But if I was going to do it, I had to get moving.

And our decision to have a baby wasn’t really just a two-person conversation. It was a four-person conversation.

“Go on,” I said as we made our way to the front of the restaurant. “Say it.”

“A baby,” Harry said. “You and me.”

“Have you discussed it with John?” I asked.

“Not specifically,” he said. “Have you discussed it with Celia?”

“No.”

“But are you ready?” he said.

My career was going to take a hit. There was no avoiding it. I’d go from being a woman to being a mother—and somehow those things appeared mutually exclusive in Hollywood. My body would change. I’d have months where I couldn’t work. It made absolutely no sense to say yes. “Yes,” I said. “I am.”

Harry nodded. “Me too.”

“OK,” I said, considering the next steps. “So we’ll talk to John and Celia.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I suppose we will.”

“And if everyone is on board?” I asked, stopping before we got out to the sidewalk.

“We’ll get started,” Harry said, stopping with me.

“I know the most obvious solution is adoption,” I said. “But . . .”

“You think we should have a biological child.”

“I do,” I said. “I don’t want anyone trying to claim we adopted because we had something to hide.”

Harry nodded. “I get it,” he said. “I want a biological child, too. Someone half you, half me. I’m with you on this.”

I raised my eyebrow. “You do realize how babies are made?” I asked him.

He smiled and then leaned in and whispered, “There is a very small part of me that has wanted to bed you since I met you, Evelyn Hugo.”

I laughed and hit him on the arm. “No, there is not.”

“A small part,” Harry said, defending himself. “It goes against all my greater instincts. But it is there nonetheless.”

I smiled. “Well,” I said, “we will keep that part to ourselves.”

Harry laughed and put out his hand. I shook it. “Once again, Evelyn, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

WOULD THE BABY BE RAISED by the both of you?” Celia asked. We were lying in bed, naked. My back was lined with sweat, my hairline damp. I rolled over onto my stomach and put my hand on Celia’s chest.

The movie she was doing next was making her a brunette. I found myself transfixed by the golden red of her hair, desperate to know that they would dye it back properly, that she would return to me looking exactly like herself.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. It would be ours. We’d raise it together.”

“And where would I fit into all of this? Where would John?”

“Wherever you want to.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that we would figure it out as we go.”

Celia considered my words and stared at the ceiling. “This is something you want?” Celia asked finally.

“Yes,” I told her. “Very badly.”

“Is it a problem for you that I have never . . . wanted that?” she asked.

“That you don’t want children?”

“Yes.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Is it a problem for you that I cannot . . . that I cannot give you that?” Her voice was starting to crack, and her lips were starting to quiver. When Celia was on-screen and needed to cry, she would squint her eyes and cover her face. But they were fake tears, generated out of nothing, for nothing. When she really cried, her face remained painfully still except for the corners of her lips and the water brimming in her eyes that stuck to her lashes.

“Honey,” I said, pulling her toward me. “Of course not.”

“I just . . . I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted, and you want that, and I can’t give it to you.”

“Celia, no,” I said. “It’s not like that at all.”

“It’s not?”

“You have given me more than I ever thought I could have in one life.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m positive.”

She smiled. “You love me?” she said.

“Oh, my God, what an understatement,” I told her.

“You love me so much you can’t see straight?”

“I love you so much that when I sometimes get a look at all the crazy fan mail you get, I think, Well, sure, that makes sense. I want to collect her eyelashes, too.”

Celia laughed and ran her hand across my upper arm as she stared at the ceiling. “I want you to be happy,” she said when she finally looked at me.

“You should know that Harry and I will have to . . .”

“There’s no other way?” she asked. “I thought women were getting pregnant by men just using their sperm now.”

I nodded. “I think there are other ways,” I said. “But I’m not confident in the security of the situation. Or, rather, I don’t know how to ensure that no one finds out that’s how we did it.”

“You’re saying you’re going to have to make love to Harry,” Celia said.

“You are the person I’m in love with. You are the person I make love to. Harry and I are merely making a baby.”

Celia looked at me, reading my face. “You’re sure about that?”

“Absolutely positive.”

She looked back up at the ceiling. She didn’t talk for a while. I watched her eyes as they moved back and forth. I watched her breathing as it slowed. And then she turned to face me. “If it’s what you want . . . if you want a baby, then . . . have a baby. I will . . . we will figure it out. I will make it work. I can be an aunt. Aunt Celia. And I’ll find a way to be OK with it all.”

“And I’ll help you,” I said.

She laughed. “How do you suppose you’ll do that?”

“I can think of one way to make it all a bit more palatable for you,” I said, kissing her neck. She liked to be kissed right below and just behind her ear, where her earlobe hit her neck.

“Oh, you are too much,” she said. But she didn’t say anything else. She did not stop me as I moved my hand across her breasts, down her stomach, between her legs. She moaned and pulled me closer to her, and she ran her own hand down my body. She touched me while I touched her, soft at first and then harder, faster. “I love you,” she said, breathless.

“I love you,” I said back to her.

She looked into my eyes and made me feel rapture, and that night, in giving of herself, she gave me a baby.

PhotoMoment

May 23, 1975

EVELYN HUGO AND HARRY CAMERON HAVE A BABY GIRL!

Evelyn Hugo is finally a mother! At the age of 37, the stunning bombshell is adding “parent” to her résumé. Connor Margot Cameron, 6 pounds, 9 ounces, was born late last Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Dad Harry Cameron is said to be “over the moon” about the little bambina.

With a string of hits behind them, Evelyn and Harry are sure to consider the littlest Cameron their most exciting coproduction yet.

I WAS IN LOVE WITH Connor from the moment she looked at me. With her full head of hair and her round blue eyes, I thought, for a moment, she looked just like Celia.

Connor was always hungry and hated being alone. She wanted nothing more than to lie on me, quietly sleeping. She absolutely adored Harry.

During those first few months, Celia shot two movies back-to-back, both out of town. One of them, The Buyer, was a movie I knew she was passionate about. But the second, a mob movie, was exactly the sort of work she hated. On top of the violence and darkness, it shot for eight weeks, four in Los Angeles and four in Sicily. When the offer came in, I was expecting her to turn it down. Instead, she took the part, and John decided to go with her.

During the time they were gone, Harry and I lived almost exactly like a traditional married couple. Harry made me bacon and eggs for breakfast and ran my baths. I fed the baby and changed her nearly hourly.