PART 2
“Prepare for an emergency cesarean. Now.”
The doctor’s command cut through the room with such force that, for one suspended second, everyone seemed to stop breathing.
Then the room exploded into motion.
A nurse pulled a mask over my mouth. Another pushed medication into the IV line taped to my hand. The ceiling lights moved above me as they rushed my bed through a set of double doors.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
My voice sounded distant, as though it belonged to someone at the far end of a tunnel.
Dr. Helen Crawford appeared beside me, still wearing the dark blue scrubs she had changed into moments earlier. Rainwater glistened on the windows behind her.
“Emily, the placenta has begun separating from the uterine wall,” she said. “The babies are showing signs of distress. We need to deliver them immediately.”
My fingers closed around her wrist.
“Are they going to live?”
Her expression remained calm, but she did not offer me the kind of easy reassurance people gave when they were afraid to tell the truth.
“We have an excellent neonatal team waiting.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
Another contraction tore through me.
I cried out, bending around the pain as much as the straps and wires allowed. A monitor beside the bed emitted a rapid series of alarms.
Dr. Crawford leaned closer.
“We are going to do everything we can for all three of you.”
All three of us.
Aiden. Savannah. Me.
The life I had spent years praying for had narrowed to a few frantic minutes under fluorescent lights.
As they wheeled me into the operating room, I thought of the nursery at home.
Two white cribs stood beneath a mural of pale gray clouds that Michael and I had painted together. A wooden letter A hung above one crib, and an S above the other. Michael had complained that the letters were crooked, although they were perfectly straight. He had measured the distance between them four times.
I remembered him sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding a tiny yellow sleeper in both hands.
“How can a human being be this small?” he had asked.
I remembered laughing.
I remembered believing we would bring our babies home together.
“Emily?”
A nurse’s face came into view.
“We need you to breathe slowly.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“My husband doesn’t know.”
“He’s been contacted.”
I turned my head sharply.
“No.”
The nurse hesitated.
“Your emergency contact information was in your medical record.”
“I don’t want him here.”
“We can make a note—”
“No.” My voice cracked. “I mean…I don’t know.”
That was the terrible truth.
I did not know what I wanted.
I wanted Michael nowhere near me.
I wanted him beside me.
I wanted to punish him with his absence.
I wanted him to walk through the doors and tell me the twins would be all right.
I wanted the man I had married, not the man who had lied to me.
But they were the same man, and I could no longer separate one from the other.
The anesthesiologist told me to count backward from ten.
I reached seven before the room disappeared.
Michael arrived at St. Joseph Medical Center twenty-three minutes after the nurse’s call.
I learned that later from the hospital records.
I learned the rest from my sister, from Dr. Crawford, and eventually from Michael himself.
He came through the emergency entrance soaked from the rain, his hair plastered to his forehead and his dress shirt clinging to his skin. He had left his coat at the restaurant. His car was still running beneath the covered entrance until a security guard moved it.
“My wife,” he told the receptionist. “Emily Whitman. She’s pregnant with twins.”
The receptionist typed quickly.
“Are you the spouse?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes lifted to him.
“Please wait here.”
“I need to see her.”
“A member of the surgical team will speak with you.”
“Surgical team?”
The receptionist’s expression softened.
“Sir, please take a seat.”
He did not.
He stood in the center of the waiting area, staring at the doors that led into the restricted wing.
Behind him, the elevator opened.
Jessica Monroe stepped into the lobby.
She was still wearing the cream-colored blouse from the photographs Nicole had given me. Her dark hair was pinned behind her ears, and she carried Michael’s forgotten coat over one arm.
When Michael saw her, something in his face changed.
“What are you doing here?”
“You left your coat.”
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“You could barely speak when you ran out. I was worried.”
“My wife is in surgery.”
Jessica’s gaze moved toward the secured doors.
“Are the babies—”
“Don’t.”
“I only asked because—”
“You need to leave.”
People in the waiting room looked up, but Michael lowered his voice.
“Please, Jessica. Not here.”
She studied him for a moment.
“You didn’t tell me she had filed.”
Michael closed his eyes.
“This isn’t the time.”
“You said you were going to tell her.”
“I know what I said.”
“You kept saying you needed one more day.”
“I said leave.”
Jessica placed his coat on the back of a chair.
Her voice trembled, but she did not argue.
“All right.”
She walked toward the elevator, then stopped.
“Michael.”
He did not turn.
“You should know that she deserved the truth before tonight.”
The elevator doors closed behind her.
