Chapter 6 - The Baby With My EyesRebecca was released twelve hours later.
I hated that.
I wanted my daughter.
My bed.
My sister.
Maybe twelve consecutive hours of sleep.
Instead, I got investigators.
Attorneys.
Reporters.
And three women I'd never met who had reasons to hate Halston Reproductive Center almost as much as I did.
The first was Monica Hayes.
Thirty-nine.
Elementary school principal.
Mother of twin boys.
She called Margaret after seeing a brief television report saying the clinic was under investigation.
Monica had used Halston five years earlier.
Her twins looked nothing alike.
That was not unusual.
Until one developed a blood disorder requiring family genetic screening.
The test showed Monica wasn't genetically related to one son.
Her husband wasn't related to the other.
Halston told her there had been “laboratory contamination.”
Monica believed them.
Until my case appeared.
The second woman was Priya Nair.
She had frozen six embryos before chemotherapy.
When she returned three years later, Halston told her a storage malfunction had destroyed all six.
Anna's copied inventory suggested otherwise.
Two of Priya's embryos had been transferred to another account.
The third woman was Rebecca Sloan.
Except Rebecca didn't come willingly.
Investigators subpoenaed her.
And that's when the story changed again.
By Friday morning, Grace and I were staying at Claire's townhouse.
I refused to return to the house Daniel and I owned together.
The nursery there felt contaminated.
Every yellow wall.
Every tiny blanket.
Every piece of furniture Daniel had assembled while pretending Grace was mine genetically.
Claire converted her home office into a temporary nursery.
It wasn't beautiful.
The crib was borrowed.
The curtains were gray.
Boxes of diapers occupied half the floor.
I loved it.
Nothing in that room had been built on a lie.
Daniel received supervised visits twice that week.
I didn't attend.
Margaret advised against unnecessary contact.
Claire wanted to.
Margaret advised against homicide.
So Daniel met Grace in a family-services office.
The supervisor's notes mattered.
During his first visit, Daniel reportedly spent twenty-eight minutes asking staff when Rebecca could be included.
He held Grace for nine.
During his second visit, he asked whether I had started breastfeeding.
The supervisor asked why.
Daniel answered:
“Because that could complicate attachment.”
When Margaret read that to me, I had to put Grace down because my hands started shaking.
Attachment.
Again.
They weren't talking about her emotional security.
They were talking about mine as a logistical problem.
That evening, I received a handwritten letter.
Not from Daniel.
Rebecca.
Margaret opened it first.
Then handed it to me.
Evelyn,
You hate me, and you have every reason to.
But there are things Daniel told me that you need to know.
I believed you knew.
Not everything, but enough.
He told me you had agreed to a donor egg arrangement but didn't want to know the donor's identity because knowing it was me would make you uncomfortable.
I should have questioned that.
I didn't.
That failure belongs to me.
My heart condition made pregnancy dangerous. Daniel knew how desperately I wanted a child. Years ago, we froze embryos together before we broke up. I believed they were destroyed after our separation.
Last year, Daniel contacted me and told me one remained.
He said you had been unable to produce viable eggs.
He said you had agreed to carry an embryo from an anonymous donor and that using mine would allow the baby to be genetically his.
He said after the birth, we would tell you the truth and work out a shared parenting arrangement.
I wanted to believe him.
So I did.
I stopped reading.
“Shared parenting?” Claire said.
“Keep going.”
I did.
The night you went into labor, Daniel told me you had changed your mind about the agreement.
That's why I came to the hospital angry.
He said you intended to keep my biological child after promising otherwise.
I tried to enter the maternity floor because I was terrified I would never see her.
I know now how that looked.
I know what it did to you.
I am sorry.
There is something else.
The embryo used was not an old embryo.
Daniel lied about that too.
My egg retrieval happened eleven months before your transfer.
My blood went cold.
Eleven months.
Daniel and I had been married seven years.
That meant he had undergone fertility treatment with Rebecca while married to me.
Claire whispered, “Oh, God.”
I kept reading.
Daniel told me his marriage to you was ending.
