CHAPTER NINE
AUbrEE
The magazine arrived on a Tuesday morning, delivered by a courier in a crisp Metropolitan Life envelope with a handwritten note from the editor thanking us for our participation.
I stood at the kitchen island and stared at the glossy cover, my coffee growing cold beside me. The headline screamed in bold serif font: The New Face of Family: Inside the Wickham Surrogacy Journey.
The photo beneath it made my stomach drop.
It was supposed to be all three of us. That's what we'd agreed to during the shoot. The photographer had positioned us carefully, Tristen in the middle with Oakleigh and me on either side, a unified front representing the modern family unit.
But the cover image wasn't that shot.
The cover image was Tristen and Oakleigh alone.
She was sitting on the velvet settee in our living room, her hand resting protectively on her growing belly, her face tilted up toward Tristen with an expression of absolute adoration.
He stood beside her with his hand on her shoulder, looking down at her stomach with something that could only be described as tenderness.
I was nowhere to be seen.
My hands shook as I flipped to the feature article inside, scanning the pages desperately for some context, some explanation for why the wife and intended mother had been cropped out of her own story.
The photographs inside were slightly better.
There were a few shots that included me, mostly in the background or off to the side.
In one, I was reaching for a glass of water while Tristen and Oakleigh smiled at each other.
In another, I was looking down at my phone, seemingly disengaged from the tender moment happening between my husband and our surrogate.
The photographer had made choices. Editorial choices that painted a very specific narrative.
And then I started reading.
"Oakleigh Scott never imagined she'd become the woman carrying the Wickham heir," the article began. "But when she met Tristen Wickham at the surrogacy agency's matching event, she knew immediately that this was a family she wanted to help create."
The Wickham heir. Like we were some kind of dynasty. Like Oakleigh was a noble vessel chosen to continue a royal bloodline.
I kept reading, my heart beating faster with every paragraph.
"'Tristen has been my rock through this entire process,' Oakleigh is quoted as saying. 'He makes me feel safe and supported in a way I've never experienced before. I truly don't know what I would do without him.'"
Where was I in this quote? Where was the mention of the intended mother, the woman whose eggs had created this baby, the wife who had endured four years of fertility hell to get to this point?
I scanned further, searching for my name.
"Aubree Wickham, Tristen's wife and co-founder of the Wickham Foundation for Fertility Awareness, was unavailable for extended comment but expressed gratitude for Oakleigh's sacrifice."
Unavailable for extended comment. I'd sat for a forty-five minute interview with that journalist. I'd talked about our miscarriages, our IVF journey, the emotional toll of infertility on our marriage. I'd opened my heart and laid out my pain for public consumption.
And they'd reduced it to a single line about being grateful.
My phone buzzed on the counter. Then again. And again.
I picked it up and saw the notifications flooding in. Text messages, social media alerts, emails from friends and colleagues who had seen the article.
Girl, have you seen this? from Collette.
Thinking of you today from my college roommate.
Call me when you can from my mother, which was never a good sign.
I opened Instagram with trembling fingers and searched for my name.
The results made bile rise in my throat.
Wow, Tristen Wickham's surrogate is STUNNING. Way to go from infertile wife to literal goddess carrying his baby. Followed by a laughing emoji.
The way he looks at her in that photo... someone check on the wife because YIKES.
Is it just me or does Oakleigh seem way more bonded with Tristen than Aubree does? Maybe the right woman is carrying that baby after all.
Imagine being so broken you can't even carry your own husband's child. Aubree Wickham is a cautionary tale tbh.
The last comment had two hundred likes.
I put my phone face-down on the counter because I couldn't look at it anymore. My hands were shaking so badly the device rattled against the marble.
Broken. That's what they thought I was. Broken and defective, a woman whose body had failed at the most basic biological function, who had to watch another woman grow round and glowing with the child she couldn't carry herself.
And now the whole world knew it.
I heard footsteps behind me and turned to find Oakleigh padding into the kitchen in her silk pajamas, her hair sleep-mussed and her face bare. She looked young and fresh and devastatingly beautiful, and I hated myself for noticing.
"Oh good, the magazine came!" She picked up the copy I'd set down and squealed with delight. "Oh my god, the cover turned out amazing. Look at how perfect Tristen looks."
She was staring at the photo of herself and my husband, the one where I didn't exist.
"Where am I?" I asked quietly.
Oakleigh looked up, her brow furrowing slightly. "What do you mean?"
"On the cover. Where am I?"
"Oh." She glanced back down at the image, as if just noticing my absence for the first time. "I guess they decided to focus on the surrogacy angle specifically? You know, the journey of carrying someone else's baby. It's probably just an editorial decision."
"An editorial decision that erased the intended mother from her own family's story."
Oakleigh's expression shifted, concern creasing her features. "Aubree, I'm sure they didn't mean anything by it. These magazines just want whatever image is most compelling, you know? It's not personal."