Michael remained standing beside the chair, staring at his coat as if it were evidence from a crime scene.
A few minutes later, my sister Rachel arrived.
She had driven from her home in Brookhaven after receiving the call from my attorney. Before leaving for the lake house, I had given my lawyer permission to notify Rachel if there was an emergency.
Rachel saw Michael before he saw her.
She crossed the lobby and struck him across the face.
The sound startled everyone nearby.
Michael did not defend himself.
“You did this to her,” Rachel said.
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything.”
Her voice broke. She pressed a fist to her mouth and turned away.
Michael touched his cheek.
“Where is she?”
“In surgery because she was driving alone through a storm while you were sitting across from your girlfriend.”
“I didn’t know she was leaving.”
“You didn’t notice she was gone?”
“I was served at work.”
Rachel gave a bitter laugh.
“Of course. The papers were what made you notice.”
Michael looked toward the surgical doors again.
“I need to know if she’s alive.”
Rachel stared at him for a long moment.
“So do I.”
They sat on opposite sides of the waiting room.
Neither spoke again until Dr. Crawford came through the doors.
When I woke, the first thing I heard was a mechanical hiss.
Air moving through a tube.
A steady electronic pulse.
A voice whispering my name.
“Emily?”
I opened my eyes.
Rachel sat beside the bed, wearing the same green sweater she had worn to our mother’s birthday dinner two weeks earlier. Her face was pale and swollen from crying.
“Where are they?” I asked.
The words scraped painfully against my throat.
Rachel stood.
“You’re awake.”
“The babies.”
“They’re alive.”
I stared at her.
“Both?”
“Both.”
The breath left my body in a broken sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
Rachel leaned over me, careful of the lines connected to my arms.
“They’re very small,” she said. “They were born early, but they’re alive.”
“How early?”
“Thirty-one weeks.”
I closed my eyes.
Eight weeks too soon.
“Can I see them?”
“The doctor wants to examine you first.”
“I need to see them.”
“You lost a lot of blood.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
I looked down.
A blanket covered me to the waist. Beneath it, my abdomen felt heavy and hollow at the same time. I placed both hands over the place where Aiden and Savannah had been.
They were no longer inside me.
For months, every movement had belonged to the three of us. A kick beneath my ribs. A flutter near my hip. A tiny rolling sensation that made me stop whatever I was doing and smile.
Now there was only stillness.
Panic rose inside me.
“What happened?”
Rachel pulled her chair closer.
“Dr. Crawford said you had a placental abruption. One of the babies’ heart rates dropped. They had to deliver immediately.”
“Which baby?”
“Aiden.”
My son.
I turned toward the window. The storm had passed, leaving black glass streaked with rain.
“Is he breathing?”
“With help.”
“And Savannah?”
“She’s doing a little better, but she’s also in the neonatal intensive care unit.”
“Have you seen them?”
“Through the glass.”
“Do they look…” I swallowed. “Do they look normal?”
“They look perfect.”
Rachel began crying again.
“Tiny,” she whispered. “But perfect.”
A nurse entered and checked the monitors. She introduced herself as Claire, though I forgot the name almost immediately.
“Your doctor will be here soon,” she said.
“I want to go to the NICU.”
“As soon as Dr. Crawford clears you, we’ll take you.”
“Now.”
“Emily,” Rachel said gently.
“No. I carried them. They know my voice. They’re waiting for me.”
The nurse came closer.
“They are being cared for by a full team. They are warm, monitored, and safe. Right now, the best thing you can do for them is allow us to make sure you’re stable.”
Her tone was neither dismissive nor overly soothing.
It was firm.
I hated her for being right.
Then I noticed a shadow beyond the narrow window in the door.
A man stood in the hallway.
Even through the textured glass, I recognized the slope of his shoulders.
Michael.
My entire body tightened.
Rachel followed my gaze.
“I told him not to come in.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Since before the surgery ended.”
“Has he seen the babies?”
Rachel hesitated.
“He went to the NICU with the doctor.”
The words struck me harder than I expected.
Michael had seen them before I had.
He had looked at our children while I lay unconscious, cut open and emptied of the life we created together.
Something hot and bitter filled my throat.
“Tell him to leave.”
Rachel stood immediately.
Then I stopped her.
“No.”
She looked back.
“I want to speak to him.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
That was still the only honest answer.
Rachel opened the door.
Michael stepped inside.
He looked older than he had that morning.
His shirt had dried in uneven wrinkles. There was a red mark across one cheek, and his eyes were bloodshot. He held himself stiffly, as if any movement might cause something inside him to collapse.
