I stared at the embryo identification number until the characters blurred.
The airplane cabin was dim except for reading lights scattered above the rows.
Emma slept against me with her mouth slightly open.
Chloe had abandoned her movie and was watching the clouds through the window.
Neither girl knew that a string of letters and numbers printed on a financial document had just reopened a part of their history I had spent years trying to close.
Carter and I had not expected difficulty having children.
For the first two years of our marriage, we treated pregnancy as something that would happen when life settled down.
Life never settled down.
When we finally tried, nothing happened.
Tests became appointments.
Appointments became procedures.
Procedures became a vocabulary I had never wanted to learn.
Follicles.
Retrieval.
Blastocysts.
Implantation.
Genetic screening.
Carter had initially been patient.
He attended every appointment.
He learned the medication schedule.
He injected hormones into my abdomen when my hands shook too badly to do it myself.
Back then, I had believed hardship was revealing the best part of him.
I did not yet understand that Carter could be devoted to an objective without being devoted to the person beside him.
Our first successful IVF cycle produced four viable embryos.
The doctor had placed the report between us.
Two female.
One male.
One female.
Carter had squeezed my hand.
“We have a family waiting for us.”
I had cried.
The first transfer gave us Chloe.
The second gave us Emma.
Emma’s pregnancy nearly killed me.
I developed severe complications late in the third trimester, and her delivery became an emergency.
I remembered operating-room lights.
A nurse pressing something cold against my arm.
Carter’s face disappearing behind surgical masks.
Then waking hours later and asking whether my baby was alive.
She was.
Tiny.
Angry.
Perfect.
My doctor visited the next morning.
Another pregnancy, she warned, could carry significant risk.
Carter and I discussed it for months.
Eventually we agreed.
Two children were enough.
Two healthy daughters were more than enough.
We decided the remaining embryos would not be used.
That decision had hurt, but it had been ours.
Or so I believed.
A year later, Carter told me there had been a storage problem.
He came home holding an envelope.
I was making pasta while Chloe colored at the kitchen table and Emma sat in her high chair dropping peas onto the floor.
“Oakfield called,” he said.
I remembered turning off the stove.
“What happened?”
He handed me the letter.
The remaining embryos, it said, had deteriorated and were no longer viable.
They had been disposed of according to laboratory procedure.
I cried in the pantry where the girls could not see me.
It was irrational in some ways.
We had already chosen not to use them.
Yet knowing they were gone felt different from choosing to let them go.
Carter found me there.
He held me.
“At least we have our girls,” he said.
For years, I remembered that as one of his kindest moments.
Now I wondered whether he had already known it was a lie.
I turned to another document in Rebecca’s folder.
STERLING CORPORATION — SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSE.
The payment had been routed through a subsidiary.
Oakfield’s name did not appear directly.
The forensic accountant found the connection only because the payment reference contained the storage account number.
The payments continued annually.
Seven years.
Seven payments.
Someone had preserved something Carter told me was destroyed.
I pulled out my phone.
No signal at altitude, but Wi-Fi was available.
I connected.
Notifications appeared immediately.
Nine missed calls.
All Carter.
A tenth arrived while I watched.
I let it ring.
Chloe looked over.
“Is that Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to answer?”
“Not right now.”
She studied me.
“Are you mad at him?”
Children always ask simple questions about complicated things.
“Yes,” I said.
“Did he do something bad?”
I looked at her.
Her headphones rested around her neck.
A faint purple mark covered one knee from falling during soccer practice.
Carter had promised to attend that game.
He had not.
“I think your dad made some choices I don’t understand yet.”
Chloe considered this.
“Is that why we’re going to Aunt Natalie?”
“Partly.”
“Does he know we’re going?”
“Not yet.”
Her eyes dropped.
“Will he care?”
That question hurt far more than Carter’s courthouse cruelty.
I closed the folder.
“Chloe, whatever happens between your father and me has nothing to do with your worth.”
“I know.”
But she said it too quickly.
I reached across Emma and took her hand.
“You and your sister are the best things that ever happened to me.”
