The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Forgery

I had never signed it.

But it was my signature.

The loop on the B. The little hook I put on the end of the h. The way the F leans.

Somebody had copied it off something I'd signed for Oscar. A lease. A birthday card.

I sat down on a pizza box and called downstairs.

Andrew came up two steps at a time and read the whole petition standing in my doorway.

He didn't say anything until the last page.

"They're calling you a carrier."

"They're calling me a uterus with a signature."

He handed the agreement back and tapped the bottom of the last page.

"Look at the notary block."

A raised seal. A notary's signature. A stamp with a commission number.

And a date.

July 4.

I started to laugh.

Andrew looked at me.

"Beth?"

"Fourth of July," I said. "Who gets a surrogacy contract notarized on the Fourth of July?"

The court gave us a hearing on Thursday, April 9.

I was thirty-five weeks and two days pregnant and I couldn't see my own shoes.

Trish found me a lawyer through a family-law clinic, a tired young man with a cheap tie and a very sharp pencil.

He read the petition once and said, "Huh."

He read the notary block and said, "Oh, huh."

Family court was a small room with fluorescent lights and a judge who looked like she'd seen every kind of family there was and liked none of them.

Oscar sat at the other table with two lawyers in better suits than the judge's.

He didn't look at me.

Philippa wasn't there.

Her lawyer said she was on hospital bed rest at Lowther, high risk, and had signed an affidavit.

Edward Lowther sat in the front row of the gallery with his hands folded on a cane he didn't need.

He nodded to me when I came in.

Oscar's lead lawyer did most of the talking.

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