The Surrogate, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book one (17 page)

As a final gesture, Father Jimmy called up its web page and instantly recognized Oviedo Cathedral in the picture at the top. Beneath it was a message of welcome (he was the 603rd visitor to the site) and a statement of the society’s goals and purposes.

The society’s founder, a cheerful-looking woman, appeared in a large color photograph, along with her personal invitation to become a member of the society. The caption identified her as Judith Kowalski. Prospective applicants could respond either by e-mail or by regular post; the appropriate addresses were given for each.

“It’s not possible,” Hannah gasped, hypnotized by the face on the screen. “That’s the lady I told you about.”

“Who?”

“The one who runs Partners in Parenthood.”

“Are you sure? I thought you said her name was——”

“There’s a different name under the photo, but that’s Letitia Greene. I’m positive.”

“How odd.”

The doorbell to the rectory sounded a succession of sharp rings. Father Jimmy jumped up, glancing at his watch as he did. The time had slipped away without his knowing it. It was past eleven. No one called at this hour, unless it was an emergency.

The front door was opened and in the exchange of voices that ensued, Hannah heard her name being mentioned. She rose and went into the hall to find Jolene, disheveled and wild-eyed.

Dispensing with any greeting, the woman grabbed her by the arm. “Do you know what time it is? You’ve given me such a scare. You told us you were going to social hour and you’d be back at ten. When you didn’t come home, we feared the worst.” Jolene was unable to control the trembling in her voice. “Excuse me, father, but you can understand my feelings. I come out looking for her and find the church pitch black! Not a soul in sight! What am I supposed to think?”

“I told Marshall I’d call if I needed a ride,” Hannah said with what she hoped was the proper tone of penitence. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“It’s my fault, Mrs. Whitfield,” Father Jimmy intervened. “I apologize. We got talking. I would have seen her home.”

The priest’s words seemed to calm Jolene down a little.

“That’s kind of you, father,” she muttered begrudgingly. “But it’s not the issue. For now, the main thing is everyone’s alive and well. We should get home and let Marshall know nothing’s happened.” She tugged her toward the door like a disobedient child.

“Just a second, Jolene,” Hannah said, breaking free. “I forgot something.” She darted back into the den and grabbed a note pad off the desk. On it, she scribbled:

Dr. Erick Johanson!!!!

Then she placed the notepad on the keyboard of the computer where Father Jimmy couldn’t fail to see it.

As Hannah and Jolene pulled into the driveway, Jolene attempted to minimize her outburst in the rectory.

“You have to know we have your welfare at heart. It’s just that I got so nervous, when you didn’t come home. I didn’t know what to think.”

“There’s nothing to think. Father Jimmy is my confessor, that’s all. I’m safe with him.”

Jolene’s mouth drew inward into a barely perceptible pout of displeasure. “Confessor? Are they really necessary in this day and age? What could you possibly have to confess that’s so important, a sweet thing like you?”

“Oh, all of us have some secret or other to confess. Don’t we, Jolene?”

Hannah turned and entered the house, leaving the woman standing in the driveway.

1:31

Hannah slept fitfully that night. At times, only the thinnest of membranes seemed to seal her off from the outside world, and a car backfiring on Alcott Street or a dog howling in the woods behind the house, neither uncommon occurrences in East Acton, was sufficient to pierce it.

The discussion that broke the membrane yet again sounded as if it were being conducted at the foot of her bed. As she relinquished her last claim on sleep, Hannah realized that it was coming from the floor below and that Jolene and Marshall were actually doing their best to hold their voices down. At least Marshall was. Jolene’s voice being higher and her mood being agitated, her words carried easily though the floorboards.

Hannah checked her bedside clock, saw it was 3:32. What could have them up at this hour?

“In her name, that’s what she said. Her name.” (That was Jolene’s voice.) “She distinctly told us someone would come in her name. It’s so clear to me now what she meant.”

Marshall’s response was unintelligible, but it exasperated Jolene, because she came back louder than before. “He’s the one she meant, Marshall. That’s why she led me there. So I could see for myself.”

Again, something from Marshall that Hannah couldn’t understand.

Then Jolene. “She promised she would guide us. Well, didn’t she, Marshall? Didn’t she?”

“Yes, she did, Jolene.”

“It’s obvious to me that’s exactly what she’s doing? She’s has alerted us. She’s shown us the danger. Why do you have trouble believing that?”

The voices died down and were soon supplanted by the sound of Jolene and Marshall retreating down the stairs, then opening and shutting the kitchen door. Hannah knew what was happening. They were going out into the garden again. As she had done the last time, Hannah lifted up her bedroom window a crack and concealed herself behind the curtains.

