Chapter 3 - The Price of Abandonment
The check lay on our kitchen table between the divorce papers and Eleanor’s letter.
Five million dollars.
The number looked unreal beneath the pendant light.
Anna stood across from me, still wearing the sweater she had slept in at the hospital. Her hair was tied loosely at the back of her neck, and exhaustion had drained the color from her face.
“Read it again,” she said.
“I’ve read it three times.”
“Read it out loud.”
I picked up the letter.
“Daniel, the events surrounding Samuel’s birth have placed you in an intolerable position. My family is prepared to compensate you for the emotional, financial, and reputational damage caused by Anna’s decisions.”
Anna gave a bitter laugh.
“My decisions.”
I continued.
“In exchange for the enclosed payment, you will file the prepared divorce petition, accept sole custody of Benjamin, waive any claim against the Whitmore estate, and maintain strict confidentiality regarding Ridgeway Reproductive Center, Dr. Conrad Vale, and all related medical matters.”
Anna pressed both hands against the table.
“Keep going.”
“Samuel will remain in Anna’s custody pending arrangements for private long-term care. You will not identify him publicly as your son or pursue additional genetic investigations.”
She stared at me.
“Private long-term care means an institution.”
“I know.”
“She wants you to take the white baby and abandon the Black one.”
“She wants silence.”
“She wants to erase him.”
I tore the check in half.
Anna watched the pieces fall.
“Why didn’t you hesitate?” she asked.
“Because both boys are my sons.”
“She offered you five million dollars.”
“I would have torn up fifty million.”
Anna’s shoulders dropped.
For the first time since the maternity results, she allowed me to touch her.
I pulled her into my arms.
“I’m sorry I doubted you after the delivery,” I said.
“You were shocked.”
“I still hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes.
“I kept thinking that when the truth came out, everything would become simple. But every answer makes it worse.”
“We’ll find the whole truth.”
“What if the whole truth destroys us?”
“Then we’ll rebuild.”
A knock sounded at the back door.
We both froze.
It was nearly midnight.
I opened the drawer beside the refrigerator and removed the small handgun I kept locked inside. Anna took out her phone.
The knock came again.
“Mr. Hayes?” a man called. “My name is Thomas Reed. I worked at Ridgeway.”
I kept the door closed.
“Show me identification.”
A driver’s license appeared against the glass.
Thomas Reed was sixty-four, gray-haired, and visibly shaking. I opened the door but did not lower the gun.
He looked at it and raised both hands.
“I understand.”
“What do you want?”
“To tell you that your mother-in-law knows more than she’s admitting.”
Anna stepped into view.
“What did she do?”
Thomas looked past us toward the street.
“Can I come inside?”
“No,” I said. “Talk from there.”
He swallowed.
“I was Ridgeway’s laboratory supervisor for eleven years. Dr. Vale ordered us to alter embryo identification codes.”
“Why?” Anna asked.
“He said certain clients required discretion.”
“What clients?”
“Donors. Politicians. Wealthy families. People who wanted children without records connecting them to genetic material.”
Anna’s face tightened.
“Did you work on my case?”
“I saw your name.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Thomas took a folded sheet of paper from his coat.
“Your final treatment cycle produced one viable embryo. Your egg, your husband’s sperm.”
“We were told it didn’t implant,” I said.
“That was true.”
“Then how did she become pregnant?”
“Seven months later, Dr. Vale reopened your case.”
Anna stared at him.
“Without my knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He had preserved a frozen sample of your husband’s sperm.”
I felt sick.
“We ordered the destruction of all remaining material.”
“The paperwork showed it had been destroyed. It hadn’t.”
“What did he do with it?”
Thomas looked at Anna.
“He fertilized two eggs. One was yours.”
“That’s impossible,” she said. “I didn’t undergo another retrieval.”
“An egg from your original cycle had been mislabeled as nonviable and preserved.”
“And the second egg?”
“I don’t know the donor’s identity.”
“Why were two embryos created?”
“Dr. Vale said Eleanor Whitmore wanted a guaranteed pregnancy.”
Anna’s knees weakened. I caught her arm.
“What does my mother have to do with this?”
