We called Patricia from the hotel parking lot.
I did not want to wait until we got home.
Emily remained with us.
Michael sat behind the steering wheel but did not start the car.
Jake sat beside him.
I stood outside with the phone, needing cold air.
Patricia answered on the third ring.
“Did you meet Emily?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“So you saw Daniel’s letter.”
“Yes.”
“You sound angry.”
“I am past angry.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right.”
That answer kept me from hanging up.
I said, “You told me seven eggs were retrieved.”
“Yes.”
“Five were fertilized.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the other two?”
Patricia went silent.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“I know what the record said.”
“What did it say?”
“Research discard.”
“What does that mean?”
“That they were considered unsuitable for fertilization and designated for disposal or approved research, depending on consent.”
“I never consented to research.”
“I know.”
“Were they discarded?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Vale keep them?”
Patricia’s voice became smaller.
“I suspected he did.”
“Why?”
“Because the laboratory count never matched.”
My heart pounded.
“What count?”
“The number of oocytes logged for destruction was zero.”
I leaned against the car.
“So where were they?”
“Removed from the active case sheet.”
“By whom?”
“Vale.”
“Why?”
“I asked him.”
“And?”
“He said they had been relabeled for quality-control work.”
“What kind of work?”
“He never explained.”
“Was that normal?”
“No.”
Emily stood nearby with her arms folded tightly across her chest.
I put the phone on speaker.
Patricia continued.
“Leonard was fascinated by maternal-line inheritance.”
I felt cold despite the humid air.
“What does that mean?”
“Mitochondrial inheritance. Egg-cell characteristics. Cytoplasmic factors.”
Jake leaned forward from inside the car.
“Could he have used parts of Mom’s eggs in other procedures?”
Patricia inhaled.
“In theory.”
“In practice?”
“There were experimental methods at the time involving cytoplasmic transfer.”
Emily closed her eyes.
“What?” I asked.
Patricia explained carefully.
“Material from one woman’s egg could be introduced into another woman’s egg in an attempt to improve viability.”
I gripped the phone.
“Using my eggs as donor material.”
“Potentially.”
“Without consent.”
“If that happened, yes.”
“How many children could result from that?”
Patricia’s voice was cautious.
“It would not make them your genetic children in the ordinary sense. Most nuclear DNA would come from the intended parents.”
“But some biological material would come from me.”
“Mitochondrial DNA, potentially.”
Jake whispered, “Another connection.”
Emily looked toward him.
Her face had changed.
“My father mentioned mitochondrial testing.”
Everyone turned toward her.
“When?”
“In his notes about my case.”
Patricia heard.
“Emily?”
“Yes.”
“Did Daniel test you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he find?”
Emily looked at me.
“A mismatch.”
My pulse jumped.
“Between you and your recorded maternal line?”
“Yes.”
Patricia whispered, “Oh my God.”
Emily continued.
“My mother’s mitochondrial profile did not fully explain mine.”
Jake frowned.
“How can that happen?”
Emily answered.
“Normally it shouldn’t.”
Patricia interrupted.
“Unless there was cytoplasmic transfer.”
The parking lot seemed suddenly too bright.
I stared at Emily.
“You could carry mitochondrial material from one of my eggs.”
“Possibly.”
“That’s why Daniel connected our cases.”
“Yes.”
The family relationship shifted again.
Emily was not my daughter.
Not my sister.
Not in the ordinary sense related to me through nuclear DNA.
But some tiny biological contribution from my body might have been used in creating her without my knowledge.
I felt nauseated.
“Did Vale do this to other women?”
Patricia did not answer.
“Patricia.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“More than one?”
“Yes.”
“More than five?”
A long pause.
“Probably.”
Michael got out of the car.
“What was the ethics investigation actually about?”
Patricia answered.
“Consent failures. Experimental procedures. Sample tracking.”
“And it was buried.”
“Yes.”
“By Charles Lawson.”
“Partly.”
I stared at the pavement.
My legal father.
The man who raised me.
The man who knew Thomas was my biological father.
The man who later asked Thomas to provide sperm for me.
He had protected the clinic that ultimately used my body without consent.
The betrayal spread backward through my entire life.
I asked Patricia, “Did my mother know about the egg material?”
“I don’t think she knew at first.”
“When did she learn?”
“After Daniel’s audit.”
“What did she do?”
“She threatened Leonard.”
“That fits.”
“What did he tell her?”
“That nothing remained.”
“But she didn’t believe him.”
“No.”
That explained Daniel’s line.
Margaret believes Susan’s ovaries must never be accessed again because Leonard did not return everything he took.
Not medical fear alone.
Evidence.
My mother feared any future reproductive treatment might expose the earlier unauthorized retrieval and experimental use.
“Is that why she pushed sterilization in 2008?”
Patricia sounded shaken.
“It may have been part of it.”
Part.
Always part.
I ended the call after asking her to send copies of every notebook entry mentioning egg counts, research, or cytoplasmic transfer.
Then I called Thomas.
He answered immediately.
“I wondered when you’d call again.”
“Did you know Vale kept my unfertilized eggs?”
Silence.
I closed my eyes.
“You knew.”
“I knew something had been retained.”
“How long?”
“Since shortly after Jake was born.”
My anger came fast.
“You have one chance to stop editing your answers.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t. Tell me everything you know about the eggs.”
Thomas exhaled.
“Leonard contacted me after Patricia questioned the lab count.”
“Why you?”
“Because of my work.”
“Molecular genetics.”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
“My opinion.”
“On what?”
“A procedure involving cytoplasmic transfer.”
Emily leaned against the car.
Jake became perfectly still.
I said, “He used material from my eggs.”
