Page 13 of The Best Worst Thing

Century City

This is just outstanding work. Your husband had an excellent lawyer, I—”

“Are you kidding me?” Mari said, glaring at some gawky attorney in wire-rimmed glasses and a suit that was, somehow, both ill-fitting and very expensive. He was also halfway through his second blueberry muffin. “This is not the Yale Law Review.”

That seemed to do the trick.

Mitchell Winters, Esquire—one of the best divorce attorneys in Los Angeles, supposedly—put down his pastry and Nicole’s prenuptial agreement, then glanced at his newest client.

Nicole and Mari had been warned Mitch’s bedside manner was not great, but nobody had expected he’d be quite this technical.

“Sorry, right,” he said. “You understood what you signed, yes? When you agreed to this? No duress, no threats? And you selected your own counsel?”

“I knew exactly what I signed,” Nicole said. “I used to read a hundred contracts a week at my old job.”

“So you’re aware, then, that your spousal support will be severely limited, and pay out for only half the duration of your marriage? And that the deed to the Manhattan Beach property is—”

“I know all about the alimony and all about the house. I know why his parents gifted it to him before the wedding. I know about the loopholes and separate property and why he bought the Aspen condo with cash he earned before he married me. I never cared. I didn’t marry him for his money.”

The attorney nodded. He also kind of smirked. Nicole could get like this sometimes. Especially when people made assumptions about her—and what she saw in Gabe.

“I just need a divorce,” she said, pinning her hands to the edge of the conference room table. “Can you get me one, or not?”

She’d been up all night, reading articles and message boards and the Judicial Branch of California’s Interactive Guide to Divorce, which was surprisingly intuitive and well-written for a government resource.

Point is, she’d read everything. Most of it, twice.

And Nicole knew, despite the prenup she’d signed nearly six years ago, that her case might be extracomplicated.

After all, there could be custody to sort out, and California had tricky community property laws.

There were a lot of assets in Gabe’s name, and they were kind of just … everywhere.

Gabe made tons of money, and while he liked to spend it, what he really loved to do was invest it.

Mostly with his financial adviser, but also by himself, late at night, when Nicole would curl up next to him in bed, reading or sleeping or giggling at his too-serious face.

He’d just sit there—contacts out, glasses on—staring into his laptop, making his own trades on whatever markets were open like he was searching for flights or shopping for a new bathrobe.

“So,” the attorney said, “there’s a bit of a hurdle.”

“I know I have to wait six months. That’s fine. But can we just start today?”

Mitch shook his head. At once, a dull ache crept across Nicole’s body. She quelled it with the same sentence she’d spent the whole night repeating: People get divorced all the time.

“Nicole, I spoke to Jasmine Clark earlier this morning.”

Jasmine was Nicole and Gabe’s surrogacy attorney in Virginia.

Nicole had sent Mitch a copy of Valerie’s contract, but she’d never thought much of it.

After all, she’d sent him a lot of things.

Yesterday evening, when Mari had finally peeled Nicole off her bedroom floor—and successfully banished Gabe yet again—the two of them sat in Nicole’s office and scanned in every last document Mitch’s assistant had asked for, from her car registration to the latest income statement for her suddenly dormant, barely profitable podcast.

“She’s very concerned about your situation,” he said. “Honestly, we both are.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Mitch slid a sheet of paper across the glossed mahogany.

When it landed a few inches from Nicole’s now-trembling fingers, every single letter was out of focus.

She stared at the sentences. She begged the words to rearrange into something she could interpret, into a language she could understand. But nothing helped.

“I’m sorry, Nicole, but you cannot file for divorce. It’s not in your best interest.”

“What?” Nicole had risen out of her chair. Somehow, she was already halfway across the room, hands on her head, pacing. Mari watched her carefully. “Why the hell not?”

“We’ve been on the phone all morning, trying to figure out whether any of this is enforceable. Whether a judge would ever revoke custody of—”

“Why would that even come up? That doesn’t make any sense! What are you saying?”

“I understand you’re upset,” he said. “I understand you’ve been through a lot.”

“You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

“Just explain it,” Mari said, walking toward Nicole. “Don’t tell her to calm down. Just give her an explanation, please. Now.”

He sighed. “Virginia is a postbirth order state. As long as you’re married, this process is quite simple.

Halfway through your carrier’s pregnancy, Jasmine will take your executed contract and a signed affidavit from the fertility clinic to family court in Norfolk.

