Chapter 5 - The Match
“You stole my embryos?”
My voice sounded distant.
Margaret backed against the wall.
Ethan looked from the paper to me.
“What embryos?”
I couldn't breathe.
Years earlier, before Lily, Ethan and I had struggled to conceive. We had undergone one cycle of IVF after two miscarriages.
Three viable embryos had resulted.
One became Lily.
The clinic told me the remaining two had failed during storage after a refrigeration malfunction.
I had mourned them.
Then I moved on.
Apparently, they hadn't been lost.
Vanessa's hands shook.
“I didn't know.”
Ethan stared at her.
“You told me Noah was conceived naturally.”
“I thought he was.”
“What?”
Vanessa looked at Margaret.
“Your mother arranged everything.”
Margaret sank into a chair.
Her obsession with a male Parker heir had gone further than any of us understood.
After my pregnancy produced a girl, Margaret had contacted someone at the fertility clinic.
One embryo remained viable.
She preserved it illegally through falsified paperwork.
Years later, after Ethan left me for Vanessa, Margaret discovered Vanessa had fertility complications.
She arranged treatment.
Vanessa believed she was receiving an embryo created from her and Ethan's genetic material.
She wasn't.
She carried mine.
Noah was genetically my son.
The room blurred.
“No.”
I grabbed the table.
Lily caught my hand.
“Mom?”
I looked at Ethan.
“You raised my child for nine years and never knew?”
He was crying now.
“I swear.”
Vanessa sobbed.
“I swear too.”
I believed her.
I hated that I believed her.
Because the horror on her face was the same horror inside me.
Margaret had stolen something from both of us.
From me, a child.
From Vanessa, the truth about the child she carried.
From Ethan, informed consent.
From Noah, his own history.
And from Lily, a brother she should have known.
Dr. Mercer quietly left to give us privacy.
I faced Margaret.
“Why?”
She covered her face.
“I wanted a grandson.”
Four words.
That was all.
Twelve years of lies.
One stolen embryo.
Two destroyed families.
Because Margaret wanted a boy.
Lily stared at her grandmother.
“So Noah is Mom's son?”
“Genetically,” Vanessa whispered.
Lily looked at me.
“Then he's my full brother.”
“Yes.”
Suddenly her compatibility made sense.
She squeezed my hand.
“I want to meet him.”
My first instinct was no.
Then I realized Lily had just discovered she had a full brother fighting for his life.
I couldn't protect her by pretending he didn't exist.
We went upstairs to pediatric hematology.
Noah was asleep behind glass.
He looked small.
Too small.
His head was covered by a knit cap. Machines surrounded him.
I pressed my hand against the window.
Something primitive and impossible moved through me.
He was mine.
And he wasn't.
Vanessa stood beside me.
“I love him,” she whispered.
I turned.
“I know.”
“If you're going to take him—”
“I won't.”
Her face crumpled.
“He's your son,” I said. “You carried him. You raised him. I'm not here to erase you.”
She cried harder.
“But somebody erased you.”
That sentence nearly broke me.
Inside the room, Noah woke.
He saw Vanessa first.
Then Ethan.
Then Lily.
His eyes stopped on her.
He lifted one weak hand.
Lily lifted hers.
The glass separated them.
But for the first time, brother and sister saw each other.
Then Noah looked at me.
His expression changed.
He reached beneath his blanket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
A drawing.
Vanessa went still.
“What is that?”
Noah held it against the glass.
It showed a woman and a little girl standing beside a green-shuttered house.
My house.
Lily grabbed my arm.
“Mom.”
At the bottom, Noah had written:
THE LADY GRANDMA SAID I MUST NEVER MEET.
I turned toward Margaret.
May you like
But she was gone.
And the hospital elevator doors were already closing.
