Chương 2
Reyes asked them to move into a private conference room.
“No,” Victoria said.
Everyone looked at her.
She lowered her voice. “Not with him.”
She meant Daniel.
Daniel’s mouth tightened.
“Vic.”
She had once loved the nickname because he was the only person who could use it without making her feel reduced. Now it sounded stolen.
Bennett slid the records back into the folder. “There are things you need to understand before anyone leaves.”
Daniel looked toward the jet.
Victoria followed his gaze.
A passport wallet protruded from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
Her attention shifted to Lauren’s taupe carry-on, George’s overnight bag, the stroller loaded with snacks and diapers, the gate agent waiting too carefully near a computer.
“You were taking them somewhere.”
Lauren stood.
“He said reporters were coming.”
Victoria looked at Daniel.
“What reporters?”
Daniel did not answer.
Lauren’s distress sharpened. “He said there’d been a clinic leak. He said Noah’s privacy was at risk. He booked the plane this afternoon.”
Noah.
The child had a name.
Victoria felt that fact with embarrassing force.
Noah.
She had carried dozens of imagined names through years of treatment. Daniel used to reject them for ridiculous reasons. Ethan reminded him of a man who cheated at golf. Henry was “too aggressively British.” Miles sounded, he said, like an app.
They had never discussed Noah.
Reyes opened the conference-room door.
“Everybody inside,” she said. “The aircraft is not departing until I understand whether there’s a custody issue.”
“There isn’t,” Lauren said immediately.
Her hand landed on the stroller.
“He’s my son.”
Victoria looked at her.
Lauren returned the look.
Neither woman moved.
For the first time, Victoria saw beyond the photographs and the panic. Lauren’s blonde hair had been pulled back and had mostly escaped. There were crescent marks beneath her eyes. Her dress looked expensive from a distance but wasn’t. One strap of her handbag had been repaired with thread slightly darker than the leather.
She looked terrified.
Not guilty.
Victoria had expected to hate her.
That would have been easier.
Inside the conference room, George parked the stroller beside his chair and stood behind it rather than sitting. Lauren stayed close enough for Noah to touch her knee. Daniel took the seat nearest the door. Victoria remained standing.
Bennett laid the folder on the table.
“I’m going to tell you what I know,” he said. “And I’m going to be careful about what I don’t know.”
“Start with why my son is in her stroller,” Victoria said.
Lauren flinched.
Victoria saw it and regretted the wording immediately.
She did not apologize.
Not yet.
Bennett adjusted his glasses.
“Two years and ten months ago, Northstar migrated part of its cryostorage inventory to a new barcode system. There was a manual reconciliation during the transition. Your final two embryos were logged correctly in storage, but the transfer identifiers attached to them were not.”
Victoria stared at him.
Bennett continued. “Both embryos were removed from storage under different patient numbers.”
“Transferred?”
“Yes.”
“To women who weren’t me.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked down at the table.
Victoria felt the room tilt without actually moving.
“You told me they were lost in a thaw failure.”
“That was the information I was given.”
“You signed the letter.”
“Yes.”
“So when you say given—”
“I signed it.”
Bennett’s voice did not rise.
He looked directly at her.
“I should have verified the embryology record before I signed it. I didn’t. I was medical director. That is my responsibility.”
Lauren touched Noah’s hair.
“What about me?”
Bennett turned toward her.
“I cannot discuss your medical file without your consent.”
“Oh, now you care about consent?”
George’s rough voice filled the room.
Bennett accepted the blow.
Lauren stared at him. “I consent. Say it.”
“Lauren.”
“Say it.”
Bennett inhaled.
“You underwent IVF at Northstar in the same month. You were told that the embryo transferred to you had been created from your egg and your former husband’s sperm.”
Lauren’s lower lip moved slightly.
“My ex had azoospermia.”
“There had been a surgical retrieval.”
“I know what we did.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
Noah began turning the wheel of the stroller with his fingers.
Lauren lowered her voice.
“I took injections for eleven weeks. I bled at six weeks. I slept on the bathroom floor because I was afraid standing up would make me lose him. I threw up every morning until February. I pushed him out of my body.”
Bennett said nothing.
“So don’t sit there and tell me what I was told like I read it on a receipt.”
“I’m not.”
Her eyes filled, but the tears did not fall.
Victoria looked away first.
Bennett removed one sheet from the folder. “The record we recovered indicates that the embryo transferred to you was one of Victoria and Daniel’s.”
Lauren stared at Daniel.
“You knew that?”
Daniel spoke carefully. “Not at first.”
“When?”
“When Noah was about seven months old.”
George swore under his breath.
Lauren’s chair scraped backward.
“You said the sperm was yours. You said they contacted you because of a donor-chain investigation.”
“I was trying—”
“Don’t tell me what you were trying.”
Noah startled.
Lauren immediately softened her voice and placed a hand on his shoe.
“It’s okay.”
The child watched her.
Daniel looked miserable.
Victoria hated him more for looking miserable.
“What happened at seven months?” she asked.
Daniel rubbed the red mark on his cheek.
“Northstar’s insurer started reviewing an unrelated specimen complaint. Someone found a mismatch in the old migration log. Arthur wasn’t at the clinic anymore. Legal contacted me because my name was attached to the original account.”
“Why you?”
“Our billing profile used my email.”
It was such an ordinary answer that Victoria nearly laughed.
For years, Daniel had paid hotel deposits, club memberships, charitable pledges, and medical bills because he liked centralized records.
A family destroyed by a billing email.
May you like
“What did they tell you?”
“That an embryo associated with us may have resulted in a live birth.”