There was no moon tonight and the blackness was all-enveloping. It took a while before Hannah’s eyes adjusted and she could begin to make out vague shadowy shapes in the garden. If she was not mistaken, that was Jolene on her knees by the birdbath, her hands arms outstretched. Marshall stood back, keeping his distance. He was a passive presence in these nighttime vigils, a witness to his wife’s activities. She was the one in charge. She was mumbling now in sing-song, but the stridency in her voice was gone, so it registered as little more than a faraway drone.

Then all movement, all sound, came to an end. And without movement and sound to orient her, minimal as they had been, Hannah lost track of the bodies in the darkness. After a while she wasn’t even sure if the Whitfields were still there. The garden was so silent she could hear the sound of her own breathing.

Finally, a rustle.

A whisper. Someone walking.

They were there, after all.

Jolene spoke. “We have to leave. It’s time to prepare the way.”

Autumn had a solid hold on Eastern Massachusetts. The trees had exploded with color, most of which would be gone in a matter of weeks. But mounds of pumpkins and pyramids of rust and burgundy mums still fronted the roadside produce stands, and even the skies managed to put on a respectable show at sunset.

No one disputed that winter was on its way, only when it would make its appearance. In a single day, a north wind could strip the trees of their leaves and turn the skies gunmetal gray. For now, the seasons appeared to be observing a cordial truce.

Hannah was sorry for the dwindling hours of daylight, but grateful for the colder temperatures. Now that she was in her eighth month of pregnancy, she was feeling big. Well, she
was
big - fleshy and bulbous from head to toe, rather like a female version of the Michelin tire man.

The good news was that she couldn’t get much bigger. Next month, the baby would start to drop into her pelvis and, while she might not be any smaller as a result, her shape would be different. The bad news was that her stretch pants had lost all their stretch, bending over was a Herculean chore, and the baby was kicking like a linebacker.

Dr. Johanson had told her to make a big game of it by placing a piece of paper on her abdomen and watching the baby kick it off.

“Is fun, you will see!”

At least as much fun, Hannah imagined, as being at the bottom of a pile-up on the Notre Dame football field.

Hannah made no mention of Jolene’s most recent nocturnal outing. Jolene seemed in every respect her usual self - a little more mother-hennish than usual, perhaps, but there was nothing suspicious about that. Ever since her outburst at the rectory, in fact, the older woman had made a point of being solicitous around Hannah, as if her anger that night had been the legitimate concern of a mother for her daughter. “You’re like the daughter Marshall and I never had,” she said all too frequently now. Hannah knew she was supposed to reply that they were like her parents … her new parents, but she couldn’t. Jolene’s congenial mood struck Hannah as particularly expansive during Saturday night dinner, much of which incorporated fresh produce from a roadside stand. Marshall opened a bottle of Chardonnay and soon got to talking about his favorite subject - the joys of travel and how essential it was to change scenery now and then.

“You’ll get no argument from me,” piped up Jolene, as she ladled sweet potato soup into a cup and passed it to Hannah. “I always say I’ll go anywhere at least once. I may not go back, but until I see a place with my own eyes, you can’t keep me away.”

“How about you, Hannah?” Marshall asked.

“I’ve never been anywhere. New York City once on a school trip. My aunt and uncle preferred to stay at home.”

“So where would you like to go?”

“I don’t know. Europe some day.”

“Anyplace else?”

“I haven’t given it much thought.”

He swirled the wine in his glass. “What do you think of Florida?”

“It’s warm, I guess. The pictures look nice.”

“Ever heard of the Florida keys? Key Largo? Key West?”

“That’s like at the very tip of Florida. Way out in the ocean, isn’t it?”

Jolene interrupted. “Oh, Marshall, that’s enough. Stop torturing the girl. Just come right out and say it.” She put down the soup ladle and stared at her husband. “Marshall has a little surprise. Tell her, dear.”

“We have a friend who has a small island off the coast between Marathon and Key West. There are no other houses on it. The only way you get to it is by private boat. It’s beautiful and secluded and even has a lovely beach all its own.”

“So you know you’re not bothered by all the pesky tourists,” Jolene added. “It’s very quiet. Just the sound of the waves and the seagulls. Anyway, he’s offered it to us for a couple of weeks over Thanksgiving. And since the insurance company owes me a good deal of vacation, I thought—”

“Ahem!” Jolene cleared her throat.

“Yes, dear.
We
thought it might make a nice escape. A little peace and relaxation far from the madding crowd. No traffic, no television. What do you say?”