He said you had agreed to divorce after the baby was born.
He told me you were staying married only because of insurance and treatment costs.
He showed me messages.
I now believe they were fabricated.
I have given my phone and documents to investigators.
I am withdrawing my emergency petition for custody until the court determines what happened.
Grace deserves the truth.
So do you.
Rebecca Sloan
I lowered the paper.
I expected satisfaction.
Instead I felt hollow.
“She believed him.”
Claire looked skeptical.
“Some of it.”
“Enough.”
“You don't owe her forgiveness.”
“I know.”
That afternoon, Margaret confirmed Rebecca had changed lawyers.
She was cooperating with investigators.
More importantly, she had produced financial records.
Daniel had paid for her egg retrieval.
He had paid for storage.
He had paid Dr. Halston.
He had also been transferring Rebecca $8,000 every month for nearly a year.
“Affair?” I asked.
Margaret shrugged.
“Potentially.”
I almost didn't care.
Infidelity seemed ordinary compared with what he'd done.
Then Margaret placed another document on Claire's dining table.
A corporate ownership chart.
Mercer Biomedical Holdings.
Daniel owned 62%.
The company supplied laboratory technology to fertility clinics.
Including Halston.
“Conflict of interest,” Claire said.
“More than that,” Margaret replied.
The federal investigation was focusing on an experimental embryo-tracking platform developed by Daniel's company.
Halston had been one of the pilot sites.
Patients had not been told.
The software used internal identifiers.
RS-DM-04.
EN-DM-07.
My embryos had become data points.
Products.
Assets.
“Why would Daniel use our treatment for this?”
“That's one of the questions investigators are asking.”
The answer came from someone unexpected.
Daniel's former chief financial officer.
Jason Pike.
He contacted federal prosecutors after seeing Daniel's name in the news.
According to Jason, Mercer Biomedical had been running out of money.
Daniel needed a successful fertility-tech demonstration before a major acquisition.
Halston provided access to real patients and embryo data.
Off the books.
Unapproved.
Dangerous.
And Daniel had personally invested millions.
My pregnancy had been proof that the system “worked.”
I felt physically ill.
“He used Grace as a product demonstration?”
Margaret's expression was grim.
“Possibly.”
“And me?”
“Possibly.”
I stood from the table too quickly.
Pain shot through my abdomen.
Claire caught me.
“Sit down.”
“I can't.”
“Evelyn.”
“I was his wife.”
My voice cracked.
“I cooked dinner with him. I slept beside him. I held his hand when my first pregnancy ended. He watched me bleed and cry, and then he turned around and used me as part of some business experiment?”
Claire wrapped both arms around me.
For days I had stayed angry because anger kept me upright.
That afternoon, grief finally caught me.
I cried for the marriage.
For the babies I'd lost.
For the woman I had been.
For how thoroughly Daniel had mistaken trust for stupidity.
Grace began crying from the next room.
Immediately, I wiped my face.
Claire smiled sadly.
“She has excellent timing.”
I went to her.
The second I lifted her, she settled.
I pressed my cheek to her head.
“I'm here.”
And I understood why Daniel's plan would ultimately fail.
He thought parenthood could be engineered.
Genetics selected.
Documents manipulated.
People arranged.
But Grace wasn't an outcome.
She was a person.
And she needed someone whose first instinct was to protect her instead of own her.
Two days later, police executed a search warrant at Halston Reproductive Center.
By sunset, Dr. Warren Halston had resigned.
By midnight, six more former patients had contacted investigators.
And the next morning, Claire woke me before sunrise.
“Evie.”
I opened my eyes.
She was holding her phone.
“What?”
“They arrested someone.”
“Halston?”
She shook her head.
My stomach tightened.
“Daniel?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Claire turned the screen toward me.
A photograph showed a woman being escorted from a building by federal agents.
Rebecca.
I stared.
“What happened?”
Claire swallowed.
“They found something in her apartment.”
“What?”
“Embryo storage records.”
May you like
I looked toward Grace's bassinet.
“And apparently one of the records has your name on it.”
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