"Not personal." I laughed, and the sound came out sharp and ugly. "They're calling you the mother of the Wickham heir, Oakleigh. They're running photos of you and my husband looking at each other like you're the couple. How is that not personal?"
"I didn't ask them to do any of that." Her voice had taken on a defensive edge. "I can't control how journalists frame their stories."
"No, but you can control what you say in interviews. 'Tristen has been my rock.' 'I don't know what I would do without him.' Does that sound familiar?"
Oakleigh's cheeks flushed pink. "I was just being honest about my experience. He has been supportive. Is that a crime?"
"It's not a crime. But it's interesting that your honest experience apparently doesn't include anything about me."
"That's not fair. I talked about you plenty in my interview."
"Then where is it? Where's my name in any of these quotes?" I grabbed the magazine and flipped through the pages, pointing at paragraph after paragraph. "Tristen. Tristen. Oakleigh and Tristen. The Wickham family and Oakleigh. Where's Aubree? Where's the woman whose baby you're actually carrying?"
Oakleigh's eyes filled with tears, and I felt a sick twist of satisfaction that I immediately hated myself for.
"I didn't write the article," she said, her voice trembling. "I can't help what they chose to include or not include. And getting upset with me about it isn't fair when I'm just trying to do something good for your family."
Your family. Not our family, not the team we were supposed to be. Your family, like she was an outsider looking in. Except she wasn't on the outside at all. She was right in the center, taking up all the space, while I got pushed further and further to the margins.
"What's going on?"
Tristen appeared in the kitchen doorway, still in his workout clothes, his hair damp with sweat. He looked between us with obvious concern.
"The magazine came," I said flatly. "Congratulations. You and Oakleigh look beautiful together."
He crossed to the island and picked up the copy, his brow furrowing as he studied the cover. I watched his face carefully, looking for any sign that he understood why I was upset.
"This isn't the shot we approved," he said slowly.
"No, it's not."
"They must have changed it without telling us." He flipped through the pages, his frown deepening. "I'll call the editor. This isn't what we agreed to."
"Will calling the editor put me back in the photos? Will it erase the thousands of comments online calling me a broken failure who couldn't carry my own husband's baby?"
Tristen's head snapped up. "What comments?"
"Check social media. Check any platform. The internet is having a field day with our modern surrogacy journey." I grabbed my phone and thrust it at him. "Go ahead. Read what they're saying about your wife."
He took the phone and scrolled, his face growing progressively paler with each swipe. I watched his jaw clench, watched the muscles in his neck tighten, watched him absorb the public humiliation that I'd been marinating in for the past thirty minutes.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered.
"Yeah."
"Aubree, I'm so sorry." Oakleigh stepped forward, reaching for my hand. I pulled away before she could touch me. "I had no idea people would react like this. I never wanted anyone to say those things about you."
"But they are saying them. And they're saying them because this article made it look like you're the center of this story and I'm just an afterthought. An obstacle. The sad infertile wife who had to be worked around."
"That's not what the article says."
"It doesn't have to say it explicitly, Oakleigh. It's in every photo, every quote, every editorial choice they made. You're the star. You're the hero. And I'm the cautionary tale."
Tears were streaming down her face now, and I knew I should feel bad about making a pregnant woman cry. I knew I should be the bigger person, should swallow my hurt and comfort her because stress was bad for the baby.
But I couldn't. I just couldn't.
"I need to go," I said, grabbing my purse from the counter.
"Go where?" Tristen asked.
"Anywhere that isn't here. Anywhere I don't have to look at that magazine or listen to more apologies that don't actually fix anything."
"Aubree, please. Let's talk about this."
"There's nothing to talk about, Tristen.
You agreed to this interview without asking me.
You posed for photos that made you look like a couple with another woman.
And now the whole world thinks I'm some sad, broken footnote in my own family's story.
" My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated myself for showing weakness.
"So congratulations. The foundation got its publicity. I hope it was worth it."
I walked out the front door and kept walking until I reached my car.
I sat behind the wheel for a long time, just breathing, trying to stop the tears that kept sliding down my cheeks no matter how hard I blinked them back.
My phone buzzed again. Another notification. Another comment. Another stranger on the internet picking apart my infertility like it was entertainment.
I turned the phone off completely and shoved it in my purse.
Then I started the car and drove.
I didn't know where I was going. I just knew I couldn't stay in that house with the magazine and the photos and the woman who had somehow become the face of my family without even trying.
I'd spent four years fighting to become a mother. Four years of needles and hormones and hope and heartbreak. Four years of watching my body fail over and over again while everyone around me got pregnant effortlessly.
And now, when I was finally so close to having everything I'd ever wanted, I felt more invisible than ever.
The tears came harder, blurring my vision until I had to pull over to the side of the road.
I sat there in my car on a random residential street and cried until I had nothing left.
And when the tears finally stopped, what remained wasn't sadness.
It was something harder. Something colder.
Something that felt like the first crack in a foundation I'd always believed was unbreakable.