“Emily.”
I stared at him.
His face was painfully familiar.
I knew the small scar near his eyebrow from when he fell off a bicycle at twelve. I knew the line that formed between his eyes when he was worried. I knew how his left hand trembled when he was frightened, although he always tried to hide it by placing it in his pocket.
His left hand was in his pocket now.
“Rachel,” I said, “would you give us a minute?”
She looked as if she wanted to refuse.
“I’ll be right outside.”
When the door closed, Michael moved one step closer.
I lifted my hand.
“Stay there.”
He stopped.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
“Are they all right?” I finally asked.
“They’re stable.”
“You saw them?”
His eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“What did they look like?”
Michael’s mouth opened, but no words came.
I waited.
“Aiden has your nose,” he said at last.
A tear slipped into my hair.
“That’s impossible. Newborn babies barely have noses.”
“He does. I’m sure of it.”
“And Savannah?”
“She kept moving her left hand. Opening and closing her fingers.”
“She does that.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
The words came out sharper than I intended.
Michael lowered his eyes.
“You don’t know them,” I continued. “You don’t know what they do at night. You don’t know which one presses against my ribs when I lie on my right side. You don’t know which songs make them move.”
“I want to.”
“You wanted other things more.”
He flinched.
I had expected anger to feel powerful.
Instead, it exhausted me.
“Why?” I asked.
Michael looked at me.
“Why her?”
He pulled the chair away from the wall but did not sit.
“There is no answer that makes it acceptable.”
“I didn’t ask you to make it acceptable.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Everything.”
I almost laughed.
“You were afraid, so you had an affair?”
“I was afraid we would lose the pregnancy. I was afraid to be happy. I was afraid you would look at me one day and realize how much of yourself you had sacrificed trying to build a family with me.”
“That doesn’t explain Jessica.”
“No.”
“Then explain her.”
Michael rubbed both hands over his face.
“She was easy to talk to.”
“So was I.”
“I know.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Because every conversation with you mattered.”
I stared at him.
He heard how terrible the sentence sounded as soon as he said it.
“That came out wrong.”
“No, I think it came out exactly right. Talking to me had consequences. Talking to her didn’t.”
“At first.”
“At first?”
He looked toward the floor.
“It began with lunches. Then messages. She listened when I said I was frightened. She didn’t tell me I should be grateful or that everything would be fine. She let me say the things I was ashamed to say.”
“You could have said them to me.”
“You had spent years giving yourself injections, going through procedures, rearranging your entire life around appointments. How could I tell you that after we finally succeeded, part of me was terrified?”
“By opening your mouth.”
His eyes closed.
“I know.”
“No, Michael. You know now. That’s different.”
A machine beside me sounded, and the nurse glanced through the window. I tried to slow my breathing.
“How long?” I asked.
“Emily—”
“How long were you sleeping with her?”
His silence was an answer.
“How long?”
“Four months.”
Four months.
I calculated automatically.
I had been pregnant for seven.
He had painted the nursery during those months.
He had read parenting books beside me in bed.
He had gone to hotels while I was at prenatal appointments.
I turned my face away.
“Get out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I am.”
“Being sorry is not the same as being safe.”
He stood completely still.
The words seemed to land somewhere deeper than anger.
“I know you don’t owe me anything,” he said quietly. “But I want to be here for the twins.”
“You will communicate through my attorney.”
“They’re my children.”
“And I’m their mother.”
“I’m not trying to fight you.”
“You already chose where to spend your loyalty.”
“Emily, please.”
I looked back at him.
For the first time in twelve years, I saw Michael not as my husband but as a man asking me for something.
A flawed man.
A frightened man.
A man who had betrayed me.
And, somehow, still the father of my children.
“You may receive medical updates,” I said. “You may visit them when the hospital allows it. But you do not make decisions without consulting me.”
“I won’t.”
“You do not speak for me.”
“I understand.”
“You do not come into this room unless I invite you.”
His jaw tightened, but he nodded.
“All right.”
“And Jessica does not come near my children.”
“She won’t.”
“How can I believe you?”
He had no answer.
I pressed the call button.
Rachel entered before the nurse did.
Michael walked toward the door.
At the threshold, he turned.
“I ended it.”
I said nothing.
“Before tonight,” he continued. “I met her because she had something of mine and I wanted it back.”
“What?”
He hesitated.
“That doesn’t matter now.”
“You’re still lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re withholding the truth and calling it something else.”
Rachel opened the door wider.