The judge will issue a postbirth order, no questions asked.

Then, when Baby X is born in March or whenever, your attorney will head back to court next business day and have the birth certificate amended so that you, Nicole, are listed as—”

“I know all that!” Nicole threw her hands in the air. “Why does that matter? Why would anything change that? I’m the mom! It’s my egg!”

Mitch swallowed, then attempted to lock eyes with Nicole. He could barely keep up with her circuits now. Her path had grown erratic. Her pace, unpredictable. She was everywhere.

“If you and your husband are not married when that baby is born,” he said, “the court is compelled to take a closer look at whether you and Gabriel are suitable parents, whether—”

“Of course we are!”

“I’m not saying you’re not. I’m just advising you that you’re in uncharted territory here. That, in Virginia, a judge could decide not to grant you parental rights.”

“And give them to who? This is insane!”

“They’d declare prima facie, most likely. They’d declare your carrier the baby’s rightful mother.”

“That doesn’t make any sense! Valerie would never do that to me!”

“It’s not about what your carrier wants,” he said.

“It’s about what the court determines. Besides, most relationships between intended parents and surrogate mothers break down over time.

It’s a very tenuous arrangement. Who knows?

By spring, you and your carrier might not even be on speaking terms.”

Nicole winced. She would never, ever let that happen.

“The judge,” he said, “could give your carrier the right to put the baby up for adoption. You could have to contend against her for custody. And not in a California court either. In Virginia. It could take years.”

Nicole tried to breathe. She pressed her hands against the cool, thick glass—the heat of her skin at war with the floor-to-ceiling windows of a sky-high Century City conference room that, despite being freezing, despite being massive, was on fire. Was closing in on her.

“What the hell is she supposed to do, then?” Mari said.

“As long as she’s willing to wait, everything is going to be fine.”

Nicole whirled around. “I don’t want to wait! I fucking hate him!”

“I understand this is difficult news. I really do.” Mitch closed her file and looked at her from across the room.

“And honestly, I think you’re right. That the law is unfair.

But your story—the podcast, the hotshot husband—it’s hyperpalatable.

It’s prime time. It’d be all over the news.

The national news. And I’d love nothing more than to help take your case all the way to the Supreme Court.

But we’d lose. The lowest court in Virginia wouldn’t hear our case.

Third-party reproduction, the laws haven’t been tested.

The truth is, if we make too much noise, if we push the limits of a system this fragile—all so you can leave an unfaithful spouse, an otherwise good provider who poses no real threat to you or your hypothetical child—we could wind up getting surrogacy banned in Virginia. Maybe even federally.”

Nicole slumped against the window, then slid down the glass until she was seated on the cold, colorless tile. Behind her, Los Angeles—a sprawling city she barely knew—carried on.

“Nicole, please,” Mitch said, rising from his chair. He was walking toward her to shake her goddamn hand. All this, business as usual. All this, another day’s work.

It was just like IVF, wasn’t it? Divorce? A whole cottage industry designed to make her feel like she had control of her life, like she could maybe have a second chance at it, when she did not. When she could not.

It was a business. A machine. And every time it chewed her up and spit her out, there’d be yet another woman—shit out of luck, with a little money to burn—waiting in line.

She was a patient again. A name on a schedule, a number to bill.

This was her entire life, and to everyone else, she was just another hysterical woman.

Crazy for wanting a baby. Crazy for wanting a husband who could love her all the way.

Crazy for wanting the two very things the world had told her, for over three decades now, would make her life whole.

“Nicole,” he said again, extending down his hand.

She just sat there, motionless. Her body, limp.

He turned to Mari instead. “She needs to cool off. She needs to do nothing. No new job, nothing like that. I think any judge, upon hearing why she left the workforce, would agree the spousal support provision is unconscionable. But to get that thrown out, she needs to stay in that house. She needs to keep living the life she’s always lived. Here—in Los Angeles.”

Mari nodded. Mitch walked back to the table, picked up Nicole’s file, and turned to her.

“It’s only a pause,” he said. “A couple of years, if that. And when the ink dries on that amended birth certificate, when the baby is legally, officially yours, we will file. We will get started. We will get you everything you deserve, and we will get you that divorce.”

Nicole closed her eyes.

“It might be two.”

“Sorry, what? Two what?”

“Babies,” Nicole said. Her eyes were still closed. “I think there might be two.”

She opened them just in time to watch Mitch Winters—who was both completely right and totally fucking fired—flinch.