"How would you like a job there?" Emma responded.
Her eyes widened slightly and her eyebrows rose just a little, but she still said nothing.
"If you accept my offer, I will see that you do get a job working there—imagine how that will look on your resume when you're finally going for your dream job, not even graduated from college and already writing for The Chicago Sun-Times."
Emma paused for a few seconds to take a sip of wine and let that part sink in, then she said, "Additionally, as a way of rewarding you further for making the right decision, I will pay whatever student loans you have accumulated at the time of the baby's birth completely off—the slate will be wiped completely clean, and I will assume all financial obligation for your education up to that point. After that, you will be on your own, but consider the thousands of dollars in debt that I'm offering to wipe clean—and that in addition to an excellent job with one of the best papers in the country and a real step up in your overall career."
Still, Julie could say nothing, and at her continued silence she saw the first hint of irritation flit across Emma's face, but Emma quickly cleared her face and pasted on a smile. "Of course there will be an interview—a mere formality, assuming you let me help you—and I'd want you to dress as any of my friends would, so we could go to Sak's and find you a nice outfit for the interview, a celebratory outfit with a nice new pair of shoes, maybe a new Chanel handbag to set it off."
"Why?" Julie finally managed to ask. "Why would you want my baby?"
"Well, technically it is my husband's baby," Emma stated, her face impressively free of any antagonism as she pointed that out. "I would love to give Anna a playmate and a sibling, someone to grow up with, but I don't want to go through that again right now—pregnancy is terribly taxing on my body, I'm very sick from week 6 to week 36, and… you're already pregnant, so... why not make the best of a bad situation?"
Emma sat back in her chair as the waiter brought the food and put it on the table in front of them, then she thanked him politely and turned her attention back to Julie once he was gone.
"I realize this is a very big decision I've just put on you, and you don't have to give me an answer right now. You've got time, think it over," Emma encouraged. "I'm positive that if you think about this and consider everything that I've offered, you will make the right decision for yourself and the child."
With that, Emma offered a confident smile and then she began eating her salad.
Julie took a bite of her own food, but she couldn't even taste it—her mind was going too fast, trying to process too many thoughts.
Emma wanted to adopt her baby, and in exchange give her the world on a silver platter. She wanted to reward Julie for having an affair with her husband and getting knocked up. An even exchange—trade in your baby for a great new job, a new outfit, and about $35,000 in student debt just completely erased.
Looking at it from a logical standpoint, the offer Emma made was unbelievable.
But there was something else, something that wasn't logical nagging at her as her mind was filled with the dazzling picture Emma had created.
A different picture.
An image of a baby—her baby—swaddled in a blanket in her arms, just born with perfect, wrinkly little fingers poking out from the blanket, a perfect little mouth forming a little O as the baby yawned, the little hat covering his or her dark curls.
Could you really put a price to such a thing?
Julie and Emma ate the rest of their lunch in complete silence as Julie asked herself that question and tried to come up with an answer.
---
As if Aaron's general strangeness and Emma's out-of-the-blue offer hadn't been enough to stress Julie out, when she went in to work at four they were already so busy that she barely had time to tie on her apron, and Leigh wasn't even working that day.
The good news was that she had made $36 in two hours.
The bad news was that the rush was over after two hours, leaving Julie with nothing to distract her from her thoughts about her lunch with Emma.
She was probably already a terrible mother for not getting up and leaving as soon as Emma had suggested such a thing, but there were so many thoughts running around in her head—her kid wouldn't be cheated out of a family that way, and those issues she had mentioned to Aaron about the kid being ostracized and punished for Julie's mistakes would evaporate. Anna and the baby would be normal siblings, and they would both have a normal family—mother, father, sibling.
Well, if you could call Emma normal…
"What did she say?"
Julie turned away from the coffee pot, surprised that Aaron had snuck up on her again. "What?"
"Emma," he clarified. "You wen
t to lunch with her. I was going to ask earlier, but we were busy, I didn't have a chance. How'd it go?"
Julie shifted, feeling uncomfortable enough thinking about it, but she didn't feel like talking about it too—it was already occupying too much of her brain space.
"It was… weird," Julie finally said.