“Answer me.”
Eleanor Price recovered quickly.
“Your medical history may have appeared in prior litigation.”
“It didn’t.”
“Isabelle—”
“Don’t call me that.”
The speakerphone sat in the center of the table like an object under interrogation.
“You represented Graham six years after the girls were born. Our fertility treatment was never relevant to the custody case.”
Graham pushed his chair back.
“This discussion is finished.”
Daniel closed the consultation-room door.
“No one is preventing you from leaving.”
Graham looked toward him.
“But,” Daniel continued, “leaving will not prevent medically authorized testing from continuing.”
Dr. Whitman folded her hands.
“Did Ms. Hayes undergo IVF before Sophie and Ruby were born?”
“Yes,” Graham said.
I looked at him.
Something about the ease of the admission frightened me more than denial.
“How many embryos were transferred?”
He hesitated.
“Two.”
Dr. Whitman watched him.
“You’re certain?”
“That’s what we were told.”
I felt my chair beneath me as if I had suddenly fallen into it from a height.
“What do you mean, that’s what we were told?”
Graham would not meet my eyes.
Bright Horizons Fertility Center returned to me in pieces.
White walls.
Lavender hand soap.
Soft instrumental music.
Photographs of babies lining corridors where people carried private grief from one appointment to another.
Three miscarriages had taken me there.
The first at nine weeks.
The second at twelve.
The third after we had heard a heartbeat.
By the time Graham suggested IVF, I was exhausted enough to mistake being managed for being cared for.
He scheduled appointments.
He handled insurance.
He organized injections.
He read consent forms.
Whenever I tried to take back some part of the process, he told me to rest.
“You’re making yourself sick with details,” he once said.
I had believed that was tenderness.
Now I remembered the medication boxes.
One evening, halfway through treatment, I noticed the packaging had changed.
The dosage printed on one label seemed unfamiliar.
I asked Graham.
He took both boxes from my hands.
“Same medication. Different manufacturer.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I want to call the clinic.”
“Isabelle, stop.”
I remembered his expression.
Not angry.
Concerned.
The expression he would later perfect in court.
“The hormones are making you anxious.”
I had apologized.
That memory made my stomach turn.
Dr. Whitman asked, “Who performed the transfer?”
“Dr. Adrian Vale,” I said.
The name felt dusty from disuse.
“He founded Bright Horizons.”
Daniel wrote it down.
“What happened during the procedure?”
“I was sedated more heavily than expected.”
“Why?”
“There had been complications after an earlier procedure. Dr. Vale said sedation would make the transfer easier.”
“And you were told two embryos were transferred?”
“Yes.”
“Our embryos,” I added.
I looked directly at Graham.
“Mine and his.”
He said nothing.
“Two weeks later, I was pregnant. At the first major ultrasound there were two viable heartbeats.”
Sophie.
Ruby.
I remembered leaving the clinic with Graham’s arm around me.
We had sat inside the parked car and cried.
I had thought those were the happiest tears of my life.
Now every memory felt contaminated.
“What did you do?”
Graham looked at me.
“Nothing.”
“You controlled every form.”
“Because you couldn’t manage them.”
“I was grieving.”
“You were unstable.”
There it was.
The word he used whenever he needed my pain to become evidence.
“I asked questions.”
“You accused the clinic of changing medication.”
“The medication changed.”
“The manufacturer changed.”
“You told me that.”
“Because it was true.”
“Was it?”
His mouth tightened.
Dr. Whitman interrupted.
“Ruby needs genetic testing.”
“No,” Graham said.
“Understanding her relationship to Sophie could identify compatible relatives.”
“She’s healthy.”
“That isn’t the issue.”
“I said no.”
Daniel looked at him.
“The court may authorize it.”
Graham stood.
I stood too.
“You took my daughters.”
“Move.”
“You made them believe I abandoned them.”
“Move, Isabelle.”
“You used a psychiatric report to convince a judge I was dangerous.”
Daniel looked up.
“What report?”
Graham’s eyes changed.
I saw it.
“You forged it,” I said.
Daniel stared at me.
“Do you have evidence?”
“Not enough.”
I had spent years saying those exact words to people who stopped listening after the second one.
The psychiatrist who evaluated me was Dr. Nathan Mercer.
His report described conversations that had never occurred.
Statements I had never made.
It claimed I suffered paranoid ideation focused on Graham.
It described me as emotionally unpredictable.
Most damagingly, it suggested my obsession with retaining control over the girls could eventually become dangerous.
I challenged it.
Graham’s attorneys portrayed the challenge itself as paranoia.
After the custody ruling, I hired a private investigator named Marcus Bell.
Marcus discovered that Mercer had received consulting payments through a company connected to one of Graham’s business entities.
The trail disappeared through layers of corporate ownership.
