"I'm sorry," I said. "I just—I was doing math."
"Math."
"In my head. The whole time you were talking." I looked down at the spreadsheet. Then back at him. His eyes were very steady and very brown and not helping. "You need someone to have your baby. And I—" I gestured at myself. At the spreadsheet. At the general disaster of my current situation. "I mean. It makes sense, right? Logistically. You need a surrogate and I need a donor and we're both already—" I waved at the waiting room. "Here."
Silence.
The sunflower print stared at us.
I became very interested in my own lap.
"I'm sorry," I rushed out. "That was insane. Forget I said?—"
"Walk me through your numbers."
I looked up.
He hadn't moved. Same posture, same stillness, those big hands loose on his knees. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't fully read above the mask but it wasn't horrified and it wasn't amused and it wasn't the careful blankness of a man trying to figure out how to let someone down easy.
It was the expression of a man pricing something.
"My numbers," I said.
"The spreadsheet." He nodded at it. "Walk me through it."
I stared at him for one more second. Then I unfolded the spreadsheet.
"Okay," I said. "So. Current savings are here?—"
I pointed. He leaned in slightly to see, close enough that I could smell cedar and something warm underneath it, and my dormant body staged another small revolt that I dealt with by talking faster.
I walked him through all of it. Savings. Consultation fees. The cost of a sperm donor, which I had researched with the thoroughness of a woman who had spent three weeks trying not to think about how much it cost. The cost of the procedure itself, one attempt, two, three, the diminishing probability curve I'd built into the model because I was an optimist but not a delusional one. The cost of my apartment minus what I could get back from breaking the lease. The timeline. The gap.
He listened. Actually listened, the way I'd said—not waiting for his turn to talk, following the numbers, asking one question about the lease terms that was clarifying and not stupid.
When I finished he was quiet for a moment.
Then he said: "I've got a cottage on the property. No rent."
I stopped breathing.
"It's small," he said. "One bedroom. There's a kitchen. You'd have a truck to use, unless you have a car." A brief pause. "Fair warning—it's in the middle of the goat pasture."
I blinked. "The goat pasture."
"My mother keeps pygmy goats. Seven of them. They have the run of that section of the property most of the time." He said it the way you'd mention a minor weather pattern. A fact, not an apology. "They're friendly. Mostly."
"Mostly," I repeated.
"Dolly can be territorial about the porch."
I stared at him.
He looked at the sunflower print.
"The town's about a mile from the ranch," he continued, as if he hadn't just told me I'd be living in a goat kingdom. "There's a diner."
"A diner," I repeated.
