Cressida is right. Kersti does think about it a lot. Cressida already understands that about her, which is really quite thrilling. No one has ever gotten her before, or for that matter, really seen her and accepted her anyway. Cressida doesn’t seem to give a shit about Kersti’s lack of credentials, or who she has to pretend to be for the world, or what she looks like, or her silly bravado. She’s dug her hands right inside Kersti and she’s feeling around in there, looking for something she can get hold of, something dirty and real she can grasp. That’s what she’s really interested in—the gory truth—which is utterly freeing.
“What about you?” Kersti says. “What’s your story?”
“It’s only our first date,” Cressida answers, smiling. “Too soon for my dark secret.”
Kersti suspects Cressida has more than just one.
Chapter 3
TORONTO—September 2015
The view through Dr. Gliberman’s picture window on the eighteenth floor looks like a grainy black-and-white photograph. Sheets of rain against the glass blur the Toronto skyline, completely obscuring the CN Tower. Kersti is distracted today. Lausanne’s been on her mind, whether or not to go back. And Lille has, too. Ever since Kersti got Lille’s letter, she’s felt uneasy. The new information that Magnus Foley was at Huber House the night Cressida fell has been niggling at her. Did Lille want her to do something? Is that why she wrote her? And if so, what?
“Kersti?”
Her gaze drifts away from the window and over to the baby pictures on Dr. Gliberman’s Wall of Success. Thank you for making our dreams come true! We will be forever grateful, Dr. G! Introducing Kiley and Kiera! Introducing Jack, Sam, & Mason! Singles, twins, triplets. The cards on the wall seem to be multiplying as fast as the infertile couples around her. She wants her own card up there on the wall. Introducing Eila! She’s had the name picked out since age six, her first year at Estonian summer camp.
“You’ve got a few options,” Dr. Gliberman says. Kersti’s head snaps back and she regards him with her usual blend of reverence and desperation. Gliberman is self-important and abrasively arrogant, but he has a reputation for getting even the most hopelessly infertile couples pregnant. His desk is cluttered with framed pictures of his own five children, who mock Kersti whenever she sits across from him.
Behind his head, there’s a life-size poster of a woman breastfeeding her baby. The mother and baby both have milk mustaches, and beneath them, the slogan: got breast milk?
“I don’t recommend more IVF, Kersti. You’ve already done six cycles and you’re just not producing good-quality eggs. In fact, your eggs in this last cycle were the quality of a woman in her mid-fifties.”
Kersti lets out a soft gasp and looks down at her feet, ashamed. She’s only thirty-five. Jay reaches for her hand and she can’t help but think about all the promise of their wedding day. She’d felt utterly triumphant walking down the aisle toward him, so damn handsome in his black tux and white Converse. She believed then that only good things lay ahead for them, the fulfillment of every wish and dream.
Jay had just quit his job and was about to open his own ad agency when he showed up at Kuusk Tours, where Kersti was working for her father, looking to book one last trip before his new business swallowed his freedom. The moment he walked through the door, Kersti was taken. He had dark hair that fell to his jawline, brown eyes that kind of winked at her without actually winking, and a smile that made her feel like a jelly fish. He was wearing a suit with Converse running shoes and had a computer bag slung across his chest. He could have been a college student or a stockbroker, but he was exactly Kersti’s type. She knew right away with a sinking feeling that she was with the wrong guy. What had been only a nagging suspicion about her current boyfriend of four years, Aleks Rummo, the beloved Estonian camp sweetheart whom her parents had practically chosen for her, was now a sickening, irrevocable fact.
Jay ended up buying a plane ticket to Stockholm that day and, thinking she was Scandinavian, asking Kersti out on a date. Lucky for her, he wasn’t too disappointed when he found out she was Estonian and by the time he got back from his Scandinavian holiday, Kersti had already broken up with Aleks.
In the years that followed, life began to unfold in delightfully unexpected ways. Jay proposed and Kersti started taking creative writing courses at a local college. After their wedding, which was officiated by an Asian Unitarian minister—a reasonable compromise, given that Jay is Jewish and Kersti is an emphatically nonreligious Lutheran descended from a long line of nonbelievers—Kersti took time off from Kuusk Tours and, with Jay’s moral and financial support, began to work on her first novel. The marriage was in a renaissance. Jay’s agency was thriving. She was writing. They bought a house.
And then one day they looked at each other and they both knew. It was time. They were ready for a baby. She remembers the excitement of deciding on their timeline. How na?ve she’d been, thinking she could choose the timing of her pregnancy. But those first few months of trying were wonderful. Sex everywhere, all the time. Lying upside down with her legs in the air, believing this was it. “I think we just made a baby,” she would giggle. “I feel it.”
When nothing happened, panic set in. It was fertility monitors and thermometers and increasing anxiety, until it all culminated with a grim diagnosis of blocked tubes. Not technically blocked—which would have been simpler to fix—but closed. Or, as her ob-gyn put it, deformed. The ob-gyn drew a picture of normal tubes, and then Kersti’s, which looked like a pair of boxing gloves. Still, her doctor was optimistic. Kersti was a perfect candidate for IVF. She was only in her early thirties and everything else was in perfect working order.
Thus began their long journey here, and what is starting to feel like the end of the road. One last chance to please her old-world Estonian parents. Motherhood surely would make her less of an outsider in her family; at least that’s what she keeps telling herself.
“I think it’s time to explore other options,” Dr. Gliberman says. “I don’t want to risk another miscarriage—”
Jay turns to her abruptly. “We could go on that cruise in the Baltic Sea,” he says, sounding way too excited for the situation at hand. “The Baltic Beauty, the one that goes to Copenhagen and Oslo and Russia. And then we could even pop over to Tallinn for a few weeks—”
“A cruise?” she says, astonished. “Instead of becoming parents?”
“We talked about our life getting back to normal if this cycle didn’t work. Dr. Gliberman is telling us it’s over—”
“I haven’t said it’s over,” Dr. Gliberman interrupts. “I can get you pregnant.”
“We’ve given this everything we’ve got,” Jay says, grabbing her hand with urgency. “We can see the world together. Let’s move on, Kerst. Let’s put our life back together—”
Kersti looks over at Dr. Gliberman. “How can you get me pregnant?” she asks him.
“With an egg donor.”
Jay jumps up. “We’re not using a donor,” he says.
“Jay, just listen—”
“I never signed on for this,” he mutters. “I’m done.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll be waiting outside.”