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Back The Surrogate Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Part One
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Thirty-Two
  37. Thirty-Three
  38. Part Two
  39. Thirty-Four
  40. Thirty-Five
  41. Thirty-Six
  42. Thirty-Seven
  43. Thirty-Eight
  44. Thirty-Nine
  45. Forty
  46. Forty-One
  47. Forty-Two
  48. Forty-Three
  49. Forty-Four
  50. Forty-Five
  51. Forty-Six
  52. Forty-Seven
  53. Forty-Eight
  54. Forty-Nine
  55. Fifty
  56. Fifty-One
  57. Part Three
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Acknowledgments
  64. About the Author
  65. About the Publisher

“No, I mean they stopped walking. They’re standing still back there. Look,” I said, touching his elbow, “they’re blocking traffic.” Hal stopped, sighed, turned around, saw the boys frozen like they’d seen Medusa, and then Hal resumed walking toward our gate. I followed Hal’s lead and kept trudging. After a few steps, I asked, “Do they have their boarding passes?”

“That’s their problem.” Hal adjusted the shoulder strap of his laptop bag and kept walking.

I was pretty sure we’d been assigned seats all together across one row, so this was going to be an awkward two-and-a-half-hour flight to Colorado. As we approached our gate, I heard the stomping thuds of running feet and recognized their out-of-breath voices, racing and laughing and calling each other names. Their hair flying, they landed in front of us in line to board the plane and plopped their backpacks on the floor, bent over red-faced, and caught their breath.

“You’re such a woman,” Caleb said to Jake.

“Idiot.” Jake recovered enough to shove Caleb, almost toppling him over.

The two attendants at the gate watched us, probably calculating whether to address the situation or let it settle. One of them lifted the phone receiver and talked to who knows who on the other line. Perhaps she was warning the flight attendants about the rowdy family about to board. Maybe she was faking a call so she wouldn’t have to deal with us. I wondered if it was too late for me to turn back and stay home. The other attendant took our boarding passes and tore off one end, smiled, and pointed to the backpacks still on the floor.

“Jake. Caleb, get your backpacks,” said Hal.

“Sorry,” I said to the gate attendant.

“No problem,” she said. “Have a nice flight.” She moved on to the next traveler in line. I wondered if the gate attendant could tell that we were a “blended” family and that I was completely ill-equipped as a stepmom. Were we that obviously different from the other families on this flight? Was I the only one who didn’t know how to handle these dynamics, this behavior? I wondered if I was being naive to marry a man with children. And whether I’d made a mistake in marrying him so quickly. Or at all?

It got worse.