“Yes.”
“How many patients?”
“I was told two.”
“Told by Vale?”
“Yes.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Leonard lied whenever a smaller number made him safer.”
The sentence was terrible because it sounded practiced.
“What did you do?”
“I told him to stop.”
“That’s all?”
“I threatened to report him.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
I laughed once.
Of course not.
“Why?”
Thomas’s voice broke.
“Because Charles begged me not to.”
“My father.”
“Your legal father.”
I hated the correction.
“Why did Charles care?”
“He had financed the clinic. Public exposure would have implicated him.”
“So he protected himself.”
“Yes.”
“What about my mother?”
“She wanted Leonard destroyed.”
“Finally.”
“But she did not want you told.”
There it was.
Even righteous anger filtered through control.
“She wanted Vale punished without exposing what she had done to me.”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
Thomas no longer defended her.
I asked, “Was Emily one of the two?”
“I believe so.”
“Who was the other?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there a child?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did the procedure use an entire egg?”
“No.”
“What happened to the rest?”
Thomas went silent.
My skin prickled.
“What happened to it?”
“He froze material.”
“What kind of material?”
“Oocyte fragments. Possibly an intact egg.”
“Possibly?”
“I never saw the inventory.”
“Did Daniel?”
“Eventually.”
“What did he find?”
Thomas took a long breath.
“A vial associated with your case.”
“Where?”
“In a private research freezer Leonard maintained after leaving the hospital program.”
Michael stared at the phone.
“That would have been illegal.”
Thomas said, “Many things he did were.”
“When was the vial found?”
“Years later.”
“Before 2008?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to it?”
“Daniel demanded destruction.”
“Was it destroyed?”
“I thought so.”
The word thought made my stomach tighten.
“What do you know now?”
Thomas was quiet.
“After Daniel died, I found a reference in one of his old emails.”
“What reference?”
“To a transfer.”
“A transfer of my reproductive material?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
I almost threw the phone.
“Thomas.”
“The destination was coded.”
“Give me the code.”
He hesitated.
“VL-4.”
Jake wrote it down.
“What does it mean?”
“I never decoded it.”
“Could Patricia?”
“Maybe.”
Emily said, “My father used VL codes.”
Thomas heard her.
“For what?”
Emily was already opening files on her tablet.
“Legacy Vale.”
The words stopped us.
She searched through scanned records.
“VL was how Dad labeled documents originating from Vale’s private archive.”
“Then four?” Jake asked.
Emily shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
I looked at Thomas.
“What date?”
He gave it.
Nineteen years ago.
One year before my overdose.
I felt the pattern tighten.
“Something was transferred one year before 2008.”
“Yes.”
“And then my mother suddenly became desperate to make sure I could never undergo fertility treatment again.”
Thomas was silent.
“Did she know about the transfer?”
“I think she learned shortly before your overdose.”
Everything inside me went still.
“That is why she panicked.”
“Probably.”
“What was transferred?”
“I don’t know.”
I believed he truly did not.
For once, uncertainty had a different sound.
I asked, “Could it have been an egg?”
“Yes.”
“Could someone have used it to create another embryo?”
“Yes.”
“Could another child exist?”
“Yes.”
Jake closed his eyes.
One sister we could almost prove.
Another possible sibling.
Maybe more.
Emily whispered, “This is bigger than Dad told me.”
I looked at her.
“Yes.”
Thomas spoke again.
“There is something else about the date.”
“What?”
“The transfer happened three days after Leonard met Margaret.”
My pulse quickened.
“Why did they meet?”
“I only know what Margaret told me later.”
“What?”
“She said Leonard wanted money.”
“Blackmail?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“To keep quiet about Jake’s conception and the experimental work.”
My mother had paid for silence before.
Maybe again.
“Did she pay him?”
“No.”
“What did she do?”
Thomas hesitated.
“She threatened to expose him.”
“That sounds more like her.”
“He responded by telling her she no longer knew where all of your biological material was.”
My skin crawled.
“He threatened her with me.”
“Yes.”
“She still didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“Then a year later I overdosed.”
Thomas’s voice softened.
“Yes.”
“And she saw the hospital as an opportunity.”
“I think so.”
“To prevent future pregnancies.”
“Yes.”
“To prevent future fertility treatment.”
“Yes.”
“To keep me from discovering what Vale had done.”
“Yes.”
Michael leaned against the car.
The affair had still been real.
My overdose had still been my act.
But the consequences around it had been manipulated into serving an older secret.
My mother had taken the worst night of my life and used it to close a door she feared I might someday open.
I stared at the hospital in the distance beyond the highway.
Then Jake said, “Mom.”
“What?”
“Look at the code.”
VL-4.
He had searched Emily’s copied records.
“There are VL references in Daniel’s letter.”
Emily moved beside him.
Together they compared pages.
Then Emily stopped.
Her face drained.
“What?”
She pointed to a line in one of her father’s notes.
VL-1: Harris discrepancy.
VL-2: Carter embryo transfer.
VL-3: Lawson retained material.
And beneath those:
VL-4: Live birth verification pending.
No one spoke.
I read the final line twice.
Live birth.
Not storage.
Not research.
A child.
Somewhere, nineteen years ago, Leonard Vale had transferred something originating from my reproductive material.
And Daniel Harris believed it had resulted in a birth.
Click here to continue reading: PART 17: The Code VL-4 Meant a Child Had Been Born, and Daniel Harris Had Left One More Trail Toward the Person Who Raised Them
For Eighteen Years My Husband Slept Ten Feet Away, Until One Ordinary Appointment Made Our Silence Feel Suddenly Dangerous
Part 16 of 35
