Chapter 8: The Weight of Thirty-One
The formal investigation became public on a Tuesday.
Rachel found out the way most people did — a news alert on her phone while she was standing in her sister's kitchen watching Maddie arrange crackers into a pattern on the placemat that only Maddie understood the logic of.
*Fertility Physician Faces Criminal Investigation in Multi-Family Donor Fraud Case.*
She read the first paragraph.
Set the phone face-down on the counter.
Watched Maddie move a cracker one centimeter to the left and nod with satisfaction.
"More juice?" Rachel asked.
"Please," Maddie said, without looking up from her work.
Rachel poured the juice.
Her phone began ringing almost immediately.
Diane first, then Grant, then a number she didn't recognize that she let go to voicemail.
The voicemail turned out to be a journalist.
She deleted it.
Grant arrived an hour later.
He came in, looked at Maddie, and crouched down to her level.
"Hey, bug."
Maddie looked up.
"Daddy.
I made a map."
"Of what?"
"Of everything." She gestured at the crackers with complete authority.
Grant looked at the arrangement for a moment.
"It's a good map."
"I know," Maddie said.
He stood.
He and Rachel moved to the far side of the kitchen, voices low.
"Diane called," he said.
"Me too."
"The DA's office confirmed the referral is active.
They're moving faster than she expected because of the volume of families." He paused.
"And because of the text message he sent you.
Apparently attempting to contact a witness directly after being notified of an investigation is — she used a legal term I didn't fully catch, but the short version is that it made things significantly worse for him."
"Good."
"Rachel." He stopped.
Started again.
"I owe you an apology.
Not for today.
For what I said.
In that room.
In front of everyone."
She looked at him.
"I said she wasn't mine." His voice was low and even and it cost him something to say it.
"She was standing twenty feet away.
She could have walked in.
She could have heard me say that about herself."
"She didn't."
"She could have." He looked across the kitchen at Maddie, who had now incorporated a napkin into the map and appeared to be expanding her territory.
"I signed those papers.
I was in that room when they told us about the process.
I chose her before she existed.
And the second my mother made one comment about — I just—" He stopped.
"You panicked," Rachel said.
"I threw my daughter away to save my ego.
In public.
In front of your whole family."
Rachel was quiet for a moment.
"You have a long way to go," she said.
"But you can start by not doing it again."
"I won't."
"That's not a promise you make to me.
That's a promise you make to her."
He nodded.
He looked at Maddie again.
"Can I take her for a walk?
Just around the block?"
Rachel looked at her daughter, who was now explaining the map to a stuffed rabbit she had produced from somewhere.
"Ask her," Rachel said.
Grant walked over and crouched down again.
"Hey, bug.
Want to go find some puddles?"
Maddie looked up with the evaluating expression of someone weighing a serious offer.
"Big puddles?" she asked.
"I'll find you the biggest one on the street."
She stood up immediately, crackers abandoned.
"Okay.
But I need my boots."
"I know where your boots are."
Rachel watched them go.
She stood in the kitchen alone for a moment.
Then she called Diane.
"The journalist who called me—"
"Don't speak to them yet," Diane said.
"But don't block them either.
There will be a moment when a statement from you will matter.
I'll tell you when that moment is."
"Understood.
What about Adrian Vale?
Has he responded to the referral?"
"His attorney issued a statement this morning calling the investigation politically motivated and promising full cooperation while simultaneously filing to suppress three categories of clinic records."
"So full cooperation except for the records."
"Correct."
"What does he actually want?"
Diane was quiet for a moment.
"He wants this to be about paperwork.
About administrative failures.
About systems that didn't work correctly.
He does not want it to be about intent."
"Is there evidence of intent?"
"Rachel." A pause.
"The text message he sent you.
The contact with Evelyn six weeks before the investigation went public.
The fact that he personally oversaw a disproportionate number of the affected cases.
The fact that Thomas — his own son — appears in the DNA registry of thirty-one children." Another pause.
"Yes.
There is evidence of intent."
Rachel looked out the window.
Down the street, she could see Grant and Maddie.
Maddie had found her puddle.
She was jumping in it with both feet, her arms out for balance, her face turned up toward Grant with an expression of pure delight.
Grant was laughing.
May you like
Rachel watched them for a long moment.
Then she said, "What do you need from me next?"
