Chương 9
Emily closed her eyes.
The baby settled against her.
His fingers curled into her gown.
“Send it to my lawyer.”
“You have counsel listed now?”
“Yes.”
The hospital had arranged independent representation and agreed to pay initial fees without requiring Emily to waive anything. Emily’s lawyer, Naomi Green, had made the hospital put that promise in writing before she accepted.
The counselor confirmed the address.
Emily ended the call.
Her mother sat upright.
“Emily?”
Emily looked at her.
“He’s not Aaron’s.”
Her mother stood.
Emily flinched.
Her mother stopped.
Neither moved.
The baby swallowed.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Emily looked down at him.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
Her mother’s face crumpled.
Emily shook her head.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not—”
“Please.”
Her mother covered her mouth.
Emily lifted the baby to her shoulder and patted his back.
He gave a small burp.
The sound was so ordinary that Emily nearly screamed.
Instead she started laughing.
Her mother looked terrified.
Emily laughed until tears came.
“He burped.”
“I heard.”
“I just found out my dead husband isn't his father and he burped.”
Her mother sat beside her.
This time Emily did not pull away.
For ten minutes neither woman spoke.
The grief was stranger than Aaron’s death.
Aaron had been there and then not.
This was different.
The child remained.
The history disappeared.
Emily had not lost the baby in her arms.
She had lost the story she had wrapped around him.
At noon, Aaron’s parents called.
Emily almost did not answer.
Then she did.
Aaron’s father cried quietly.
His mother asked one question.
“Do you still want us to come?”
Emily’s chest tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know what this makes you.”
Aaron’s mother was silent for a long time.
Then she said, “Neither do I.”
Emily appreciated that more than any reassurance.
“We were his grandparents yesterday,” the older woman said. “I don’t know what paperwork or DNA makes us today. But we loved him yesterday.”
Emily covered her eyes.
Aaron’s mother added, “We can wait while you figure out whether that’s useful or annoying.”
A wet laugh escaped Emily.
“A little of both.”
“That sounds like family.”
They came the next afternoon.
Aaron’s father stood six feet from the bassinet for ten minutes before asking to hold the baby.
Emily said yes.
When he took him, his face changed.
He did not say the baby looked like Aaron.
Nobody said that anymore.
The second genetic result arrived five days after the hospital door incident.
The baby was genetically consistent with preserved samples from Laura Hale and her husband, Michael.
There was no longer a technical ambiguity.
The embryo transferred into Emily thirty-eight weeks earlier had not been the embryo North Lake had assigned to her and Aaron.
It had belonged to another couple.
Both were dead.
Margaret Hale was, genetically, the baby's maternal grandmother.
Emily read the report three times.
Then she asked Naomi, “What happens now?”
Her lawyer did not pretend there was a simple answer.
“Now several different questions that people keep mixing together need to be separated.”
“What questions?”
“Who made the error. Who concealed it. What rights, if any, Ms. Hale has. What rights you have. What the deceased genetic parents directed the clinic to do with their embryos. What happened to your embryo. What the hospital breach has to do with the fertility clinic problem. And what arrangement protects the baby while those questions are being resolved.”
Emily stared at her.
“That sounds like years.”
“It could become a long case.”
“No.”
Naomi waited.
Emily stood at the window of the secure family room, holding the baby.
He had regained the ounces he lost after birth.
Rachel had said his color looked good.
Emily had started calling him Owen during pregnancy, but she had not filled out the final birth certificate worksheet yet because she and Aaron had argued jokingly about the middle name until his death.
Aaron wanted James.
Emily wanted Thomas.
After Aaron died, she had chosen James.
Now the name felt complicated.
“Owen James Carter,” she whispered.
Naomi watched her.
“What if they say he isn't mine?”
“I’m not going to promise you an outcome.”
“I didn’t ask for a promise.”
“You asked what could happen.”
Emily turned.
“What do you think Margaret wants?”
“Custody.”
“Why?”
“Her attorney says Laura was her only child.”
“That doesn't answer why.”
“No.”
“Does Margaret have another family?”
“Not much that we’ve found.”
“Was she close to Laura?”
Naomi hesitated.
“Complicated.”
Emily almost laughed.
“That’s lawyer for terrible.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then what?”
“Laura and Margaret were estranged for roughly the last eighteen months of Laura’s life.”
Emily looked at the baby.
“Why?”
“We’re trying to understand that.”
“Does it matter?”
“It may matter emotionally. It may matter to how Margaret is behaving. It may matter to documents Laura signed. Legally, we’ll see.”
Emily sat.
“What documents?”
Naomi opened her folder.
“North Lake found the original disposition forms.”
Emily’s heart accelerated.
“And?”
“Laura and Michael instructed the clinic that if both died, remaining embryos were to be discarded after a defined storage period.”
Emily stared.
“Not donated?”
“No.”
“Not given to family?”
“No.”
“Margaret knows that?”
“She does now.”
“What did she say?”
“That the forms are old and don’t reflect Laura’s wishes.”
“Can she prove that?”
“Not yet.”
Emily looked down at Owen.
“So Laura didn't want someone else to have him.”
Naomi’s expression was careful.
“She signed a form directing the clinic not to transfer embryos after both genetic parents died. That’s what we know.”
Emily felt suddenly ashamed.
Owen moved in her arms.
“She didn't choose me.”
“No.”
“I didn't choose her baby.”
“No.”
“And he’s here anyway.”
“Yes.”
There was no comforting way to arrange those facts.
The fertility clinic had made Owen possible by mistake.
Emily hated the clinic for it.
She loved him for existing.
Both things were true.
A week after the hospital incident, Emily agreed to meet Margaret Hale.
May you like
Naomi opposed meeting privately.
Emily did not want privately.
