The single word broke something inside her.
“Why did you pretend?”
“Because the truth was complicated.”
“Who is Grace’s father?”
“I do not know.”
Emma’s knees weakened.
“That is not possible.”
“It is possible because you were never told everything that happened.”
“What are you talking about?”
Adrian’s voice sounded different now. Not arrogant.
Afraid.
“Ask your doctor about the procedure you had eight months before you became pregnant.”
Emma stared at the wall.
“I had surgery to remove a uterine polyp.”
“No,” Adrian said. “You had an embryo transferred.”
PART FOUR: THE CHILD WHO SHOULD NOT EXIST
Emma drove to Dr. Helen Ward’s clinic the next morning.
Daniel sat beside her. Margaret stayed home with Grace.
The clinic occupied a quiet brick building surrounded by winter-bare trees. Emma had visited it dozens of times, believing Dr. Ward had helped treat her fertility problems.
Now every memory felt contaminated.
Dr. Ward met them in her office.
She was sixty-four, with careful gray hair and the exhausted eyes of someone who had not slept.
“I knew this day might come,” she said.
Emma remained standing.
“Did you place an embryo inside me without my knowledge?”
Dr. Ward closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Daniel’s voice hardened.
“Explain.”
“Adrian approached me after Emma’s procedure. He said they had been trying to conceive for years and that Emma was becoming depressed.”
“I was grieving,” Emma said. “My father had died.”
“I know.”
“You altered my medical treatment.”
Dr. Ward’s hands trembled.
“Adrian told me you had agreed to donor conception but were too frightened to proceed knowingly. He showed me documents with your signature.”
“Forged documents.”
“I understand that now.”
“You are a doctor. You performed a procedure on an unconscious woman based on papers brought by her husband.”
Shame passed across Dr. Ward’s face.
“I told myself I was helping a marriage.”
“You violated my body.”
“Yes.”
The doctor opened a locked drawer and removed a folder.
“The embryo came from a private donor program.”
“Whose embryo?”
“That is where the situation becomes worse.”
Emma almost laughed at the absurdity of the phrase.
“Worse?”
“The donor identification was sealed. But Northbridge Analytics later attempted to access it. That is when I began to suspect Adrian had never intended the pregnancy simply to give you a child.”
Daniel leaned forward.