It was suspicious.
Not proof.
Graham smiled faintly.
“You see?”
I looked at Daniel.
“See what?”
“This is what she does. Every person who disagrees with her becomes part of a conspiracy.”
The old fear moved through me.
For an instant I was back in court.
Then Daniel said, “I’d like a copy of the report.”
Graham’s smile disappeared.
“I have one.”
Daniel gave me his card.
“Send it.”
I almost laughed from relief.
Not because he believed me.
Because he was willing to look.
Graham left the room.
When I returned to Sophie’s floor, Ruby was waiting near a vending machine.
She glanced toward the corridor.
“Dad?”
“Talking to his attorney.”
She nodded.
I remembered the folded paper.
“Can I read this?”
Ruby checked the hallway again.
“Yes.”
I unfolded it.
Four words.
HE READS MY JOURNAL.
Below them:
HE TOOK MY DOOR.
I looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
Her chin tightened.
“He took my bedroom door off.”
“Why?”
“Because I locked it.”
“Why did you lock it?”
“He checks everything.”
My stomach turned.
“Your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Messages?”
“Yes.”
“Your journal?”
She nodded.
“When did he remove the door?”
“Last year.”
“Did Sophie have one?”
“She doesn’t lock hers.”
Ruby looked ashamed of the answer, as though Sophie’s compliance somehow accused her.
I folded the note carefully.
“Has he hurt you?”
She looked toward the elevator.
“Ruby.”
“Not like hitting.”
“What does that mean?”
“He grabs.”
“Where?”
“My arm sometimes.”
“Hard?”
She shrugged.
Children should not know how to shrug at that question.
“He makes us write things.”
“What things?”
Her eyes met mine.
“Letters.”
My throat tightened.
“To whom?”
“You.”
The corridor seemed to narrow.
“I never received letters.”
“I know.”
“What did they say?”
“That we didn’t want to see you.”
I could barely breathe.
“Did you mean it?”
Ruby looked offended.
“No.”
Then fear returned.
“Don’t tell Dad.”
“I won’t confront him without making sure you’re safe.”
“That’s what people always say before they confront him.”
The sentence was too old for her face.
I crouched.
“Then tell me what safe looks like.”
She thought.
“Don’t let him take me home.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
When I opened them, Ruby was still watching me.
“I’ll do everything legally possible.”
She frowned.
“That doesn’t sound like a promise.”
“It isn’t. I won’t lie to you just because a promise sounds nicer.”
Something softened in her expression.
A nurse approached.
“Ms. Hayes? Dr. Whitman needs you.”
The new results had arrived.
Ruby’s test had been authorized by the emergency judge.
Graham had fought it.
He lost.
Dr. Whitman waited in consultation with Daniel.
Graham stood by the window.
“Tell me,” I said.
Dr. Whitman looked at all three of us.
“Ruby is biologically related to you.”
My knees weakened.
“How?”
“She is your biological daughter.”
Relief came so fast it hurt.
Then guilt followed.
Sophie was no less my child.
But some frightened part of me had needed to know that the entire history of my pregnancy had not been fabricated.
“And Graham?”
“Ruby is also his biological daughter.”
I looked at him.
“So Ruby is ours.”
“Yes.”
“And Sophie?”
“Biologically, Sophie shares Graham as her father.”
Dr. Whitman paused.
“But she and Ruby do not have the genetic relationship expected of conventional fraternal twins with the same two parents.”
“Half sisters.”
“Yes.”
The phrase Graham had accidentally used.
Sisters.
Not twins.
He had known.
“Who is Sophie’s biological mother?”
Graham stared through the window.
Daniel slid a document across the table.
“We started looking into Bright Horizons.”
Graham turned.
“You had no authority.”
“Public corporate records require none.”
Daniel tapped a name.
“Bright Horizons was acquired eleven years ago through a holding company.”
I read it.
Vale Biomedical.
Another name appeared beneath it.
One of Graham’s former companies had invested in Vale Biomedical during the same year I underwent treatment.
“You knew Adrian Vale.”
Graham said nothing.
“You told me you met him through a referral.”
Silence.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I answered.
“Hello?”
A woman spoke.
“Is this Isabelle Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Evelyn Ward.”
Graham moved so quickly his chair struck the wall.
“Hang up.”
I stared at him.
The woman heard.
“Is Graham there?”
“Yes.”
Her breathing changed.
“Then don’t let him take your phone.”
“Who are you?”
A long pause.
“I think I’m Sophie’s mother.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: The Woman Claiming to Be Sophie’s Biological Mother Knew About an Embryo Graham Had Never Told Me Existed
The Hospital Called After Two Years of Silence, and the First Thing They Asked Me Was Whether I Could Save Sophie
Part 3 of 20
