Chương 5
“I know him.”
“Did he perform your retrievals?”
“He ran the lab. We met twice.”
“Melinda knew him?”
“I don’t know.”
Kenneth turned the transfer page toward himself. “There is something else. The witness signature belongs to a nurse named Lisa Moreno. She died eighteen months ago.”
Kirsten looked up.
“Cancer,” he said. “She left Northlake shortly after this transfer. We have not located any statement from her.”
“A dead witness and forged signatures.”
“Potentially forged.”
“You are choosing your words very carefully.”
“That is why you pay me.”
“I haven’t paid your last invoice.”
“Then you owe me careful words.”
She finally picked up the tea. It was lukewarm.
“What can I do?”
“We can seek an order for genetic testing and preservation of relevant records. We can ask the court to appoint someone to represent the child’s interests. We can pursue civil claims against the clinic and potentially against individuals involved. Law enforcement may become interested if the evidence supports fraud, falsification, or unauthorized medical procedures.”
“And custody?”
Kenneth removed his glasses and polished them with a cloth from his pocket.
The gesture frightened her. He used it when no answer could be made kind.
“Genetics will matter,” he said. “Intent will matter. Consent will matter. The existing birth certificate, caregiving history, and the child’s best interests will matter. There is no simple rule that hands you a one-year-old because a laboratory report says he shares your DNA.”
“I didn’t ask anyone to hand him to me.”
“No.”
The word held no judgment, which made her defensive.
“He has a mother.”
“He has a woman who has raised him since birth.”
“That is what I said.”
Kenneth put his glasses back on. “Is it?”
Kirsten looked toward the rain.
She had spent years training herself not to covet other people’s children. She held infants during examinations, soothed toddlers through vaccinations, taught exhausted parents how to recognize retractions in a struggling breath. Then she handed each child back.
That return was part of the ritual. It protected everyone.
Yesterday, when Melinda had carried the baby from the conference room, Kirsten had moved aside because a child needed his nap.
She was no longer sure whether the movement had been mercy or surrender.
“I want the truth,” she said.
“And after that?”
“I don’t know.”
Kenneth nodded. “Then do not let strangers decide your answer before you have one.”
The hospital placed Kirsten on paid leave for ten days. The letter praised her professionalism while explaining that her presence could attract disruption. Hospital communications asked her not to post online. Human Resources scheduled a meeting. Her department chair, Dr. Asha Patel, called twice and left one message.
“I’m not calling as your chair,” Asha said. “I’m calling as the person who knows you keep emergency chocolate in the third drawer of your desk and never share it. Call me.”
Kirsten did not call that day.
She cleaned the kitchen instead. She washed a dish rack that was already clean, sorted a drawer of takeout menus, and found a blue plastic fertility-clinic wristband beneath a stack of batteries. She did not know why she had kept it.
The printed letters had faded, but her patient number remained visible.
The sight of it brought back not the retrieval itself but the waiting room afterward. Connor had been trying to assemble a small wooden puzzle from a children’s table while she recovered from anesthesia. He had held up two pieces and said, “This is either a duck or a poorly designed state.”
“Which state?”
“Ohio.”
“That looks nothing like Ohio.”
“Exactly.”
She had laughed until her abdomen hurt.
The memory arrived whole and unwelcome. Connor had not always been cruel. That fact did not excuse what he became. It only made the road between versions harder to dismiss.
Her phone rang.
Connor.
She let it stop.
He called again.
On the third attempt, she answered.
“What?”
“I didn’t sign it.”
His voice sounded different without an audience.
Kirsten sat on the kitchen floor beside the open drawer. “You have a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Talk through your lawyer.”
“I need you to believe me.”
“No, you need me to do something useful with belief.”
“I didn’t know Melinda had treatment at Northlake. I thought she got pregnant naturally.”
“You thought she got pregnant six weeks after we separated, and the timing never bothered you?”
“We had been—”
“Careful.”
Silence.
She closed her eyes.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did. You just didn’t mean to say it to me.”
He exhaled. “I thought the baby was conceived in August.”
“The embryo was transferred in July.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“My attorney showed me the record.”
“Did you recognize the company that paid the clinic?”
“No.”
“Did Melinda ever ask for your signature?”
“No.”
“Did she have access to it?”
Connor hesitated.
Kirsten opened her eyes. “Connor.”
“She handled some documents for my firm.”
“When?”
“Before we separated.”
Melinda had done occasional design work for Connor’s offices. Kirsten remembered contracts spread across their dining table, Melinda sitting barefoot in a chair while Connor complained about invoice language. Kirsten had cooked pasta. The three of them had shared a bottle of wine.
“Why would she have your legal documents?”
“She scanned a vendor agreement while my assistant was out.”
“And mine?”
“I don’t know.”
Kirsten picked up the faded wristband. “She was my emergency contact at Northlake.”
Connor went silent.
Patients were required to designate someone who could receive information if they became incapacitated. Connor traveled often then. Melinda had sat with Kirsten after two retrievals. She knew the staff. She knew the schedules. She knew where Kirsten kept copies of everything because she had helped organize them in a white binder labeled with a joke neither of them found funny later.
“Did she ever tell you she wanted a child?” Kirsten asked.
“All the time.”
“With you?”
“She said she wanted a family.”
May you like
“That is not what I asked.”
He rubbed his face; she could hear it in the phone. “She was afraid I would go back to you.”
