Chapter 5: Eleven Years of Lies
I found the copy at two in the morning.
It was in the blue folder in the kitchen drawer where I kept hospital paperwork — the same drawer I had organized three times during the pregnancy because organizing things was the only control I had when my body refused to cooperate.
I handed it to Conrad without reading it myself.
I didn't trust my eyes.
I didn't trust my ability to stay standing if the words said what I feared.
He read it at the kitchen table.
Petra sat across from him.
Alaric had retreated to the living room, where he sat in the armchair he always sat in, hands folded, waiting.
Conrad set the paper down.
"It's a standard insurance update on the surface," he said.
"But there's a secondary clause on page three.
It's formatted to look like a beneficiary designation.
It isn't."
"What is it?"
"It's a parental rights waiver.
Limited scope, but enough to create a legal complication." He looked at me.
"You didn't sign it knowingly.
That matters.
But it will take time to untangle."
"How much time?"
"Weeks.
Maybe longer, depending on whether Alaric's attorney pushes it."
I sat down.
Petra put her hand over mine.
"He planned this from the beginning," I said.
Not a question.
Just the shape of it, finally visible.
"It looks that way," Conrad said.
I turned toward the living room.
Alaric was watching me through the doorway.
"How long?" I asked him.
He didn't answer.
"How long were you with her?"
"Nevaeh—"
"Two years, she said.
That's what she told me." I stood up.
"Two years ago I was in my third round of IVF.
Do you remember that?
Do you remember what that was like for me?"
"I remember."
"Then how?" My voice finally cracked.
Just once.
"How do you sit beside someone in a clinic waiting room and hold their hand and then go home to someone else?"
He looked at his hands.
"I didn't think it would work," he said quietly.
"The IVF.
After the second round failed, I thought — I thought it was over.
I thought we were never going to have children and I didn't know how to tell you I'd stopped believing."
"So you found someone else."
"It wasn't like that."
"Then what was it like?
Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you kept me trying so you'd have a reason to stay in the house, and when it actually worked, you panicked."
He said nothing.
"The document," I said.
"The guardianship plan.
Whose idea was it?"
A long pause.
"Hers," he said.
"At first.
But I agreed to it."
"You agreed to take my children from me."
"They were going to be in the same house—"
"Without me." My voice dropped to almost nothing.
"You were going to raise my babies with another woman and tell me to pack a bag.
After eleven years.
After everything my body went through to give you a family."
Upstairs, Thaddeus woke up crying.
I didn't move for a moment.
Neither did Alaric.
Then I walked to the stairs.
I climbed them slowly, one hand on the rail.
I went into the nursery and lifted Thaddeus from his crib and stood at the window in the dark, his warm weight against my shoulder.
The street outside was quiet.
I heard Conrad's voice downstairs, low and steady, and I knew he was already building the case.
I pressed my lips to the top of Thaddeus's head.
"Nobody is taking you anywhere," I said.
He settled.
His breathing slowed.
I stood there until the street went completely still, and then I heard Conrad call my name from the bottom of the stairs.
May you like
"Nevaeh.
There's something else in the folder."
