Page 14 of Owned

“Good. It’s Charlotte Hamilton, your grandmother, here. I have a proposition for you.”

Cold shock hit me.

“Grandmother?” I echoed stupidly, the word not making any sense to me. “What?”

“Didn’t Caitlyn tell you about me?” Charlotte Hamilton didn’t sound offended, only amused. “That would be very like her.”

My grandmother. The one my mother had warned me never to contact. Except now she was the one contacting me and I had no idea what to say.

“No, she mentioned you.” I jabbed at the eggs. “Once or twice.”

“Oh did she?” Charlotte’s tone was dry. “Interesting. I suppose she told you never to contact me, hmmm?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, don’t worry. You can safely say you haven’t contacted me. I’m the one doing the contacting.”

I stared hard at the eggs in the pan. “And…uh…how did you get my number?”

“That’s not the question you should be asking.”

“What question should I be asking?”

She ignored me. “Did Caitlyn ever mention her sister? Juliana?”

I frowned. The name meant nothing to me. “No. She didn’t tell me anything about her family.” Which was absolutely true. I’d even stopped asking her about them, since every time I did she went into a decline. All I knew about the Hamiltons were that they were filthy rich, extremely powerful, and terrible.

“Juliana was a couple of years younger than your mother, but she died a long time ago,” Charlotte said.

Another little shock went through me, along with a strange pang of grief for an aunt I hadn’t known existed until now. “Oh. I’m…so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said in the same dry tone. “I lost both my daughters, which I suppose might be what you’d call karma. Though, for what isn’t important. What is important, is that I’d like to start over. I’d like to have the chance to do better this time, to learn from my mistakes. A chance to be a better mother than I was back then.”

I didn’t understand. “Um, okay,” I muttered. “Do you want me to get Mom on the phone?—-”

“No, no,” Charlotte interrupted. “Caitlyn made clear her views on me years ago and I’m not looking to change them. No, what I’m asking for now, is a great-grandchild. A baby that I can bring up myself, as my daughter.”

That seemed a…strange thing to want to do, but people did strange things all the time. And I wasn’t a mother, I didn’t know what it was like to lose a child. Awful, probably.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “So why are you calling me?”

Charlotte gave a dry little laugh. “My dear girl, why do you think? I’d like to ask you if you be willing to be a surrogate.”

This time I just stood there, gaping at the stove in shock, the phone clutched in my hand. “What?”

“I know, it’s a strange request. But obviously I can longer have children of my own so I need a someone who can. Preferably one of my own blood.”

There was a weird smell in the room that took me a moment to realize was Mom’s eggs burning in the pan. Muttering curses, I quickly turned off the gas and lifted the pan from the stove, examining the burned eggs.

Yep, well and truly burned. How apt.

“Everything all right?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes,” I muttered, slinging the pan into the sink for the meantime. “You’re seriously asking me to be your surrogate?”

“Indeed.” There was a pause. “I realize this is a big thing to ask, so I’m going to pay you for it. Enough to set you up for life.”

I stilled. “How much?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

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