Chapter 3: What My Husband Already Knew
One of the security officers placed his hand on the young woman's arm, not roughly, just firmly enough to hold her in the doorway.
She didn't fight him.
She just kept staring at me.
I looked back at the consent form on the table.
The signature was mine — the loop of the L, the way the letters tilted slightly right.
It looked exactly like my handwriting.
But I had not written it.
"Doctor." I set the form down carefully.
"Where did this come from?"
"It was in the biological mother's file.
It was submitted when she registered for treatment at this hospital."
"Treatment for what?"
He hesitated.
"Fertility treatment."
The young woman made a sound — not quite a word.
The officer tightened his grip slightly and she went still.
I turned to Christopher.
"Tell me what you know.
Right now.
All of it."
He pulled out the chair across from me and sat down.
He pressed both hands flat on the table, the way he did when he was trying to hold himself together.
"Her name is Nora," he said quietly.
"The young woman in the doorway.
Her name is Nora."
"How do you know her name?"
"Because she contacted me.
Eight months ago."
The air left the room.
"Eight months," I said.
"She found me through the foster application.
She had been searching for her biological mother for three years.
When she saw your name on the application, she reached out to me first.
She was afraid of how you'd react."
"So you decided for me."
"I was trying to protect you."
"You were trying to protect yourself." I heard my own voice go flat and steady in a way that frightened me slightly.
"You sat across from me at dinner for eight months.
You slept in our bed.
You knew this girl existed and you said nothing."
"I needed to be sure."
"Sure of what?"
He didn't answer.
I stood up.
The lab report was still on the table.
I picked it up and walked to the doorway where Nora was standing.
Up close, her eyes were a shade of green I recognized from old photographs of my own mother.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Twenty-two."
I did the math without meaning to.
2003.
I would have been thirty years old.
"I wasn't pregnant in 2003," I said.
"I would have known."
"You weren't pregnant." Her voice was steadier now, though her hands were still shaking.
"Someone used your eggs.
Without your knowledge.
That's what the consent form is — it's forged.
I only found out six months ago when I got my own genetic panel done and your name came up as a direct maternal match."
I turned back to the doctor.
"Is that possible?
Could eggs have been taken without my consent?"
He chose his words carefully.
"It would require someone with access to a fertility clinic, a patient's records, and the ability to falsify documentation.
It is not common.
But it has happened."
The room was very quiet.
Christopher was looking at the table.
"Christopher." I waited until he looked up.
"Did you know about the eggs?"
A long pause.
Too long.
"Not at first," he said.
That was when I understood that the eight months was not the whole story.
There was something earlier.
Something he had known even longer.
I set the lab report back on the table.
May you like
"I want a lawyer present," I said.
"Before anyone says another word."
