Chapter 5 - The Brother Who Was Supposed to Be DeadGrant told me his younger brother Daniel died in a motorcycle accident when they were in college.
Not loudly.
It was worse than that.
It came out as one sharp, animal sound I did not recognize as my own.
Rebecca took the phone before I dropped it.
“Vanessa, this is Rebecca Shaw. Claire is represented by counsel. You are going to explain exactly what you mean.”
Vanessa was crying.
“I thought both embryos were mine.”
“Why don’t you think that anymore?”
“Because Keller called me this morning.”
Rebecca put the phone on speaker.
“What did he say?”
“He wanted me to sign an amended donor acknowledgment.”
“What amendment?”
“He said there had been a labeling irregularity.”
Marcus sat forward.
“What kind of irregularity?” Rebecca asked.
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Did you sign anything?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Vanessa took a shaky breath.
“I called one of the embryologists afterward.”
“Who?”
“Melissa Grant.”
Rebecca wrote down the name.
“She used to work there. She left last year. We knew each other from college.”
“And?”
“She told me there had been a problem during the cycle. She wouldn’t give details because she said it could destroy her career.”
“Vanessa, why do you think only one embryo was yours?”
“Because Melissa said, ‘If Claire is carrying twins, there are two women who deserve to know the truth.’”
My blood turned cold.
Two women.
Rebecca asked, “Who is the other donor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Grant?”
“I don’t think so.”
I looked at Rebecca.
For once, even she appeared stunned.
After the call, we sat silently.
The babies moved inside me.
I had always distinguished them by position.
Baby A preferred my right side.
Baby B lodged himself beneath my ribs and kicked every time I drank orange juice.
Now I stared at the two rounded places beneath my shirt.
Two babies.
Possibly two genetic mothers.
One father.
One woman carrying them who had never consented to any of this.
“Can we test?”
Rebecca looked toward Marcus.
“We need medical advice.”
Dr. Lee explained that prenatal paternity and genetic testing could sometimes be performed safely through blood-based methods, but determining maternity from complex IVF records required specialized laboratory comparison.
“I don’t want anything invasive.”
“We don’t need to do anything invasive,” she assured me.
We collected my blood.
Vanessa, through her newly retained attorney, agreed to provide DNA.
Grant refused.
That almost made me laugh.
We didn’t need him.
His biological relationship to the twins was already admitted in Keller’s documents.
Three days later, the clinic’s attorneys responded to Rebecca’s preservation demand.
They denied misconduct.
They claimed I had signed “broad consent language authorizing medically necessary gamete substitution.”
Rebecca read the letter.
Then smiled.
“They’re terrified.”
“Why?”
“Because that sentence is ridiculous.”
She produced my original consent forms.
The clinic had emailed copies to me years earlier.
Nothing authorized substitution.
More importantly, the signature on a newly produced donor-consent form wasn’t mine.
It looked like mine.
But I had an unusual habit of looping the capital C in Claire backward.
The forged signature looped forward.
Rebecca hired a handwriting expert.
His preliminary opinion was devastating.
Forgery was likely.
Then Melissa Grant disappeared.
Not literally.
She stopped answering calls.
Her social accounts vanished.
Her former employer claimed not to know where she had gone.
Marcus found her in Asheville.
We drove there quietly.
Melissa agreed to meet only after Rebecca promised she was not representing the clinic.
She arrived at a coffee shop wearing sunglasses despite the rain.
“I should have reported it.”
Those were her first words.
“What happened?” I asked.
Melissa looked at my stomach and immediately began crying.
“I’m sorry.”
“Please.”
She removed the sunglasses.
“Keller was under pressure.”
“From Grant?”
“From several clients. Wealthy ones. People who wanted things done outside standard procedures.”
“What happened with my embryos?”
She pressed her lips together.
“Your last retrieval produced four eggs. Three fertilized. None developed normally.”
I already knew the first part.
“Grant came in privately.”
“When?”
“Three days before transfer.”
“Was Vanessa there?”
“Yes.”
My nails dug into my palm.
Melissa continued.
“They brought donor eggs that had been retrieved earlier through Keller’s private program.”
“Vanessa’s.”
“Some.”
My throat tightened.
“What does that mean?”
“There was another patient.”
“Who?”
“I can’t—”
“Melissa.”
She looked at me.
“I have carried these babies for seven months. I have rearranged my entire life around them. I talk to them every morning. I know which one gets hiccups after breakfast. I know which one wakes up when Grant’s dog barks. Someone decided I didn’t deserve to know where they came from.”
Melissa looked down.
Then she whispered a name.
“Lauren Price.”
I waited.
Nothing.
“I don’t know her.”
Melissa looked surprised.
“You should.”
“Why?”
“She’s Grant Mercer’s half sister.”
I stared at her.
Grant had no sister.
At least, not one I knew about.
His father, Charles Mercer, had been a prominent developer who died eight years before I met Grant.
“What half sister?”
“Lauren was born from an affair Charles Mercer had in the early nineties. Grant knew about her. Vanessa knew too.”
My skin prickled.
“Why would her eggs be in Keller’s clinic?”
“She was an egg donor before she knew who her biological father was.”
The explanation came slowly.
Lauren had donated eggs at twenty-six to pay graduate-school tuition.
Years later, she discovered through ancestry testing that Charles Mercer was her biological father.
Grant contacted her.
They met twice.
Then communication stopped.
“But her frozen eggs remained in Keller’s storage program,” Melissa explained.
“And Grant used them?”
“I don’t know if Grant knew.”
“What did you see?”
Melissa’s fingers trembled around her coffee.
“The morning before transfer, Keller told me to prepare two embryos. One was labeled VH-1187.”
Vanessa.
“And the other?”
“LP-2044.”
Lauren Price.
I felt sick.
“But Grant and Lauren are half siblings.”
“Yes.”
The implication hit all of us at once.
I covered my mouth.
“Oh, God.”
Melissa quickly shook her head.
“No. Listen. The LP embryo was not fertilized with Grant’s sperm.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Whose sperm was used?”
Melissa hesitated.
“Keller kept some cases off the electronic system. He used coded handwritten logs.”
“Do you know the code?”
“I saw initials.”
“What initials?”
Melissa looked directly at me.
“D.M.”
I frowned.
Rebecca asked, “Who is D.M.?”
Melissa shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Then she opened her purse.
“I took this before I quit.”
She placed a photocopied lab sheet on the table.
Two embryo entries.
VH-1187 + GM.
LP-2044 + DM.
Both marked transferred to patient C. Mercer.
My heart pounded.
Baby A might be Grant and Vanessa’s biological son.
Baby B might have no genetic relationship to Grant at all.
Rebecca whispered, “Claire, Grant may not know.”
The thought should have comforted me.
Instead it frightened me.
Because if Grant believed both babies belonged genetically to him and Vanessa, someone had deceived him too.
And there was only one person positioned to do it.
Dr. Adrian Keller.
Before we left, I asked Melissa one final question.
“Why did you quit?”
Her face changed.
“Keller caught me copying the record.”
“What happened?”
“He said if I ever spoke about the Mercer case, he would make sure I never worked in embryology again.”
“Anything else?”
She nodded.
“He said the people behind this were more powerful than Grant.”
Rebecca frowned.
“Who?”
Melissa looked toward the rain-streaked window.
“I don’t know.”
That evening, Marcus identified the initials.
D.M.
Daniel Mercer.
Grant’s younger brother.
A man Grant had told me died seventeen years ago.
Except Daniel Mercer wasn’t dead.
May you like
He was living forty miles away.
And according to public records, he had spent the last eleven years trying to prove that Grant had stolen his inheritance.
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