Amelia looked at her daughter as though she were speaking another language. The frayed hem of Amelia’s dress and the scuff marks on her boots did not comport with the charismatic, glamorous woman I’d met several months earlier. The roots of her hair were gray and greasy. Her shine had completely worn off. She wasn’t trying and failing. She had stopped trying altogether.

Amelia had yet to recognize my presence. I was used to feeling invisible, but even so, her lack of acknowledgment elicited a hollow feeling in my gut.

I considered excusing myself, out of a sense of propriety, but I owed it to myself to embrace the opportunities I’d created.

“I don’t want a baby if this is what happens to you.” Fritz spoke in a dry voice. “I don’t know you.”

“Then I suppose we go our separate ways.” Amelia opened up one of the kitchen cabinets. She looked at the expiration date on a box of crackers and tossed it into the trash. I questioned whether the crackers were actually expired.

“Jesus Christ.” Fritz downed the last of his beer and deposited the bottle under the sink with a loud crash. “Do you have any concern for your daughter’s feelings?” I imagined that he said the line “concern for your daughter’s feelings” often and by rote because it made him sound responsible and caring.

Fritz crossed to the fridge for another beer.

Amelia picked up a bottle of Fernando Pensato olive oil and studied the label, again looking for an expiration date. She poured the bottle of expensive olive oil into the sink. It splashed onto her blouse, but she seemed oblivious to it. She smelled the opening of the empty bottle and wrinkled her nose, confirming to herself that she’d been right in pouring it out.

“You have no compassion,” she said to Fritz. “You have no empathy.”

I stood and clasped my hands together. “Can I try to help you both? I want to help you have a child.”

Amelia startled at the sound of my voice. She turned to me with a bewildered expression. She had the glassy eyes and blotchy cheeks of someone with a high fever. “What are you going to do?”

“Whatever you want me to do.” In order to achieve my dream, I needed to believe that this was true—that I was willing to do anything in order to help their family.

“What are you talking about?” She put her head in her hands and looked to the heavens in a dramatic gesture.

“Carrying the baby?” Fritz’s eyes locked on mine, and then he turned to Amelia. “I think she means carrying the baby.”

I heard faint bells in the distance. “I mean anything.”

“Carrying the child. Surrogacy.” Amelia steadied herself with one hand, her fingers clutching the kitchen island so hard, they turned white.