Kenneth Boyd’s warning stayed in my head long after the call ended.
Do not contact Connor. Do not contact Melinda. Do not answer either of them without sending it through me first.
As a physician, I had spent years telling frightened parents that instructions mattered most when emotions made them inconvenient. That afternoon, sitting alone in my office with the blinds half closed, I discovered how difficult my own advice was to follow.
My phone lay facedown beside the keyboard.
It had vibrated six times in twenty minutes.
I did not need to look to know who was calling.
The seventh vibration lasted longer.
Voicemail.
I finished signing a chart, checked the dosage twice, and sent it to the nurse before I finally turned the phone over.
Three calls from Connor.
Two from Melinda.
One number I did not recognize.
And a text from Connor.
Kirsten, whatever you think happened today, you are misunderstanding it.
I stared at those words until they stopped looking like language.
Misunderstanding.
That had been Connor’s favorite word during the final two years of our marriage.
When I noticed money missing from the joint account, I had misunderstood an investment transfer.
When Melinda began dropping by our house while I was working weekend shifts, I misunderstood friendship.
When Connor disappeared for hours after another failed fertility appointment, I misunderstood how much pressure he was under.
And when I finally found messages between them, I had apparently misunderstood those too.
I forwarded the text to Kenneth without replying.
His response came almost immediately.
Good. Keep doing exactly that.
At five-thirty, I left through the physicians’ entrance instead of the main lobby.
The March air had turned sharp. Rain had darkened the parking lot, and water trembled in shallow depressions in the asphalt. I had almost reached my car when someone stepped from beside the concrete stairwell.
Connor.
He wore the same charcoal coat he had been wearing at the hospital earlier, but the smugness was gone.
“Kirsten.”
I stopped.
He raised both hands slightly.
“I’m not here to fight.”
“You shouldn’t be here at all.”
“Melinda is losing her mind.”
“That sounds like something she should discuss with her attorney.”
His jaw tightened.
“So you already have one involved.”
I almost laughed.
“We’ve been divorced for a year, Connor. You know I have an attorney.”
“This isn’t about the divorce.”
“No. Apparently it’s about your son.”
The word landed between us.
His expression changed so quickly that I knew Kenneth had been right to warn me.
Connor was frightened.
Not angry.
Not embarrassed.
Frightened.
“He is my son.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“You walked into that hospital room and deliberately humiliated us.”
“I was walking down a hallway.”
“You smiled.”
I remembered his expression when he had told me Noah was one year old.
The little victorious tilt of his mouth.
As though a baby were proof that the seven years of injections, surgeries, miscarriages, calendars, blood tests, and quiet grief had all been my failure.
“Yes,” I said. “I smiled.”
Connor came closer.
I stepped backward.
He noticed.
For a moment something almost like shame crossed his face.
“Kirsten, I know what you’re thinking.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re thinking because of my diagnosis—”
“You mean the diagnosis you hid from me?”
His mouth closed.
Rain ticked against the metal railing beside us.
There it was.
Not denial.
Recognition.
I felt something inside me settle.
“You knew,” I said.
Connor looked toward the parking lot.
“How long?”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“How long?”
“The results weren’t definitive.”
“Severe male-factor infertility is not an ambiguous phrase.”
His eyes snapped back to mine.
“You read my records?”
“My attorney obtained documents relevant to the divorce.”
“That’s private medical information.”
“So were seven years of my medical procedures.”
“Kirsten—”
“How long did you know?”
He rubbed one hand across his mouth.
“Before the last round.”
The last round.
I remembered that round perfectly.
Fourteen days of injections.
Blood drawn every other morning.
A procedure performed under sedation.
Then twelve days of waiting while Connor told me to stay positive.
The pregnancy test had been negative.
I had sat on the bathroom floor with the paper in my hand while he stood in the doorway and said, Maybe your body is telling us something.
I had carried that sentence for years.
“Before the last round,” I repeated.
Connor’s shoulders dropped.
“The doctor said conception wasn’t impossible.”
“But you let me believe the problem was mine.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
His face hardened.
“This is exactly why talking to you became impossible.”
That sentence used to work.
It used to make me question whether I had pushed too hard.
Now it sounded rehearsed.
I opened my car door.
Connor caught the edge before I could close it.
“Wait.”
“Take your hand off my car.”
He did.
“Who was that man today?”
I looked at him.
“What man?”
“The one Melinda saw.”
The hospital corridor came back to me.
Melinda’s face.
