Chương 4
“I didn’t know.”
“You decided I secretly transferred an embryo?”
“I considered the possibility.”
“And that would make the baby not Evan’s how?”
Silence.
Richard closed his eyes.
Evan muttered, “Mom.”
Claire looked at Margaret.
Then it landed.
“You think the embryo wasn’t ours.”
Margaret said nothing.
“Oh.”
Claire sat back.
The baby pressed beneath her ribs again, slower this time.
Claire rubbed the spot.
Margaret watched her hand.
“The former employee said there had been an inventory discrepancy.”
“What does that mean?”
“One embryo could not be accounted for correctly.”
“One of ours?”
“Yes.”
Claire’s mouth went dry.
“Which one?”
“He didn’t know.”
“So there’s a missing embryo.”
“There was.”
“And you somehow turned that into me carrying another man’s baby.”
Margaret’s face hardened.
“I turned it into a question.”
“You turned it into a public execution.”
“Claire—”
“No.”
The word came from Evan.
Everyone looked at him.
He was pale, but his voice had steadied.
“No, Mom. She’s right.”
Margaret stared at her son.
“You came here tonight knowing this.”
“Yes.”
“You planned it.”
“No.”
“You brought her to an engagement dinner and planned to accuse her.”
“I planned to speak to her privately.”
“When?”
Margaret did not answer.
“After dessert? Before the cake? Were you going to let me put a ring on her finger first?”
Claire looked down at her left hand.
The engagement ring was already there.
Evan had proposed three weeks earlier in their kitchen because Claire had been too tired to go to the restaurant where he had made a reservation.
He had hidden the ring in the drawer with the aluminum foil.
She had laughed for almost a minute when she found it.
Margaret had hated that story.
“You deserved certainty before marriage,” Margaret said.
Evan stared at her.
“I deserved honesty from you.”
“I was protecting you.”
“Stop saying that.”
Claire stood again.
This time slowly.
“I’m leaving.”
Evan moved toward her.
“I’ll drive.”
“No.”
“Claire, you shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m not going to be alone.”
“Who are you calling?”
“My sister.”
Margaret said, “Running away won’t answer anything.”
Claire turned.
“Neither will setting medical photographs on fire.”
“I didn’t intend—”
“I don’t care what you intended.”
That silenced Margaret.
Claire gathered her belongings.
Richard helped without asking. Keys. Lipstick. Antacids. Wallet. Phone charger. A tiny pair of baby socks one of Claire’s coworkers had given her that afternoon and that had somehow ended up beneath a dessert spoon.
Richard picked them up.
He stared at them for half a second.
Then he placed them carefully in the handbag.
Claire saw his face.
Fear again.
Not uncertainty.
Fear.
She stopped.
“Richard.”
He looked up.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Evan said, “Claire, not now.”
She ignored him.
Richard’s hand remained inside the handbag.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Richard removed his hand.
“I don’t know what happened at that clinic.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
“Then answer me.”
His eyes shifted toward Margaret.
Then Evan.
Then back to Claire.
“There’s something else.”
Margaret whispered, “Richard.”
He did not look at her.
Claire sat down again.
Richard remained standing.
“The embryo inventory problem wasn’t limited to your account.”
Margaret went very still.
Evan frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Richard looked at his son.
“It means Claire wasn’t the only patient affected.”
“How do you know?”
Richard hesitated.
And Claire finally understood why he had been afraid to meet her eyes.
He had gone further than Evan knew.
“How many?” she asked.
Richard rubbed a hand over his jaw.
“At least six families.”
The rain struck harder against the glass.
A server quietly replaced a candle at the neighboring table.
Claire stared at Richard.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I hired a lawyer.”
Margaret’s head snapped toward him.
“You did what?”
“Four months ago.”
“You went behind my back?”
Richard looked at her.
“You paid a stranger for confidential medical information behind mine.”
“That was different.”
“No. It was worse.”
Claire pressed her fingertips against her forehead.
“Please.”
They stopped.
She closed her eyes.
The restaurant smelled of candle wax, wet wool, expensive perfume, and something buttery from the kitchen.
Her daughter kicked.
Claire opened her eyes.
“Start from the beginning.”
And for the next twenty minutes, with rain crawling down the Seattle skyline behind them and their engagement dinner cooling untouched on the table, the Bennett family finally did.
The billing email had reached Richard by mistake in early April.
He had forwarded it to Evan, assuming it was an ordinary fertility-clinic charge.
Evan recognized the date and procedure description immediately.
He called the clinic.
The clinic refused to discuss Claire’s medical information without authorization. Evan considered telling Claire that evening.
He did not.
That was the first mistake.
The second came when he told Margaret.
Margaret had always believed problems became manageable once enough information was collected. She had built a career in commercial real estate on that principle. She investigated tenants, contractors, partners, zoning boards, neighboring property owners. She knew who owed money, who was divorcing, who had liens, who drank too much at lunch.
She treated uncertainty as negligence.
So she investigated.
The former clinic employee had worked in laboratory inventory management. He told Margaret there had been discrepancies involving several cryopreserved embryos during a software migration and storage reorganization.
He could not prove that Claire’s embryo had been transferred.
He could not prove it had been lost.
He could not prove another patient’s embryo had been transferred to Claire.
He could prove only that records were inconsistent.
Margaret paid him anyway.
Richard discovered the payment while reviewing an unusual withdrawal from one of their joint investment accounts.
He confronted her.
Then he hired an attorney to find out whether there was a legitimate way to determine if other patients had reported problems.
There was.
A small group of former patients had already retained counsel.
Richard’s attorney contacted theirs without revealing Claire’s identity.
May you like
One family claimed an embryo had been incorrectly labeled.
Another had received contradictory storage reports.
