The Finishing School

“What’s wrong with our bathroom?” Kersti wants to know. Angela’s room is also on the fourth floor, where there’s a perfectly good bathroom.

“I prefer this one,” she says, flustered. “Iss none of your business anyway.”

Kersti laughs and looks over at Cressida, expecting her to jump in, but her expression is strangely solemn. She’s dead quiet. “Cress?”

“I ate too much,” Cressida says. “I have to puke.”

Angela hurries up the stairs on her way back to the fourth floor, with Cressida not far behind.

“What was that all about?” Kersti asks Cressida, trying to keep up with her. “What do you think she was doing? Policing someone on the second floor? Spying?”

“Probably,” Cressida responds absently, rushing to the bathroom.





Chapter 23





TORONTO—February 2016



A light snow is falling outside. The lobby of the clinic is decorated for Valentine’s Day, with a banner hanging in the window. Kersti and Jay are sitting side by side in the waiting room. She looks up from the “Everything You Need to Know about Your Sperm” pamphlet and notices Jay clutching his laptop bag so tightly his knuckles are white. He’s staring miserably out at nothing. “You’re not nervous, are you, babe?” she says gently. “You’ve done this before.”

She holds up the pamphlet. “Did you know that motile sperm are called spermatozoon?”

“Sadly, I do. I’ve read that one before.”

“It’s been at least forty-eight hours, right?”

“You’ve asked me that fifty times already. Yes. It’s been forty-eight hours.”

“I just want to make sure they’re fresh—”

“They’re fresh, Kerst. Believe it or not, I’m capable of going forty-eight hours without jerking off. I also ate your oyster and pumpkin seed casserole, took my zinc, my folic acid, and my vitamin D. My sperm is fucking FRESH.”

She touches his hand and rests her head on his shoulder. “This is it, babe. I know it. I had a beautiful thick uterine lining this morning and the nurse said my cervical mucus was gorgeous.”

“That’s why I married you,” he mutters. “Gorgeous cervical mucus.”

“And my inner labia isn’t swollen anymore—”

“Babe?” he says. “I don’t ever want to hear the words labia and swollen come out of your mouth again.”

“Jay Wax?” The nurse is standing in the corridor with a clipboard. “We’re ready for you.”

Jay stands up and salutes her. “Spermatozoon reporting for duty,” he says.

Kersti hands him his laptop bag. “Here’s your porn. Now go make us a baby.”

She still can’t believe they’re at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine making a baby with Cressida’s eggs. The journey to this point has been surreal and yet divinely fated—starting with Lille’s letter, which ultimately led to this moment. If not for that first visit to Deirdre, Kersti would still be in Toronto, reluctantly giving up her dream of motherhood.

It turns out Deirdre was thrilled to donate as many of Cressida’s eggs as Kersti needed. The only catch is if Kersti gets pregnant, Deirdre wants to be in the children’s lives. “I would never impose myself,” she said. “Never expect them to think of me as their grandmother, but I would need to see them once in a while, to be kept abreast of their development. Technically, even if they never know, I would be their biological grandmother.”

It seemed fair, a small price to pay. Deirdre agreed to have her lawyer draw up a contract, and Kersti left that day with only one more obstacle to overcome: Jay.

She managed with great restraint not to say a word about it until dinner that Saturday night in Boston, after their day at the spa and a couple of rounds of make-up sex. And then, when Jay was relaxed and flushed from wine, with a belly full of filet mignon and creamed spinach, she said, “I want you to know, you’re a hundred percent right.”

“I am? About what?”

“About me, not ever being willing to give up on having a baby.”

He looked at her nervously. “And is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I would have kept going until it bankrupted us.”

“You’re scaring me, Kerst—”

Kersti shifted in her chair and sipped her wine, carefully choosing her words. “What if the cycles were free?” she asked him.

“It would help,” he admitted. “But they’re not. Especially with a donor—”

“I’ve found a private donor,” she said. “Hear me out. She’s already got fifteen superb-quality eggs frozen at one of the best fertility clinics in the United States. She would donate them to us for free. There’s a lot of legal stuff involved—it’s like adopting a baby—but I know her very well. She’s not a stranger. I know her family history. We would only pay for my drugs, which would be minimal, and the transfer—”

“Who is it?”

“Listen to me,” she said, reaching for his hands. “Look at me, Jay, and just answer this question. Do you want to have a child? Forget everything else—”

“I can’t forget everything else—”

“Do you want to have a child?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he answered, and she was moved to see he had tears in his eyes. “Of course I do. You know how much I want to be a father.”

“Then think about this. As many high-quality eggs as we need for free, from someone I know. It’s meant to be, Jay. We can’t walk away from this.”

“Who is it?”

“Cressida.”

Jay’s mouth fell open. “How the hell?”

“Her mother had her eggs frozen.”

“Holy shit. This is fucked up.”

“She’s already had one child with those eggs,” Kersti continued. “I met her. She’s beautiful. Perfect. Deirdre used a sperm donor, but of course we would use your sperm and you would be the father—”

She pulled out her phone and showed him the pictures she’d taken of Sloane, as well as a few she’d added of Cressida as a baby and in her teens. “That’s her daughter, Sloane. And this is Cressida. That’s her at two, and then here at five. . . .”

Jay scrolled through the pictures. “She was gorgeous,” he said, lingering on one of Cressida from the Lycée.

“I spoke to Deirdre about their family history,” Kersti said. “There’s nothing alarming or unusual—”

“Except suicidal tendencies,” Jay said, handing back her phone. “She tried to kill herself, Kersti.”

“No, I don’t think she did,” Kersti said. “I haven’t had a chance to really talk to you about it, but I don’t think she did. And at some point, when all this is behind us, I’m going to prove it—”

“Wasn’t she fucked up, though? Didn’t she do some messed-up shit? These can’t be the genes you want for our child.”

“I knew her, Jay. She had a good heart. She was her own worst enemy, that’s all. She was raised in a boarding school from the time she was seven. How could she not have been fucked up? But that’s got nothing to do with genes.”

“Still—”

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