The baby bottle slipping from her hand.
Her whisper.
Oh God.
So Connor did not know.
Interesting.
“You should ask Melinda.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“She said she didn’t recognize him.”
I said nothing.
Connor watched my face.
“Kirsten.”
“My attorney told me not to discuss this with you.”
“What did Melinda tell you?”
“Nothing you need from me.”
I got into the car.
Before I closed the door, Connor leaned slightly toward me.
“Whatever Kenneth Boyd is telling you, remember that he gets paid when people fight.”
“And what do you get paid for?”
His brow furrowed.
I closed the door.
As I drove away, I watched him in the mirror.
He remained under the stairwell, motionless in the rain.
Kenneth called when I was halfway home.
“You didn’t speak with him, correct?”
“He ambushed me in the parking lot.”
A pause.
“Did he threaten you?”
“No.”
“Touch you?”
“No.”
“What did he want?”
“To know who the man at the hospital was.”
Kenneth went quiet.
That caught my attention.
“You know who he is.”
“I know who I believe he is.”
“Who?”
“I’m waiting for confirmation.”
“Kenneth.”
“I don’t want to give you speculation.”
“You called me this afternoon and told me Connor’s diagnosis was real.”
“Because I had documentation.”
“And the paternity action?”
“Filed this afternoon.”
I slowed at a red light.
“Already?”
“Connor moved quickly.”
“Why?”
“Because something happened after you left.”
“What?”
Kenneth exhaled.
“Melinda apparently tried to leave the hospital with Noah before his discharge paperwork was complete.”
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
“Why?”
“Connor stopped her.”
The light turned green.
Cars moved around me.
I remained still until someone honked.
Kenneth continued.
“And according to the information I received, they had a very public argument.”
“About the man?”
“Among other things.”
I drove the remaining blocks in silence.
At home, I poured a glass of water and stood at the kitchen counter.
For years, that kitchen had been the quietest room in our house after midnight.
Connor used to sleep while I sat there researching fertility clinics.
I had believed persistence could solve anything.
The marriage.
The treatments.
My own body.
Now my phone buzzed again.
This time the message came from the unknown number.
Dr. Sinclair, you don’t know me. My name is Evan Mercer. I believe we saw each other at St. Matthew’s today.
I read it twice.
Another message followed.
Melinda Travis knows who I am.
Then a third.
And if Connor Fleming believes Noah is his son, someone needs to tell him the truth before this gets worse.
I forwarded all three messages to Kenneth.
He called in less than thirty seconds.
“Do not answer.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“This is the man.”
“You confirmed him?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because Evan Mercer filed something too.”
I sat down.
“What?”
“A petition requesting genetic testing.”
My kitchen suddenly seemed too quiet.
“For Noah?”
“Yes.”
“On what basis?”
Kenneth paused.
Then he said, “He claims he had a relationship with Melinda during the period Noah was conceived.”
I closed my eyes.
June.
The month Connor had insisted our marriage was merely going through a difficult patch.
The month Melinda had sat across from me at lunch, squeezed my hand, and told me not to give up on him.
“How long?” I asked.
“According to Mercer’s filing, approximately five months.”
“Five months.”
“Ending shortly before Melinda told Connor she was pregnant.”
I remembered Melinda in the hospital corridor.
Her hand tightening around Noah.
Her face when Evan appeared.
That was not the reaction of a woman seeing a stranger.
Kenneth’s voice softened.
“Kirsten?”
“I’m here.”
“There’s something else.”
Of course there was.
“There always is.”
“Mercer included messages.”
“What kind?”
“Messages between him and Melinda.”
I stared at the dark window above my sink.
“About Noah?”
“One specifically.”
Kenneth hesitated.
“Three weeks after she learned she was pregnant, Melinda wrote to him that the timing was bad, but she had found a solution.”
My stomach turned.
“What solution?”
“The message doesn’t say.”
But I already knew.
Or thought I did.
Connor.
The husband who desperately wanted proof that infertility had never been his problem.
The best friend who knew exactly how vulnerable he was.
And a baby conceived before my marriage had even formally ended.
For the first time since the hospital, I understood that Noah’s paternity might not be the biggest secret.
The bigger question was whether Melinda had merely deceived Connor.
Or whether Connor had known enough to help deceive me.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: THE STORY THEY HAD AGREED TO TELL
Sixteen Days After Walter Died, His Hospice Nurse Called With a Name I Had Never Heard Before
Part 5 of 20
