Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
For several seconds, Brandon said nothing.
That scared me more than anger would have.
I knew his anger.
I had lived inside it.
Brandon rarely shouted at first. He became quiet. His voice softened. His shoulders relaxed. He used calmness like a lid pressed over boiling water.
Then he searched for the weakest person in the room.
This time, his eyes found Lauren.
“You told him something.”
Lauren shook her head.
“No.”
“You talked to her lawyer.”
“I didn't.”
“You've been doing this behind my back.”
Douglas stepped closer.
“Your problem isn't Lauren.”
Brandon ignored him.
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing!”
Lauren's voice cracked.
A nurse looked through the window.
I raised one hand to signal that we were all right.
We weren't.
But this was still my hospital.
There were children twenty feet away.
Whatever Brandon had done, I would not let him turn a pediatric floor into another stage for himself.
“Sit down,” I said.
He looked at me.
Perhaps it was the white coat.
Perhaps it was the fact that I was no longer asking.
Whatever the reason, he sat.
Lauren did not.
She stood near the wall with both arms wrapped around herself.
Douglas turned to me.
“The clinic has asked everyone connected to the file to preserve all communications. Phones, emails, documents, photographs, financial records.”
“Why?”
“Because this is bigger than a forged signature.”
Brandon laughed once.
“There it is. Of course. Make it dramatic.”
Douglas reached into the folder.
“You paid Northpoint forty-two thousand dollars from a joint investment account six weeks before the transfer.”
I looked at Brandon.
“What?”
He waved a hand.
“It was my money too.”
“That account was funded with my father's inheritance.”
His expression barely changed.
But I remembered the account.
My father died when I was thirty-eight.
He had been a high school chemistry teacher for thirty-four years and invested carefully his entire life.
He left me a little over four hundred thousand dollars.
Not billionaire money.
Not enough to change the world.
But enough to mean something because every dollar had come from a man who wore the same winter coat for twelve years so his daughter could attend medical school without drowning in debt.
Brandon had persuaded me to place part of it into a joint brokerage account.
“For tax planning,” he said.
I had discovered missing money during the divorce but believed it had gone toward one of Brandon's failed real estate investments.
Douglas continued.
“The payment wasn't listed under Northpoint's public billing code. It went through a fertility services corporation registered in Delaware.”
I stared at him.
“You knew this?”
“Not until yesterday.”
“Why wasn't it found in discovery?”
“Because Brandon's attorneys produced statements that omitted the transaction page.”
Brandon stood again.
“You need to be very careful.”
“No,” Douglas said. “You do.”
Lauren whispered, “Forty-two thousand?”
Brandon looked at her.
“Not now.”
She stared at him.
“You told me your insurance covered everything.”
“Lauren.”
“You told me Gwen had signed the embryo over because she wanted nothing to do with it.”
He walked toward her.
She backed into the wall.
“Enough.”
The nurse opened the door.
“Dr. Abernathy?”
“Everything's fine, Teresa.”
Her eyes moved between the four of us.
It was obvious she did not believe me.
“Security is nearby if you need anything.”
Brandon smiled.
That familiar public smile.
“Thank you. Just a legal misunderstanding.”
I almost admired how quickly the mask returned.
Almost.
Then the baby cried.
Lauren immediately moved toward the door.
Brandon caught her wrist.
Not hard enough to injure.
Hard enough to stop her.
Every atom of the room changed.
“Let go of her,” I said.
His fingers remained around her wrist.
“Brandon.”
He looked at me.
I had spent most of my marriage negotiating with his moods.
Choosing words carefully.
Waiting for the right moment.
Measuring the cost of resistance.
That woman was gone.
“Take your hand off her.”
He released Lauren.
She left the room and hurried to the stroller.
Douglas shut the door behind her.
“You touch either woman again,” he said, “and I call security myself.”
Brandon smirked.
“You're enjoying this.”
“No. I've represented enough women married to men like you that I've stopped finding it interesting.”
That one landed.
Brandon reached for the folder.
Douglas pulled it away.
“That's evidence.”
“My name is in it.”
“So is Gwen's forged signature.”
I sat.
My knees had begun shaking.
Not from fear.
From the physical effort of holding too much information at once.
The boy in the hallway.
My embryo.
Donor sperm.
My father's money.
Seven years of Brandon watching me blame myself.
I remembered one night after our fifth failed treatment.
I had sat on the bathroom floor at two in the morning.
Brandon found me there.
I told him I felt defective.
Broken.
Less like a woman.
He crouched beside me and said, “Maybe some people just aren't meant to be mothers.”
I had carried that sentence for years.
Now I understood that while he was saying it, he already knew his diagnosis.
He had not merely allowed my shame.
He had cultivated it.
“Why?” I asked.
Brandon looked at me.
“For God's sake, Gwen.”
“Why did you take the embryo?”
“I didn't take anything.”
“It was mine.”
“It was ours.”
“You forged my signature.”
“You would've said no.”
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Douglas and I both froze.
Brandon realized it immediately.
His mouth closed.
Douglas reached slowly into his coat pocket and placed his phone faceup on the table.
The recording app was running.
