Chương 7
Evelyn looked back at the baby.
“You’re right.”
Michelle seemed surprised.
“So are you.”
“What?”
“You decided who they were before they were born.”
Michelle’s eyes filled again.
“That’s different.”
“No.”
Evelyn’s voice stayed calm.
“You chose uncertainty and then hid it from the person who believed he was their father.”
Michelle sat down heavily in the chair across from me.
“I thought I could handle it.”
“No one can handle a secret by refusing to call it one.”
I almost laughed at the irony.
Evelyn caught my expression.
“Yes, Victoria, I hear myself.”
That nearly made me smile.
Michelle looked between us.
“You both think I’m a monster.”
“I think you made choices I don’t understand,” I said.
“That sounds nicer.”
“It isn’t meant to.”
She nodded.
For a while we listened to Christopher opening and closing things in the kitchen.
Then the refrigerator door shut.
A glass clinked against the counter.
Normal household sounds.
I hated them.
Michelle stared at the carpet.
“I didn’t choose Andrew because he was Christopher’s brother.”
Evelyn’s head lifted.
“Then why?”
“Richard showed me a profile.”
My stomach tightened.
“A donor profile?”
“Yes.”
“Without telling you it was Andrew?”
“At first.”
Evelyn looked sick.
Michelle continued.
“The profile said he had brown hair, hazel eyes, no hereditary conditions they knew of, engineering student, played guitar badly.”
Evelyn gave a broken little laugh.
“He did play badly.”
Michelle looked at her.
“That was in there.”
“What else?”
“That he wanted kids.”
Evelyn’s mouth trembled.
“That should not have been in there.”
“I know.”
“How did Richard get access to the file?”
“I never asked.”
“That was convenient.”
Michelle accepted the blow.
“Yes.”
I leaned forward.
“When did he tell you who the donor was?”
“Before the embryos were created.”
“So you knew.”
“Yes.”
“And still did it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She rubbed her thumb across the seam of Emma’s blanket.
“Because I thought it meant something.”
I waited.
She looked embarrassed by her own answer.
“I was tired of anonymous profiles.”
“That doesn’t make Andrew less anonymous to you,” I said.
“No.”
“But Richard talked about him.”
Evelyn stiffened.
“What did Richard say?”
“That Andrew was kind.”
Her voice softened.
“That he used to take Christopher’s punishments sometimes because Christopher was younger.”
From the kitchen doorway, Christopher said, “That’s not true.”
Nobody had heard him return.
He held a glass of water.
His hand was shaking.
Evelyn looked at him.
“Yes, it is.”
“He didn’t take my punishments.”
“He lied for you twice.”
“I didn’t ask him to.”
“No.”
Evelyn’s expression changed.
“You worshipped him.”
Christopher stared at her.
“You made sure I had to.”
For a moment she had no answer.
He set the glass down too hard on an end table.
Water jumped over the rim.
“You compared me to him every time I screwed up.”
“I did not.”
“Dad did.”
Evelyn looked away.
Christopher laughed once.
“There it is.”
Michelle watched him with a strange mix of pity and fear.
I had never seen Christopher speak about Andrew with anything except irritation when the subject came up.
Now the irritation looked like scar tissue.
“You think I wanted to hear my father tell stories about his perfect dead son?”
His voice cracked on the last word.
Evelyn’s face folded inward.
“He was grieving.”
“So was I.”
The room went still.
That was the first true thing Christopher had said all afternoon that nobody wanted to argue with.
A knock sounded at the front door.
Evelyn handed Noah to Michelle and stood.
Christopher looked toward the hall.
“Don’t let them in.”
Evelyn kept walking.
“Christopher.”
“I said don’t let them in.”
She turned back.
“You are not sixteen.”
His face hardened.
“No.”
She opened the door.
Priya entered first carrying a laptop bag.
Daniel followed with a cardboard file box held against his chest.
He looked exhausted.
When he saw Christopher, he stopped.
“Chris.”
“You’re fired.”
Daniel nodded once.
“I expected that.”
Christopher stared at the box.
“What is that?”
“Copies.”
“Of what?”
Daniel stepped into the living room and set the box on the coffee table.
“Documents I received from Vextor’s outside accounting firm this morning.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why did they send them to you?”
“They didn’t.”
He looked at me.
“They sent them to Christopher.”
Christopher went completely still.
Daniel continued.
“His office forwarded them because I was listed as counsel on an inquiry from the auditors.”
Christopher’s voice dropped.
“What inquiry?”
Daniel stared at him.
“The one your CFO apparently opened last week.”
I knew Vextor’s CFO, Lena Ortiz.
She had been one of the few executives who challenged Christopher directly.
He disliked her for it and respected her reluctantly.
“What did Lena find?” I asked.
Daniel opened the box.
“Payments from Sonoran to a second company.”
“What company?”
“Meridian Biologic Services.”
Michelle’s head snapped up.
The movement was so sudden Emma stirred.
Priya noticed.
“So you know it.”
Michelle did not answer.
Evelyn looked at her.
“Michelle?”
She swallowed.
“It’s not a fertility clinic.”
“What is it?”
Her eyes moved to Noah.
Then to Emma.
“It handled reproductive tissue storage.”
Nobody spoke.
Daniel removed a stack of papers.
“There are payments to Meridian going back more than a decade.”
Christopher shook his head.
“That would be my father.”
“Some of them, yes.”
Daniel turned over the first page.
“But the authorization changed three years ago.”
He placed the document on the coffee table.
I recognized Christopher’s signature immediately.
So did he.
His face emptied.
Michelle stared at him.
“You knew.”
“No.”
Her voice rose.
“You knew about Andrew’s samples.”
“I signed hundreds of things for Dad.”
“This isn’t hundreds of things.”
She stood.
“This is one thing.”
“I didn’t read it.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Christopher looked at Daniel.
“What exactly did I authorize?”
Daniel’s expression remained careful.
“Transfer of account control after Richard became ill.”
Evelyn whispered, “He was diagnosed with heart disease three years before he died.”
May you like
Daniel nodded.
“Christopher became the responsible party on Meridian’s storage account.”
