Chapter 4: What Marcus Knew
I moved toward the doors.
Ben — June's husband of approximately forty minutes — was already ahead of me.
He had his phone out and was speaking quietly into it.
I caught the words *main entrance* and *now* before he pushed through into the lobby.
"Rick." Vanessa caught my arm.
"There's something else you need to hear before you do anything."
"Tell me while we walk."
"No." Her grip tightened.
"Rick.
Stop.
Please."
Something in her voice made me stop.
She looked older than I remembered.
Not just twenty years older — older in a way that had nothing to do with time.
Like someone who had been carrying a specific weight for a specific number of years and had finally put it down only to find the shape of it pressed permanently into her.
"Diane didn't just leave the girls with me to protect them from Marcus," Vanessa said.
"She left them with me because of what she found in his research files."
"What was in them?"
Vanessa glanced at the guests.
Three hundred people were still watching.
She lowered her voice until only I could hear it.
"He was running trials.
Unauthorized.
On women who came to the clinic for fertility treatment." Her eyes didn't leave mine.
"He was altering embryos.
Documenting outcomes.
The women didn't know."
The room felt very far away.
"Diane found out she was one of them?"
"She found out the girls were." Vanessa's voice was barely audible now.
"Whatever he did — whatever he changed — he wanted to study the results.
That's why he couldn't let them disappear quietly.
That's why he's been watching."
I heard myself say, "He wants access to them."
"He wants data," Vanessa said.
"To him, that's all they've ever been."
I turned back toward the hall.
My three daughters were still on the stage.
June had her hand over her mouth.
Ava had her arm around Claire.
Sam had moved to stand just behind Claire, close enough that his shoulder was touching hers.
They already knew this.
All three of them.
They had known for three months and had chosen to tell me here, today, surrounded by everyone who loved them, because they understood — better than I did — that this was the safest place to say it out loud.
I walked back to the stage.
"How long have you known all of this?" I asked.
"Since February," Ava said.
"When Vanessa found us."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
June looked at me steadily.
"Because we knew you'd go straight to him.
And we needed you here first."
"Here for what?"
Claire reached under the table beside the stage.
She lifted a manila envelope — thick, sealed, with a law firm's return address printed in the corner.
"We've already been to the bank," she said.
"We've already spoken to a lawyer.
Everything Diane hid is documented, authenticated, and currently sitting with the district attorney's office." She held the envelope out to me.
"This is your copy."
I took it.
My hands were steadier than I expected.
"So when you say Marcus has been watching," I said slowly, "does he know you've done this?"
The three of them exchanged a look.
"He found out yesterday," June said.
A phone buzzed on the table.
Then another.
Then Ben came back through the doors from the lobby, walking fast, his face arranged into the careful blankness of someone delivering bad news in a room full of people.
May you like
"There's a man outside," he said.
"He says he's not leaving until he speaks to Vanessa."
