Page 89 of Family Bonds- Gabriela & Luca

“She was a smart woman.”

Her eyes were searching his. She couldn’t really read much there. Not sadness or grief. Not even happiness. Only a conversation about anyone in his past.

“Do you feel like you’re betraying her now?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not at all.” He reached for her hand. “Her mother called me the day after Christmas.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

Not that he owed her any explanation.

“I haven’t talked to Susan in months. When I lived back home, I might get a text now and again. I told them I was moving. I found out my mother still sees Zoe’s mother. They talk and visit, but not as often. Our families were close.”

“Does that bother you?”

“What? That they still see each other? No,” he said. “No one needs to walk away completely. I’d never do that, but I don’t feel as if the connection is there anymore with them. Not with me here or them there.”

“You don’t feel it or don’t want to?” she asked. She hoped she wasn’t pushing, but sometimes words came out before she could stop them. “I’m not sure I’d feel the same way about people who were part of my life for so long.”

“I didn’t think her parents would even stay in the area. I moved back home when I was ready to start working. Zoe had no problem traveling with me for my residency, then back to St. Louis. She’s from Ohio. Cincinnati. I did my residency and fellowships in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She followed me no problem, and then her parents moved closer to her.”

“They just picked up their life and moved like that?”

“Yeah. They’ve got another daughter, Tiffany, but she lives in California, and they didn’t want to go there. Zoe was their baby. They were close.”

“Did you get along well with them? Considering she moved with you?”

“We did. I’m not that hard to get along with.”

She laughed. “I find you very easy to.”

“Once I started working, we wanted to have kids right away,” he said. “Her parents wanted to be close for that.”

“Can I ask more about that situation? You said she struggled to get pregnant?”

“She did. She’d never been regular. Her cycle. She was on birth control for years to control cysts. I think we just figured it wouldn’t be that hard, but we were wrong.”

“And she didn’t want to do any kind of fertility treatments?”

“No. I brought it up after a few years, but she shut me down. She said she’d had enough female issues in her life and didn’t want to go through that again. I respected her decision.”

“There are other ways to have a child,” she said. “You know that.”

He let out a snort. “Her sister offered to be a surrogate. I thought hell, this could work.”

“Zoe didn’t want that?”

“She didn’t believe in it. She wanted to be pregnant herself. She wanted to experience that. I personally don’t think you have to carry your child for it to be yours, but she’d still have to go through some medical procedure to get eggs. Again, she didn’t want that.”

“I’m sorry. I get the feeling you really wanted a child.”

“I did. I do. I still can have them someday. I even brought up adoption, but if she wouldn’t let her sister be a surrogate, she wasn’t going to adopt a child.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” she said. “Was she mad? Did she feel as if you were pushing her? And you can tell me it’s none of my business.”

It was hard for her not to get pissed off that Zoe wouldn’t consider Luca in all of this. That really, Zoe was the one deciding, and by doing that, she was denying them both what they wanted.

“It’s fine. I was careful about bringing it up. There is a lot of pressure on a marriage when you’re trying to conceive. I’m not going to pretend things were perfect with us all the time, because they weren’t. But they weren’t bad either. Every marriage has difficulties.”