Chương 5
“To who?”
“To me.”
Evelyn spoke from the couch.
“Start at the beginning.”
Michelle looked at her and seemed to shrink.
I had seen that expression before, years earlier when a professor caught us sharing notes for an exam and Michelle confessed before he had even accused us.
“I wanted children,” she said.
Christopher gave a disbelieving shake of his head.
“So did I.”
“You wanted your children.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Christopher.”
Evelyn’s warning barely slowed him.
Michelle rubbed both palms over her upper arms.
“Three years ago, I froze embryos.”
I stared at her.
She finally looked at me.
That was the moment my anger found a new shape.
Three years ago, Michelle had driven me home after an embryo transfer and spent the afternoon on my couch while I tried not to interpret every cramp as a sign.
She had known exactly what the medication felt like.
Exactly what the appointments were like.
Exactly what hope cost.
“You never told me,” I said.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I was thirty-seven and single.”
Her voice sharpened defensively.
“I didn’t want everybody having an opinion.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“I know.”
“Apparently you didn’t.”
Christopher cut between us.
“Whose embryos?”
Michelle looked at him.
“Mine.”
“And?”
She swallowed.
Evelyn rose with the boy in her arms.
“And whose sperm, Michelle?”
Michelle looked toward the window.
A landscaping crew had started somewhere down the block, and the distant growl of a leaf blower drifted through the glass.
It seemed absurd that somebody was clearing a driveway while the Lawson family came apart.
“Andrew’s,” she said.
Christopher laughed.
Nobody joined him.
“My brother died twenty-five years ago.”
“I know.”
“So try again.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You never met Andrew.”
“No.”
Christopher spread his hands.
“Good, so we’ve established that.”
Evelyn had become completely still.
Michelle continued before he could interrupt.
“The clinic had preserved samples.”
Christopher stared at her.
“That’s impossible.”
Evelyn said, “No.”
Everyone turned.
She sat down again.
“Andrew banked sperm before chemotherapy.”
Christopher’s face emptied.
I had never known Andrew had undergone chemotherapy.
Christopher had always said his brother died after a sudden illness.
“He had testicular cancer,” Evelyn said.
“He was twenty.”
Christopher looked at her as if she had switched languages.
“You told me it was his heart.”
“You were sixteen.”
“I’m forty-three now.”
Evelyn flinched.
“Your father didn’t want people discussing it.”
“So you lied for twenty-seven years?”
“Yes.”
The answer landed harder because she did not defend it.
Christopher paced two steps and stopped.
“How does Michelle get my dead brother’s sperm?”
Nobody answered.
He pointed at her.
“How?”
Michelle began crying then, but quietly.
She wiped her cheeks almost angrily.
“Richard.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
The baby boy stirred against her.
I understood the parking receipt before Michelle explained it.
Richard had not been meeting her as a lover.
He had been helping her gain access to something that should never have been his to give.
“I met your father through Vextor,” Michelle said.
Christopher looked physically ill.
“You worked in marketing.”
“He asked me to help with a donor event in Scottsdale.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
She glanced at me.
“I told him about freezing my eggs because he asked why I kept traveling to Arizona.”
“You told my father but not me?”
“We weren’t together then.”
“You were Victoria’s friend.”
Michelle recoiled.
The words hit me too.
Christopher noticed.
For the first time since I entered the house, shame crossed his face.
It did not last.
“Keep going.”
“Richard started talking about Andrew.”
Evelyn’s jaw tightened.
“He did that when he drank.”
“He wasn’t drinking.”
Michelle wiped her face again.
“He said Andrew had wanted children someday.”
Evelyn whispered, “He was twenty-one.”
“He said the samples still existed.”
Christopher stared at his mother.
“You kept them?”
“I didn’t know they still existed.”
“Who paid the storage?”
Evelyn looked confused.
Then I knew.
“Sonoran.”
Everyone turned toward me.
I took out my phone and opened the notes I had made from Vextor’s financial records.
“There are recurring payments buried inside Sonoran’s expenses.”
Christopher shook his head.
“No.”
“They’re small compared with the consulting transfers, so I ignored them.”
“How small?”
“Between nine hundred and fifteen hundred dollars a year.”
Evelyn sank farther into the couch.
“Richard.”
The name sounded like an accusation addressed to a dead man.
Michelle nodded.
“He kept paying.”
Christopher walked toward her.
“So my father decided you should have my brother’s child?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“He offered me the option.”
“You used my brother’s sperm and then slept with me?”
“I didn’t plan that.”
Christopher actually smiled.
It was an awful smile.
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t.”
“When were the embryos created?”
“Two years ago.”
The date struck me immediately.
That was during one of my treatment cycles.
I looked at Michelle.
She saw the calculation happen.
“Victoria.”
“Don’t.”
“I can explain.”
“You were creating embryos with my dead brother-in-law’s sperm while sitting beside me at fertility appointments?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“That is becoming a very crowded category of things you didn’t mean to do.”
Christopher turned on me.
“This isn’t about you.”
The cruelty was automatic, almost reflexive.
Something surprising happened after he said it.
Michelle stepped between us.
“Stop.”
He stared at her.
“She has every right to be angry.”
“Now you defend her?”
“I should have done it sooner.”
That seemed to wound him more deeply than anything else she had said.
Emma started crying again.
This time nobody moved immediately.
Then I did.
I reached the bassinet before thinking better of it and placed one hand gently against the baby’s blanket.
Her crying continued.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I muttered.
Michelle came beside me.
“Neither does anybody.”
Our shoulders nearly touched.
I stepped away.
She picked Emma up.
Christopher watched us with open resentment.
“Are both babies Andrew’s?”
Michelle pressed her lips together.
Christopher’s eyes narrowed.
“Michelle.”
“I don’t know.”
His expression changed.
May you like
“What?”
“I transferred two embryos.”
