Kenneth placed a third paper on the table.
“This,” he said, “is the release authorization dated three months before your divorce was finalized.”
The date glowed on the page.
I remembered that month.
I had been sleeping in the guest room. Connor had told friends we were “working through things.” Melinda had visited often. She had brought soup. She had folded laundry. She had sat beside me on the bathroom floor after I found another box of pregnancy tests I had forgotten to throw away.
My eyes lifted to her.
Melinda looked as though she might crumble.
“You were there,” I said.
Her lips parted, but no sound came.
Connor leaned forward. “Enough. You don’t know what you’re implying.”
Kenneth’s voice remained even. “I know exactly what I’m implying. I’m also stating that the signatures are now being formally challenged.”
Connor’s eyes flashed. “Good luck.”
Then Kenneth said the sentence that made the room stop breathing.
“The child may have been conceived using embryos created by Kirsten and Connor during their marriage.”
Melinda covered her mouth.
I heard the baby babble softly in the stroller, a bright little sound that did not belong beside such a sentence.
My mind refused it.
Then accepted it.
Then refused it again.
“No,” I whispered.
Kenneth looked at me with quiet compassion. “I’m sorry.”
I turned to Melinda.
She was crying now, silently, tears slipping down her cheeks while she stared at the floor.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” I said.
She did not answer.
That was an answer.
Connor stood. “This is absurd. You’re trying to take my child because you couldn’t have one.”
The cruelty was familiar.
But this time, it did not cut the same way.
Because behind it, I heard panic.
Kenneth rose too. “Sit down, Mr. Fleming.”
“You don’t give me orders.”
“No,” Kenneth said. “But I can tell you that leaving this room will not make the court filings disappear.”
Connor froze.
“Court filings?” he repeated.
