“All it took was a little dry ice,” she said with a shrug. “When the day came for the insemination procedure, Toby and I made a little game of it. I ‘helped’ him, so to speak. When we were finished, I carried the semen out of that little room while he got himself back together. But the contents of the vial I gave to the nurse came from Sonny. We left before Jamie arrived. It was quite simple, really.”
“And how did you get Sonny’s semen?”
Amanda folded her hands in her lap and looked down, avoiding her brother’s gaze and his question.
“Freda helped me,” she said, staring into the fire. “I did what I needed to do. Sonny would have wanted me to.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Gus observed.
“Of course it is,” Amanda insisted. “He will have a son to carry on for him. And we will have the next best thing to Sonny.”
“Amanda, I don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of what you have done.”
She lifted her chin. “Such as?”
“Such as Jamie Long realizing that the baby you are publicly claiming to be your own natural-born child is no such thing.”
“Jamie believes that I also am carrying a child,” Amanda pointed out.
“A child that just happens to be born the same time as the one she is carrying? You are a very famous woman. The girl is going to see photographs of you and your miracle child everywhere. And read heartwarming stories about how God miraculously healed you with another child after your son’s tragic accident even though you were postmenopausal or whatever. Those stories will say nothing about a second adopted child. There will only be one baby, Amanda, unless you and Toby plan to go out and find yourself a kid to adopt and raise alongside the miracle child.”
“I’ll tell Jamie that my baby was stillborn,” Amanda said.
“And maybe she will believe you and be ever so happy that you have the baby she carried to raise. But she will still know that the baby you are claiming to be your own child is no such thing. She would know that you, Amanda Tutt Hartmann, who is supposed to be above reproach and has millions of followers who think that you have a direct line to God Almighty and can save their souls and heal their bodies and make their pitiful little lives seem worthwhile, you are living a lie. The girl could blackmail you, Amanda. Or sell her story to the media. And if all those millions of followers lose faith in you, they are not going to donate the money we need to elect our candidates to high office. The Alliance of Christian Voters would wither up and die. We wouldn’t have friends anymore in Washington, and without the right people in Washington, the oil industry would suffer. We’d have to live at the ranch and feed out more cattle in those cruel, smelly feedlots you hate so much. Maybe we could turn the ranch house into a hunting lodge for rich, old cigar-chewing men-as long as the deer and quail population holds out, of course.”
“Stop it,” Amanda demanded, her beautiful face made hard and almost ugly with anger. “You are making too big of a thing out of this. Jamie Long signed a contract promising never to tell anyone about anything. She would have to give the money back if she ever told.”
“Amanda, that girl could get twice as much from some tabloid for telling them that she is the biological mother of your baby.”
“Then we would have to sue her and the tabloid for libel.”
“And then there would be a trial with the whole world watching. The judge would order DNA tests on you and the baby and Jamie Long and Toby. Those tests would not only prove that Jamie Long is the biological mother of the child, but they would also show that the child is related to you, which offers only two possibilities as to its father-me or Sonny-which would certainly give rise to all sorts of unseemly speculation. That girl signed a contract with a legally married husband and wife, Amanda. She did not sign a contract with a woman and her dying son. Your actions have made that contract null and void. She could sue you not only for breech of contract but for the money she needs to raise the child.”
“You don’t know that any of that is going to happen,” Amanda insisted. “Jamie is a dear girl, and she loves me. We have prayed together. It would never occur to her to cause trouble.”
“You may be exactly right,” Gus said in his most reasonable tone. “But how will she feel if she learns that you have lied to her? That the high and holy Amanda Hartmann has knowingly entered into a fraudulent contract?”
“Well, then, let’s make a new contract and give her some more money to sign it.”
“And what will you do if she says no?”
“The girl loves me,” Amanda said emphatically, her chin set, her eyes wide. “She is not going to say no.”
“You don’t know that, Amanda. When she signed on for this gig, the idea of a baby was just an abstraction to her. It was just a way to make a lot of money. Now there’s a living child moving around inside of her and all these maternal hormones racing around her body. If it had just been Toby’s kid, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the girl decided to renege on the deal. But now the equation is different. It is not Toby’s child. It’s Sonny’s.”
“So, what are you saying, Gus?” Amanda asked, her eyes narrowing.
Gus paused a few seconds before answering. “That you don’t need to worry about anything,” he said, patting her hand. “I’ll see that nothing goes wrong. You will have your baby.”
“Thank you,” she said and kissed him once again, then held out her empty glass for a refill.
When Jamie crept back up to the tower, the candles had been extinguished in Sonny’s room, the light over his bed dimmed.
Mary Millicent’s room was dark. Jamie waited for her eyes to adjust then tiptoed over to the bed. “Are you asleep?” she asked.
“Not unless I’m dreaming.”
“I thought you might like to sing some Christmas carols,” Jamie said, switching on the bedside lamp. “I came earlier but your children were here. Did you have a nice evening with them?”
“Of course not. My children have ruined my life.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about your own son and daughter,” Jamie said.
“I say terrible things about them because they are terrible people, and don’t you forget it, girl.”
Mary Millicent grabbed hold of Jamie’s arm. “Help me sit up,” she demanded, and Jamie obliged, propping up pillows behind the old woman’s frail body.
“Terrible people,” Mary Millicent repeated. “And if you don’t do exactly what they say, they’ll lock you up in a tower, too. Or they will have you killed, like they did with Sonny’s father. Amanda went crying to Gus that Sonny’s father wouldn’t let her have Sonny all the time and wouldn’t let her change his name to Hartmann, and then someone shot the man in the head,” Mary Millicent said, making an imaginary pistol with her hand and pointing it to her temple. “I wonder how long it will be until Amanda gets tired of her new husband and asks her brother to get rid of him. And don’t you look at me like that, young lady,” she said, shaking a finger at Jamie. “I may be as old as dirt and have a few screws loose, but I know what I know. Maybe it’s my fault Amanda and Gus turned out the way they did. I raised them like they were God’s anointed, like they could do no wrong. And now God is punishing me. But you know what? I wish that God would just strike us all dead. Me, Amanda, Gus, and Sonny, too, and put an end to all things Hartmann. God should just open up the earth and let this whole damned ranch and everyone who lives here drop right down into hell. Except for Sonny, of course. Sonny should go to heaven. Just Sonny. Yes, I’m going to pray for God to do that-to drop all of us except Sonny into hell, so if I were you I would be hightailing it out of here. And when that baby of yours is born, don’t you ever tell him how he came to be. Don’t tell him that his father was a dead boy being kept alive past his time. You just tell him his daddy was killed in a car wreck or in some war.”