Brandon stared at it.
Douglas shrugged.
“One-party consent jurisdiction.”
That wasn't entirely how I remembered the rule applying in every circumstance, but I didn't care.
Brandon's face darkened.
“You bastard.”
“You said she would have refused,” Douglas replied. “Why?”
Brandon said nothing.
I stood.
“Because you knew I still wanted that embryo.”
He looked away.
I remembered begging him to call the clinic after he told me about the supposed storage failure.
He had refused.
Said there was nothing to discuss.
Said reopening the subject would only make me obsessive.
I had trusted him because husbands weren't supposed to steal futures from their wives.
Then something occurred to me.
“Lauren.”
I opened the door.
She was seated beside the stroller, holding the boy against her chest.
He had stopped crying.
His small fist gripped her necklace.
When Lauren saw me, she stood carefully.
I walked toward her.
The nurses suddenly became very interested in their monitors.
“Did you know?” I asked.
She looked at Brandon through the glass.
Then back at me.
“Not at first.”
That answer hurt more than yes.
“At first?”
Her eyes filled.
“When did you find out?”
Brandon came out of the conference room.
“Don't answer that.”
Lauren turned.
“You don't get to tell me what to do anymore.”
A strange silence followed.
I saw surprise in Brandon's face.
So did she.
Maybe it was the first time she had ever said it.
She looked at me.
“During the pregnancy.”
My chest tightened.
“How far?”
“Twenty-nine weeks.”
Almost seven months.
She had carried my biological child for seven months before learning whose embryo it was.
“What did he tell you before that?”
“That the embryo belonged to him from a previous fertility cycle. That you had signed away your rights as part of the separation.”
“We weren't separated fourteen months before the divorce.”
“I know that now.”
“Lauren, you were having an affair with my husband.”
Her eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
The word was barely audible.
“Don't hide behind what you didn't know.”
“I'm not.”
“You sat across from me while I cried.”
“I know.”
“You told me he was emotionally unavailable while you were sleeping with him.”
“I know.”
“You told me maybe motherhood wasn't my path.”
She covered her mouth.
My voice lowered.
“Were you pregnant when you said that?”
Lauren's shoulders began trembling.
“Yes.”
That nearly broke me.
Not because Brandon had betrayed me.
I already knew that.
Because friendship has its own marriage.
Its own vows.
Its own intimacy.
Lauren knew things Brandon never noticed.
She knew the name I had chosen for a daughter when I was twelve.
She knew I kept my father's last birthday card in my nightstand.
She knew how many pregnancy tests I had hidden in the bathroom trash because I couldn't bear to let Brandon see another negative one.
And while carrying an embryo created from my body, she had looked me in the eye and offered sympathy.
I stepped backward.
She whispered, “Gwen, I am so sorry.”
“Don't.”
“I didn't know when—”
“But you knew later.”
She stopped.
That was the truth no apology could soften.
The elevator opened again.
Two people stepped out.
A woman in a gray suit.
A uniformed officer beside her.
Brandon's face changed instantly.
The woman walked toward us.
“Dr. Abernathy?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Rebecca Sloan. I'm an investigator with the state attorney general's healthcare fraud unit.”
She looked at Douglas.
He nodded once.
Then she faced Brandon.
“Mr. Foster, I need to speak with you regarding documents connected to Northpoint Reproductive Medicine.”
Brandon smiled.
“Not without my attorney.”
“That's your right.”
She handed him a card.
“We're also serving preservation notices on all parties associated with embryo NP-44719-A.”
Lauren hugged the baby closer.
Rebecca's expression softened when she saw him.
“We are not here to remove the child.”
Lauren exhaled shakily.
“We are here to make sure nobody removes or destroys evidence.”
Then she looked at Brandon.
“That includes electronic evidence.”
Brandon's hand moved automatically toward his pocket.
His phone.
Rebecca noticed.
“So before you decide to replace, wipe, lose, or accidentally damage any device you own, understand that doing so after notice may create additional problems.”
Brandon removed his hand.
For once, he had nothing to say.
Rebecca handed documents to Douglas.
Then to Lauren.
Then Brandon.
When she reached me, she paused.
“Dr. Abernathy, there is something else you should know.”
I took the envelope.
“What?”
“The former Northpoint employee who reported the altered files kept personal backups.”
Brandon went completely still.
Rebecca looked toward him.
“Emails. Scanned authorizations. Internal notes.”
Douglas inhaled slowly.
“Have you reviewed them?”
“Some.”
Rebecca looked at me again.
“One email was sent from an address belonging to Mr. Foster.”
My skin turned cold.
“What did it say?”
Rebecca hesitated.
Then answered.
“It instructed a clinic employee not to contact you directly about the transfer.”
Brandon spoke immediately.
“This is insane.”
Rebecca ignored him.
“There was an additional line.”
I could hear my pulse.
“What line?”
Her eyes held mine.
She quoted only what mattered.
“She'll never know which child it became.”
The hallway disappeared.
For one terrible second there was only that sentence.
Then the little boy in Lauren's arms opened his eyes.
May you like
He looked straight at me.
And smiled.
