food tonight and you are going to tell me everything and I am going to listen and not say anything unhelpful, Deal?

Deal, Elena said and meant it.

They ate on the living room floor because the coffee table was too low and the dining table felt too formal for the kind of evening it was. Jade sat cross-legged with her noodles and Elena sat with her back against the couch and her dumplings growing cold in her lap because she kept talking instead of eating and couldn't quite stop.

She told Jade about the layoff, about Vivian Clarke and her perfectly timed email, she told her about Mr. Dalton's face and what she had said to him on her way out. Jade made a sound of deep and genuine satisfaction at that part.

She told her about the funeral, about the church being full and Chloe singing while Marcus was holding it together by the thinnest possible thread.

She did not tell her about her mother and the garden and the smoothie. She was not ready to say that out loud to anyone yet, it was too large and too strange and too much like something from a story rather than a life. She filed it away in the part of herself that was still processing.

She told her about the money.

Jade's face went through several expressions at once. Okay, she said carefully, so what are we working with?

For my half? About four hundred dollars by tomorrow, maybe a little more if I sell some things.

Jade winced, my half isn't much better. I've got three hundred and something and my hours got cut at the restaurant this week.

They looked at each other across the dumplings and the takeout containers.

So we're both broke, Elena said.

Comprehensively, Jade confirmed.

Elena leaned her head back against the couch cushion and stared at the ceiling. The familiar white plaster with the small water stain in the corner shaped vaguely like a duck that had been there since they moved in and that they had named Gerald.

She stared at Gerald the water stain and thought about the math and the nine days and the four hundred dollars and felt the particular exhaustion of someone who has been problem-solving continuously for a week with no solution in sight.

We need to think, Elena said. Seriously think, what are our options.

Okay, Jade set down her noodles and lay flat on her back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling beside Elena. It was their thing their think-position, they had called it since college. Horizontal and staring upward, which for some reason produced better ideas than sitting upright at a table ever did.

Freelance work? I could pick up some data entry, admin stuff online.

Timeline is too slow, nine days isn't enough to get paid.

Sell things, my laptop, maybe.

You need your laptop to find work.

Right, Elena exhaled. Your cousin the one with the catering company. Does he still need weekend staff?

He's in Miami until January.

Of course he is, Elena rubbed her face. Okay, what about you?

Jade was already scrolling through her phone, the way she did when she was thinking not reading anything in particular, just letting her eyes move while her brain worked.

Jade kept scrolling, a minute passed, then another, the room was quiet except for the faint sound of traffic below the window and the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen. Elena closed her eyes and let herself float in the not-thinking for just a moment, which was the closest thing to rest she had managed in days.

Then Jade said "Wait"

Something in the word made Elena open her eyes.

Jade was holding her phone up, frowning at the screen with the expression she got when she had found something interesting and wasn't sure yet whether interesting was good or bad.

What? Elena sat up slightly.

This ad just came up. It's, Jade tilted her head, It's a surrogacy thing.

Elena blinked, a what?

A surrogacy program, Jade read from the screen, her voice taking on the careful cadence of someone reading something for the first time. "Help an intending parent create the family they've always dreamed of, Become a surrogate with Novara Fertility and Wellness Center and be generously compensated for your time, your care, and your incredible gift" She looked up. There's a number and a website and El the compensation figure they're listing is, She turned the phone around so Elena could see the screen.

Elena stared at the number.

It was not a small number, It was in fact a number that would take her out of hardship, if utilized properly.

That seems Elena started,

Too good to be true? Jade finished, I know.

They looked at each other.

We should look into it properly, Elena said, Research the clinic, read review and make sure it's legitimate before we do anything.

Obviously, Jade agreed. She was already typing the website into her browser.

They spent the next hour reading everything they could find about Novara Fertility and Wellness Center, the sleek website with its soft photography and its compassionate language, the handful of glowing testimonials, the professional credentials listed under the founder's name, Bianca Romano, Founder and Director.

Everything looked clean, legitimate, It looked exactly like what it claimed to be.

Elena looked at the application form on the screen for a long time.

Nine days, four hundred dollars. Gerald the water stain watching from the ceiling.

"We're applying," she said.

Jade didn't even hesitate, "We're applying" Elena felt heavy, I haven't even been pregnant before, Jade.

I know, she responded like someone who already saw a way out of hardship.

Neither of them slept well that night but for the first time in a week, it wasn't grief keeping Elena awake, It was something that felt dangerous yet like hope.