“Parents have to say that.”
“No. Parents are supposed to mean it.”
That earned the smallest smile.
She returned to the window.
I reopened the folder.
The destruction letter was there.
Rebecca had obtained the copy from our old household records.
At first glance, it looked legitimate.
Oakfield logo.
Date.
Account information.
A signature from a laboratory administrator.
Rebecca had circled the administrator’s name.
MARTIN KEENE.
Beside it she had written:
Oakfield says no employee by this name appears in HR records for relevant period. Verification pending.
My skin prickled.
I read the letter again.
If the administrator did not exist, then Carter had handed me a forged document.
Why?
The obvious answer was the male embryo.
But that created another question.
Why preserve only one?
The storage payments referenced the male embryo’s identification code.
Not the female embryo.
I searched through the documents until I found another invoice.
Same code.
Male.
My stomach turned.
Carter’s father had spent years complaining about the absence of a grandson.
Had Richard known?
Had Carter secretly preserved the embryo because he hoped someday to have the son his father demanded?
But an embryo Carter and I created genetically belonged to us.
Keeping it frozen without my knowledge was one betrayal.
Using it would be another matter entirely.
I stopped.
Using it.
Jessica was pregnant.
Carter said she was carrying a boy.
I stared at the page.
No.
The thought was so grotesque that my mind rejected it immediately.
There were thousands of fertility patients.
Thousands of embryos.
Jessica’s pregnancy could have nothing to do with mine.
I told myself that twice.
Then I remembered Rebecca’s expression outside the courthouse.
She had not looked merely concerned when I mentioned Jessica’s pregnancy.
She had looked as if two pieces of information had suddenly moved closer together.
My phone vibrated.
Carter again.
Missed call eleven.
Then a text.
CALL ME.
Another appeared.
IT’S IMPORTANT.
I stared at the messages.
Carter rarely used capital letters.
A third came.
WHERE ARE YOU?
I did not answer.
Instead I messaged Rebecca.
Are you awake?
Her reply arrived less than a minute later.
Yes. What happened?
I typed:
Carter has called eleven times since takeoff. Something is wrong.
Three dots appeared.
Then vanished.
Then appeared again.
Finally:
Lauren, do not speak to him yet.
My pulse accelerated.
Why?
Rebecca responded:
Oakfield contacted my office.
I sat upright.
Emma stirred against me.
I lowered the brightness on my phone.
What did they say?
Rebecca did not answer immediately.
I watched the message indicator.
The plane seemed suddenly too quiet.
At last her response appeared.
Their compliance director found irregularities connected to your embryo storage account.
My fingers went cold.
What kind of irregularities?
Another delay.
Then:
They are reviewing release documents.
Release.
Not storage.
Release.
I read the word repeatedly.
An embryo could remain stored.
An embryo could be destroyed.
Or an embryo could be released from storage for transfer.
My hands began shaking.
I typed:
Which embryo?
Rebecca answered:
The male embryo.
I looked at Emma.
Then at Chloe.
Then at the identification number on the invoice.
My phone rang again.
Carter.
This time I understood why he was calling.
I declined the call.
A message from Rebecca arrived immediately afterward.
There’s more. Oakfield says the release authorization contains a signature purporting to be yours.
I stopped breathing.
I had never signed any release authorization.
Not for the male embryo.
Not for either remaining embryo.
Never.
I typed the words slowly.
That signature is not mine.
Rebecca’s reply came almost instantly.
I know.
The plane began descending through a layer of cloud.
Seattle appeared below us in fragments—water, buildings, gray sky, wet streets.
I looked at my daughters.
We were minutes from landing.
Behind us, across the country, Carter kept calling.
And somewhere inside Oakfield Fertility Institute was a document bearing a forged version of my name, authorizing the release of a male embryo I had been told was destroyed.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: By the Time We Landed, Thirty-One Calls and One Forged Signature Had Changed What Jessica’s Pregnancy Meant
Five Minutes After Our Marriage Ended, Carter Said Something That Made Leaving With Our Daughters the Only Choice
Part 3 of 35