Thomas’s eyes filled with shame.
“She paid Vale to implant the embryos without telling you what they were.”
Silence filled the doorway.
Anna pulled away from me.
“No. I would remember an embryo transfer.”
Thomas nodded slowly.
“You underwent a minor hysteroscopic procedure at St. Matthew’s Outpatient Center. Your mother told you it was to remove scar tissue.”
I remembered that procedure.
Anna had been sedated. Eleanor drove her to the center because I was attending a conference in Chicago. When I came home, Anna said the doctor believed removing scar tissue might improve the chances of natural conception.
“They implanted embryos while she was unconscious?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s assault.”
“Yes.”
Anna looked as if she might vomit.
“And my mother arranged it?”
“I heard her arguing with Vale afterward. She said she had paid for a Whitmore heir and wanted no complications.”
“What complications?”
“The donor.”
“Who was she?”
“I never saw her name, only a code: DV-214.”
“Can you find her?”
“Most of Ridgeway’s electronic records were destroyed before the investigation.”
“Before or after Vale died?” I asked.
Thomas stared at me.
“Vale isn’t dead.”
The newspapers had reported that Dr. Conrad Vale died in a boating accident near the Chesapeake Bay.
“His body was never recovered,” Thomas continued. “Eleanor helped him disappear.”
Anna took a step toward him.
“How do you know?”
“Because she asked me to alter the clinic’s archived logs after the accident. I refused.”
“Why come here now?”
Thomas looked ashamed.
“Because I said nothing for years. Then I heard your son was sick.”
“How did you hear that?” I asked.
“Mrs. Whitmore contacted me yesterday. She wanted to know whether the donor could be located.”
Hope rose in Anna’s face.
“So she’s trying to help?”
“No. She wanted confirmation that the donor records were gone.”
The hope vanished.
Thomas handed me the paper.
It contained a storage-facility address and a numbered unit.
“Vale kept duplicate files,” he said. “Paper records. Audio notes. He didn’t trust computers.”
“How do you know they’re still there?”
“I don’t. But he paid the unit fifteen years in advance.”
Anna took the paper.
“Why didn’t you give this to police?”
“I tried. By the time investigators acted, the unit had been emptied.”
“Then why give us the address?”
“Because they searched Unit 318. Vale actually rented 381.”
A car turned onto our street.
Thomas looked over his shoulder.
“I need to go.”
“Wait,” Anna said. “Did my mother know the donor was Black?”
Thomas hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Then why did she agree?”
“She didn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“She believed both eggs came from you.”
“Vale deceived her?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
Thomas looked directly at her.
“Later, she learned who the donor was. That’s when she began threatening everyone.”
He hurried to his car before we could ask another question.
The storage facility opened at six in the morning.
By seven, Anna and I stood in front of Unit 381 with a locksmith and a private investigator. We had called the police, but they said the address alone was insufficient for a warrant. The unit’s payment records showed it belonged to a shell corporation dissolved after Ridgeway closed.
The facility manager allowed us access only after our attorney obtained an emergency court order.
When the metal door rolled upward, dust spilled into the corridor.
Inside were filing cabinets, cardboard boxes, medical equipment, and a locked steel trunk.
Anna stepped toward the nearest cabinet.
Every drawer was labeled with patient numbers.
We searched for nearly an hour.
Then she found her name.
HAYES, ANNA W.
The folder contained consent forms, surgical reports, embryo-development charts, and a photograph of two microscopic clusters of cells.
I read the transfer record.
Embryo A: maternal source AW-682.
Embryo B: maternal source DV-214.
Paternal source for both: DH-914.
My initials.
My genetic material.
Two embryos implanted while Anna was sedated.
One created from her egg.
One created from a stranger’s.
At the bottom of the folder was a handwritten instruction.
Client E.W. requests destruction of all donor-source references. No external reporting.
Anna sank to the floor.
“My mother signed this.”
Before I could answer, the storage door slammed shut behind us.
Darkness swallowed the unit.
Then a man’s voice came from the other side.
“You should have accepted the money.”
May you like
It was Marcus Vane.
Eleanor’s lawyer.
