Kenneth tapped the folder. “Emergency petition. Preservation request. Notice to the clinic network. Request for genetic testing. Request for a temporary order preventing removal of the child from the state until parentage and consent issues are resolved.”
Melinda let out a small sound.
Connor turned on her. “Did you know about this?”
She shook her head quickly, but not convincingly enough.
“Melinda,” I said.
She looked at me then.
For the first time in a year, I saw the girl I had met in college. The one who used to eat cereal out of coffee mugs in my apartment because we were too broke for real bowls. The one who had held my hand when my mother died. The one who knew every private dream I had ever been foolish enough to say aloud.
“I didn’t know at first,” she whispered.
Connor’s face hardened. “Stop talking.”
But she did not stop.
Maybe she was too tired.
Maybe Kenneth’s folder had done what guilt could not.
Maybe seeing me in my lab coat, in my own hallway, still standing, had reminded her that I was not just an obstacle in Connor’s version of the story.
I was a person she had once loved.
“He told me you had signed the release,” she said.
My heart pounded against my ribs. “What release?”
“He said you didn’t want anything connected to the treatments anymore. That it hurt too much. That you wanted the embryos destroyed but he convinced you to donate them anonymously.”
I pressed my palm against the table.
Donate them.
As if they were old furniture. As if they were not pieces of a future I had mourned.
Melinda’s voice broke. “He said there was one option. That we could use them, because they were partly his. He said you agreed because you wanted him to have the family he deserved.”
The room went silent again.
This time, no one even pretended it was empty silence. It was full of every lie Connor had ever told, every softened version of himself he had offered to different women for different purposes.
I looked at him.
“You told her I gave you permission?”
Connor’s nostrils flared. “You abandoned the marriage.”
