“Nine.”
I repeated it because the number refused to settle.
Michael stopped halfway through pouring water.
Thomas remained silent on the phone.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I saw Leonard’s laboratory worksheet.”
“When?”
“Thirty years ago.”
“And you never told Patricia?”
“No.”
“Daniel?”
“Eventually.”
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
“Me?”
Silence.
That was answer enough.
I stood.
I had spent so much time angry that anger itself now felt exhausted.
“What happened to the other two?”
“I don’t know completely.”
“Tell me what you do know completely.”
“One was designated X8.”
I wrote it down.
“The other?”
“X9.”
“Were they fertilized?”
“X8 was.”
“With your sperm?”
“No.”
My stomach tightened.
“Whose?”
“I never knew.”
“And X9?”
Thomas paused.
“I don’t think it was fertilized conventionally.”
The phrasing was terrible.
“What does that mean?”
“Leonard was experimenting with nuclear transfer.”
Michael put the pitcher down.
“What kind of nuclear transfer?”
Thomas spoke carefully.
“Moving nuclear material between oocytes.”
I remembered Patricia explaining cytoplasmic transfer.
“This was different?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“More invasive.”
“What was he trying to do?”
“Study whether compromised eggs could be rescued using donor cytoplasm and transferred nuclear material.”
“Human eggs.”
“Yes.”
“Mine.”
“Yes.”
“Without permission.”
“Yes.”
I pressed my fingertips against the table.
“Did this produce a pregnancy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Daniel?”
“Maybe.”
Of course.
Another dead man holding answers.
“Why didn’t you tell us when we asked about the retained eggs?”
“Because I hoped X8 and X9 had never left the lab.”
“Hoped.”
“Yes.”
“That is not evidence.”
“No.”
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because Natalie’s confirmation changes the accounting.”
“How?”
Thomas explained.
The five documented fertilized embryos had been coded E7-1 through E7-5 internally.
Jake.
Two that failed.
Maya.
Natalie.
The two supposedly unfertilized eggs had become the source of later experimental work.
One likely became Ethan.
That accounted for seven.
But if nine were retrieved, X8 and X9 had never appeared in Patricia’s patient chart at all.
“They were hidden from the beginning,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Not misplaced later.”
“No.”
“Vale planned to keep them.”
Thomas hesitated.
“I believe so.”
Michael sat beside me.
“What made those two different?”
“I don’t know.”
“Quality?”
“Possibly.”
“Genetic characteristics?”
“Possibly.”
I hated the word.
“What did Leonard write about them?”
Thomas went silent.
“Thomas.”
“X8: high viability.”
“And X9?”
A longer pause.
“Preferred maternal phenotype.”
I felt sick.
“What does that mean?”
“I asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you had unusually favorable oocyte morphology.”
“That sounds medical.”
“It was not entirely.”
“What else?”
“He was interested in family traits.”
My mother’s obsession echoed through everything.
Lawson features.
Continuity.
Selection.
“Did Margaret tell him to choose those eggs?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“She knew about the extra retrieval?”
“Not until later.”
“Then this part was Vale.”
“Yes.”
Good.
Not good.
Clear.
I needed responsibility assigned accurately.
“What happened to X8?”
“I saw a fertilization notation.”
“Paternal source?”
“Coded.”
“What code?”
“DV-2.”
“Does that mean anything?”
“Not to me.”
“X9?”
“No fertilization entry on the sheet I saw.”
“Then what?”
“Research transfer.”
“To where?”
“Blank.”
Michael leaned forward.
“Could research transfer mean another laboratory rather than a patient?”
“Yes.”
“Could it mean a pregnancy?”
“Not directly.”
One uncertainty, at least.
I called Emily.
She answered sleepily.
“What happened?”
“Thomas says nine eggs were retrieved.”
She became instantly awake.
“What?”
“Search Daniel’s archive for X8, X9, and DV-2.”
Keyboard sounds.
“I’m looking.”
Thomas said, “Also search Vale Experimental.”
Emily heard him.
“Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
Her anger sounded like mine.
“You let my father spend years reconstructing this.”
“I gave him what I had.”
“When?”
“Late.”
“How late?”
“Too late.”
Emily muttered something under her breath.
Then typing resumed.
“There’s an X9 reference.”
My heart jumped.
“What?”
“Give me a second.”
We waited.
Emily read.
X9 material forwarded under research partnership authorization. No patient consent located. Vale claims nonviable for clinical use.
“That sounds like laboratory research,” Michael said.
“Yes,” Emily replied.
“Where was it sent?”
“Ridgeway Biomedical.”
Thomas inhaled.
“I remember them.”
“What was Ridgeway?”
“A private reproductive research company.”
“Still exists?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“Closed after federal scrutiny.”
“When?”
“About twenty-four years ago.”
“Records?”
“Maybe archived somewhere.”
Emily kept searching.
“I have more.”
She found Daniel’s note from several years after Ridgeway closed.
X9 samples believed destroyed following facility closure. No evidence of clinical transfer.
I felt a small amount of relief.
Not certainty.
But evidence.
“So X9 may never have resulted in a child.”
“Correct,” Emily said.
“What about X8?”
Typing.
Nothing.
Then:
“Wait.”
She had found DV-2.
Not under Vale.
Under Harris.
Her father.
“What does it say?”
Emily became quiet.
“DV-2 was a semen sample.”
“Whose?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“There has to be a donor file.”
“Possibly sealed.”
Thomas asked, “Collection date?”
Emily read it.
Thomas made a strange sound.
