The day we signed the contract, I was mildly queasy, which I liked to think of as my own version of morning sickness. The pile of papers was half an inch thick. There was no way Cally could digest all of that in one sitting. Hal had sent the contract to her in advance, but do you think she’d read it? How could we make sure she understood her obligations? I could barely understand it, and Hal had been pedantically explaining it to me for weeks.

We met at Hal’s office, in the green-carpeted conference room. All glass. Heater vents clunking.

“I like your sweater,” I said to Cally as she took off her puffy jacket. I was trying to find some common ground, to establish rapport.

“Thanks,” she said. “It’s cold today.”

I faked a smile; I hated talking about the weather. I believed her conversation skills could be improved. Maybe this was something I could help her with.

“Did you make it?” I asked, bringing the conversation back to her sweater. I was looking for ways to connect and get to know her. Did she knit? Perhaps part of me saw knitting as something a fertile, soon-to-be-pregnant woman could do.

“No,” she said, looking at her cardigan. “I got this at Kohl’s.”

I paused and smiled. What could I say about Kohl’s? I hadn’t expected that. “Well,” I said finally. “It looks handmade.” Although this was meant as a compliment, I cringed at how it came out sounding like an insult. This was me trying to bond with our young surrogate, make her like me, but somehow it kept backfiring.

Hal joined us and took a seat at the head of the table. His secretary—sorry, administrative assistant—followed Hal into the room and set down an extra stack of papers.

“Anything else you need?” she said.

“Not yet,” said Hal. “Thanks, Pat.”

After Pat left the room, Hal cleared his throat and straightened some of the papers, as if to say, Things are going to really get serious now. His body language was giving me the sense that Cally and I were meant to sit quietly and listen. To him. Like what, a couple of schoolgirls in trouble with the headmaster? This adventure was supposed to be me and Hal, as a couple, hiring this young woman. But instead, it felt like I was a hapless client, Cally was an enchanted fertility goddess, and Hal was the hero who could make it all happen.

It’s possible I was reading more into it than was there.

“Okay, team,” he said, and we smiled. That sounded better.

But were we a team? The fertility doctor called us a team, “Team Let’s Make a Baby,” and he had included Cally in that, in some of our meetings. But making a baby, in my world, in the world where I thought I would live, was never supposed to be a team sport.