Chapter 3: The Woman on the Phone
I stared at the text for a long time.
The number had no name attached to it.
No area code I recognized.
Just those two sentences sitting on my screen like a door I hadn't decided whether to open.
My hand was shaking when I pressed call.
It rang twice.
"I wasn't sure you'd call," the woman said.
Her voice was calm.
Careful.
Like someone who had rehearsed this moment and was still nervous anyway.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"My name is Diane.
I'm a family law attorney." A pause.
"I used to work with your stepsister's husband.
With Marcus."
I looked back at the nursery window.
The little lamp was still glowing behind the yellow curtains.
"What does Marcus have to do with this?"
"Everything," Diane said.
"Can you meet me?
Not at the house.
Somewhere public."
I drove to a coffee shop three blocks away.
I don't remember parking.
I don't remember walking in.
I remember sitting across from a woman in her fifties with reading glasses pushed up on her head and a manila folder on the table between us that she hadn't opened yet.
"How did you get my number?" I asked.
"Marcus gave it to me.
Six weeks ago." She folded her hands over the folder.
"He came to my office because he wanted to undo what he and Penelope had set in motion.
He was having second thoughts.
But then he stopped returning my calls, and I didn't know what to do with what he'd told me."
"What did he tell you?"
Diane opened the folder.
Inside was a single document.
I recognized the format — it was similar to the surrogacy agreement I had signed eight months ago.
But this one had different language.
I leaned forward and read the section she was pointing to.
My name was there.
So was the baby's.
But the parental rights section had been altered.
Not the version I had signed.
A different version — one I had never seen.
"This isn't what I agreed to," I said.
"No," Diane said.
"It isn't."
"What does this version say?"
She took a breath.
"It says that in the event of any dispute over the surrogacy arrangement, you waive all rights to contest the transfer of the child.
Including in circumstances where the biological parentage differs from what was disclosed to you at the time of signing."
I looked up from the page.
"What does that mean — biological parentage differs from what was disclosed?"
Diane took off her glasses.
She set them on the table.
"It means," she said quietly, "that the embryo you were told was created from Marcus's genetic material may not have been."
The coffee shop was loud around us.
Someone laughed at the counter.
A chair scraped across the floor.
I put my hand flat on the table.
"Whose embryo is it?"
Diane looked at me steadily.
"That's what Marcus came to me trying to find out how to tell you.
He said Penelope had made a decision without him.
He said she used a donor — a specific donor — without telling him the full details.
And without telling you anything at all."
"Why would she hide that from me?"
"Because," Diane said, "of who the donor is."
She slid one more page across the table.
It was a clinic intake form.
At the top, in the field marked DONOR RELATIONSHIP TO INTENDED PARENT, someone had written four words in blue ink.
I read them.
Then I read them again.
My chair pushed back from the table on its own.
I wasn't aware of standing up.
I was just suddenly standing.
"I have to go," I said.
"Wait." Diane reached across and touched my wrist.
Not grabbing.
Just stopping.
"If you confront her tonight, she'll deny it.
And that document you signed — the altered one — it's already been filed.
You need someone in your corner before you walk back into that house."
I looked down at her hand on my wrist.
Then at my own stomach.
"She's my sister," I said.
The words came out strange.
Like I was testing whether they still meant anything.
Diane didn't answer that.
She just left her card on top of the folder and said, "Call me before you do anything.
Please."
I walked out into the cold.
The folder was in my hand.
I hadn't decided to take it.
It was just there.
I sat in my car again, in the same spot, looking at the same yellow curtains.
And I finally understood what Penelope had meant on the phone.
*She loves this baby already.
That's the problem.*
She hadn't been worried about the baby.
She had been worried about what I would do when I found out whose baby it actually was.
My phone lit up.
May you like
A call this time, not a text.
Penelope.