“What?”
“I know that date.”
“Why?”
“It was the day of the foundation research program.”
The same circle again.
“What program?”
“Male fertility screening.”
“Who participated?”
“Hospital staff. Research volunteers. Donors.”
“Was Daniel one?”
Silence.
Emily whispered, “My father?”
Thomas said, “I don’t know.”
Emily searched harder.
“I found DV.”
“What?”
“Donor Volunteer.”
So DV-2 meant Donor Volunteer 2.
Not initials.
“Can you identify number two?”
“There’s an index.”
Pages turned.
Then Emily stopped.
“Oh.”
“What?”
Her breathing changed.
“DV-2 was Daniel.”
No one spoke.
Emily’s father.
The doctor who spent decades trying to expose Vale.
Had provided the sperm sample used to fertilize one of my hidden eggs.
“Did he consent to reproductive use?”
Emily’s answer was immediate.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“The volunteer form says research analysis only. Explicitly no reproductive application.”
Another violation.
Another person’s biological material taken beyond consent.
“What happened to X8 after fertilization?”
Emily searched.
“I have an embryo notation.”
My heart pounded.
“Transferred?”
“No.”
“What?”
“Cryopreserved.”
“Where?”
“Ridgeway.”
The same company as X9.
“So both went there.”
“Yes.”
“Were they destroyed?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel’s later note had mentioned X9 samples.
Not X8.
I asked Emily to search for X8 after the Ridgeway closure.
Nothing.
Thomas said, “Try DV-2 embryo.”
Emily did.
A document appeared.
She went silent.
“What?”
“This is from my father.”
“When?”
“Twenty-two years ago.”
“What does it say?”
Emily read slowly.
Evidence suggests DV-2 embryo removed from Ridgeway inventory prior to closure. Destination unknown.
I closed my eyes.
Another missing embryo.
Created from my egg.
Daniel’s sperm.
Not Thomas.
Not Michael.
A child could exist.
Or not.
We did not know.
Jake called while we were still processing it.
He had apparently been unable to sleep.
I told him.
He listened without interrupting.
Then said, “So potentially another half sibling.”
“Yes.”
“Do we have a birth record?”
“No.”
“A transfer record?”
“No.”
“Then we don’t know there’s a person.”
“Correct.”
He was quiet.
“That feels important.”
“It is.”
We were finally learning not to turn possibility into fact.
The next morning brought something concrete.
Natalie.
We met her in a park beside a lake.
She arrived with her mother, Diane Reed.
I recognized Natalie before she introduced herself.
Not because she looked exactly like me.
She didn’t.
But she had Jake’s eyes.
Thomas’s eyes.
My mother’s chin.
Family resemblance was a dangerous thing to overinterpret.
This time DNA had already confirmed it.
Natalie stopped several feet away.
We stared at each other.
Then she laughed nervously.
“This is weird.”
“Yes.”
“Can I hug you?”
The question mattered.
“Yes.”
She stepped forward.
The hug was brief.
Careful.
Not mother and daughter.
Not strangers either.
Something unnamed.
When she stepped back, Diane stood beside her.
“I’m Diane.”
I shook her hand.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
Her voice was not hostile.
Protective.
“The clinic told us the donors had willingly given embryos.”
“I know.”
“My husband and I believed we were giving a home to an embryo that would otherwise remain frozen.”
“I believe you.”
“We would never have agreed if we knew.”
“I know.”
Diane’s eyes filled.
“Natalie is my daughter.”
“Yes.”
I answered immediately.
“I’m not here to challenge that.”
Her shoulders lowered.
Natalie looked between us.
“Can we establish one rule?”
We waited.
“No one argues over who gets to call whom family.”
Jake smiled.
“That’s a good rule.”
Natalie turned to him.
Then punched his shoulder lightly.
“You’re taller than your profile picture.”
Jake blinked.
“That’s your first observation?”
“I had five years to prepare better questions.”
He laughed.
They walked toward the lake together.
Diane and I followed more slowly.
For the first time, I saw how this story could have unfolded differently.
Diane had been deceived.
So had I.
But neither of us had to turn that deception into competition.
After lunch, Natalie asked about Thomas.
“Do you like him?”
I thought about it.
“I don’t know him well enough.”
“He’s your father.”
“Biologically.”
She smiled faintly.
“Right. We’re all learning qualifiers.”
“Apparently.”
“Do you think I should meet him?”
“That is your decision.”
She studied me.
“You really mean that.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Then she said, “Because I already emailed him.”
I laughed.
Jake nearly choked on his drink.
Natalie shrugged.
“I told you I’ve been looking for years.”
She was not waiting for us to construct her identity.
Good.
Later that afternoon, Emily called again.
I stepped away from the group.
“I found Daniel’s last note about X8.”
My body tightened.
“What?”
“It was written four months before he died.”
“Did he find the embryo?”
“No.”
“But?”
“He found the person who removed it from Ridgeway.”
“Vale?”
“No.”
“Carol?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Emily hesitated.
“Charles Lawson.”
My legal father.
The man who had raised me.
I stared across the lake at Natalie and Jake walking beside each other.
“What did my father do with it?”
Emily answered quietly.
“That’s what Daniel was trying to find out when he died.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 23: Charles Lawson Had Removed the Last Hidden Embryo Himself, and Thomas Finally Explained the Promise That Bound Both Fathers to Silence
For Eighteen Years My Husband Slept Ten Feet Away, Until One Ordinary Appointment Made Our Silence Feel Suddenly Dangerous
Part 22 of 35