Hannah didn’t know how to respond. Her delivery date was not that far away, and here Marshall was proposing they all go off on a trip. The offer was so unexpected. Then her mind flashed back to the nights she’d spotted Jolene and Marshall in the garden - Jolene rambling on about danger, some terrible danger that was coming, and the need to be vigilant. Just the other night, she’d said…What was it? “We have to be ready to leave” or words to that effect. Were they running from somebody?

As if he sensed her reservations, Marshall said, “Of course, we’d have to ask Dr. Johanson if it was okay. We’re going nowhere without his official stamp of approval. So you don’t have to decide right now, Hannah. But think about it.”

He changed the subject and for the rest of the meal held forth on some proposed legislation that was going to throw havoc into the insurance industry. Jolene interrupted with dithyrambs of praise for the autumn leaves.

Hannah took a few dutiful bites of Apple Crisp, then pushed her dessert plate away.

Her appetite was gone.

1:32

Hannah wasn’t surprised when, at her weekly check-up, Dr. Johanson pronounced her health remarkably improved.

Whatever problems she’d had with hypertension, gone! Blood pressure, normal! Urinalysis, no traces of protein! The swelling in her hands and ankles, down! All the tell-tale signs of preeclampsia had been reversed.

“You do what I tell you and you get the results,” Dr. Johanson said, with a self-congratulatory nod of the head. “The situation is so much better I see no reason why you can’t take a plane ride to Florida.”

Jolene’s eyes sparkled and she clapped her hands soundlessly with exaggerated girlish enthusiasm. Dr. Johanson raised a cautionary hand.

“However…I wouldn’t want you doing the surfing in the ocean or the deep sea diving, you understand. On other hand, if you stay out of the sun and sit under the palm trees, a trip could be beneficial. Stop you from worrying so much. So why shouldn’t you go to Florida?”

The chief reason, Hannah was tempted to answer, was that she didn’t feel like it. Life with the Whitfields was inhibiting enough in East Acton. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be cooped up with them in an isolated compound on some remote island, private beach or no private beach.

The second reason was Dr. Johanson himself. His diagnosis of preeclempsia several months ago and his insistence on bed rest had coincided with Jolene’s desire to keep her at home. And now that the Whitfields wanted to go traipsing off to nowhere, he was prepared to send her right along with them. His diagnoses were conveniently timed, to say the least.

“It’s going to be such fun.” Jolene bubbled. “I can’t wait to call Marshall, so we can start making some definite plans.

“Call him now. Use my phone,” beamed Dr. Johanson, pushing the telephone on his desk in her direction.

“Oh, no. You’ll want to finish your consultation with Hannah. I’ll use the phone in the waiting room.”

As she left, Dr. Johanson said, “Ask Marshall if there’s room for one more. I come too, no? We all sit on the beach together.” He winked mischievously at Hannah.

How cozy and cooperative they were with each another, Hannah thought. Just like the day she’d caught them examining her sonograms. Theirs was definitely not a typical doctor/patient relationship.

She realized that her wandering thoughts had taken her away from Dr. Johanson, who was talking about some exercises she should begin doing. Relaxation and breathing exercises that would aid in the delivery and minimize the pain…Did she know that music helps? Yes, soothes and relaxes - didn’t Shakespeare tell us that? -so it might be wise for her to pick out the music that will be played during the delivery, her “birth music,” and start listening to it now…

She tried to focus on the words, but what kept bobbing up in her mind was how little she knew about this man. She didn’t even know his nationality. The diplomas on the wall seemed to come from foreign universities. Back in March, when he had been recommended by Letitia Greene - or whatever her real name was -Hannah had understood that he was the official doctor of Partners in Parenthood. She’d never questioned it. Now she asked herself what that alliance entailed. She wondered if Father Jimmy had been able to find out anything about the man?

“The A-One Seal of Good Health is officially restored to Miss Hannah Manning,” announced Dr. Johanson, as he escorted her back to the waiting room.

Jolene was beside herself. “Marshal’s going to make the reservations today. Next week at this time, we’ll be having fun in the sun. Oh, except for Hannah, of course. I’ll see to it that she has fun in the shade. And, Marshall says, of course you’re invited, Doctor Johanson. You can have your own special hammock!”

The woman’s excitement had almost a giddy flirtatiousness to it. Everything she did lately was high-pitched and overly demonstrative, as if she no longer understood half tones and in-between shades.

“You put me outdoors, eh? Like a pet or a lizard. I shall have to reflect on the significance of this.”

Although his voice was gruff, Hannah had the impression he was flirting right back. The familiarity they exhibited with one another transcended purely professional behavior. She didn’t think they were having an affair, but they didn’t act like strangers, either.

“Enjoy, enjoy your trip,” he said to them heartily, as they left the office. “Don’t give your poor Dr. Johanson another thought.”

But Hannah did.