Page 9 of The Delivery

But she’d been intimidated. Maybe that’s where Maddy got it, this excessive sensitivity, the surfeit of feeling, an inability to think clearly in the face of cruelty.

She puts the groceries away, feeds Bao-Bao a quarter cup of pellets, moves the laundry to the dryer. Then for the first time in two days she takes a shower.

She tries to awaken her body, but she feels numb.

Defeated, she climbs out, towels off, dresses. In the back of the small walk-in closet sit her half-finished canvases and folded-up easel, abandoned since she was in her third term with Maddy. They stare at her, a nagging rebuke for all the parts of herself she’s been unable to keep up with.

She sits on the bed, takes a few breaths.

Her gaze moves to Mark’s nightstand.

She slides over, opens the drawer. The titanium card glimmers up at her. YOU’RE IN CHARGE.

She takes it out.

Chapter 6

One Month After Delivery

It takes three cycles of Maddy’s nigh-night routine before she stays down. Rebecca and Mark sit on the floor in the hall outside her closed door, listening for another request—water, bathroom, beneath-the-bed search.

But the silence stretches five minutes and then ten, and then by implicit agreement, they rise silently and creep down the hall to the nursery.

The hum of the rectangular prism has steadily grown louder. Code scrolls across the inset screen. It is as if they are watching something dream. As if they are peeking in on a sleeping baby.

They note the sensor light on the prism.

It remains red.

They withdraw.

Chapter 7

Seven Months Before Delivery

The kit has arrived.

Now it is real.

Rebecca still can’t believe that they did it.

The payment phase has not been without complication. The day after the wire for the $75,000 nonretrievable downpayment cleared, Mark’s company missed its quarterly earnings estimates, the stock taking a tumble. They’d debated mightily whether to cut their losses, to not throw good money after bad. But they’ve already paid 33 percent of the total, and giving up on what still felt like the chance of a lifetime to “change everything” seems a shame. On top of that, Derek has gotten more demanding of Mark at the office, asking him to work longer and longer hours, and Maddy has been spiraling at school.

They are sludging through darkness, the promise of N0RM LLC the light at the end of the tunnel.

They sit at the kitchen table, all three of them, four if you include Bao-Bao slumped in Maddy’s lap. About the size of a toaster oven, the kit arrived special delivery, requiring signature at the door.

Mark slides the Styrofoam block out of the cube of a DHL Medical Express box. When he parts the block, dry ice mist leaks out, spilling across uncleared cereal bowls and OJ glasses, creeping to the edges of the table.

Bao-Bao’s nose twitches mightily, and Maddy says, “Wowwowwow!”

Mark’s hand disappears into the pool of mist and emerges holding several sterile pouches. He reads the instructions carefully, chewing his lip.

“What is it, Daddy?” Maddy asks. “What’s it for?”

Rebecca answers for him before she can catch herself. “It’s a surprise, honey.”

“What kind of surprise?”