“You need to go.”
Michael looked at me once more, then walked into the hallway.
I watched his shadow disappear beyond the narrow window.
Only after he was gone did I realize my hands were shaking.
Dr. Crawford allowed me to visit the NICU shortly after midnight.
A nurse helped me into a wheelchair, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and guided me through silent corridors.
The neonatal intensive care unit was warmer than the rest of the hospital. The air smelled faintly of soap and plastic. Machines hummed behind glass walls, and nurses moved quietly between rows of incubators.
I saw Savannah first.
She weighed three pounds, eight ounces.
A knitted pink cap covered her head. Wires rested against her chest, and a thin tube ran beneath her nose. One hand lay beside her face, the fingers slowly opening and closing.
Just as Michael had said.
My heart broke open.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
My voice failed.
I pressed my hand through the opening in the incubator and placed one finger against her palm.
Her fingers closed around me.
The world narrowed to that tiny grip.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “Mama’s here.”
Aiden was in the incubator beside hers.
He weighed three pounds, two ounces and needed more breathing support. His chest rose beneath a small device that delivered gentle pressure to his lungs.
His skin looked almost translucent.
I touched the sole of his foot.
He moved.
That single motion filled me with such relief that I bent forward and cried.
The NICU nurse rested a hand on my shoulder.
“Talk to him.”
“Can he hear me?”
“He knows your voice.”
So I told him about the room waiting for him at home.
I told him about the wooden moon hanging over his crib and the stuffed elephant his aunt Rachel had bought before we knew whether he was a boy or a girl.
I told him his sister was beside him.
I told both of them that they were not alone.
I did not tell them their father and I were divorcing.
That truth could wait.
For nearly an hour, I sat between their incubators.
Then I saw Michael through the glass wall.
He stood near the entrance wearing disposable scrubs over his clothes. He had not crossed the line the nurses indicated. He was waiting for permission.
I considered asking them to send him away.
Instead, I looked at Aiden.
His tiny chest rose and fell with mechanical precision.
Whatever had ended between Michael and me, the twins’ need for love had only begun.
I nodded once.
Michael entered.
He stopped beside Savannah’s incubator.
“Can I touch her?”
“Wash your hands again.”
“I already did.”
“Do it again.”
He did.
When he returned, he placed one finger near Savannah’s palm. Her hand remained closed around mine.
For a while, we stood on opposite sides of our daughter, connected only by the sleeping child between us.
Michael looked toward Aiden.
“Has the doctor said anything else?”
“They’re stable.”
“That’s good.”
“It means they haven’t gotten worse. It doesn’t mean they’re out of danger.”
“I know.”
I hated those words from him.
I know.
He said them as though knowledge were the same as understanding.
Yet when he reached into Aiden’s incubator, his hand trembled so badly that he had to pull it back.
“Try again,” I said.
Michael looked at me.
“Support your hand against the edge.”
He did.
This time, his finger reached Aiden’s foot.
Our son flexed his toes.
Michael bowed his head.
A quiet sob escaped him.
I looked away, giving him the small privacy of pretending I had not heard.
Not because I forgave him.
Because grief did not belong to only one of us.
The next several days passed in fragments.
Doctors. Medication. Blood tests. Wheelchairs. Pumping milk every three hours while watching the clock. Learning the language of premature infants.
Oxygen saturation.
Feeding tolerance.
Bradycardia.
Apnea episodes.
Each unfamiliar word became part of my life.
Aiden needed additional breathing support on the second day. Savannah developed jaundice and spent long hours beneath blue lights, wearing a tiny mask over her eyes.
I learned to celebrate things I had never considered victories.
Half an ounce gained.
A stable temperature.
Three milliliters of milk.
Michael visited the twins every morning before work and every evening after.
He never entered my room without asking.
He brought coffee for Rachel and left it at the nurses’ station. He delivered clean clothes from the house after my attorney arranged a time for him to collect them. He asked the doctors careful questions and wrote every answer in a black notebook.
He did not ask me to reconsider the divorce.
That should have made things easier.
It did not.
On the fifth day, I found him asleep in a chair between the incubators, his notebook open on his lap.
A page was filled with times and numbers.
Aiden oxygen: 94.
Savannah feeding: 12 mL.
Ask about skin-to-skin care.
Beneath those notes, written smaller, was a single sentence.
Do not make Emily carry this alone.
I closed the notebook before he woke.
That afternoon, Dr. Crawford found me in the family lounge.
“You’re healing well,” she said. “Better than I expected, considering the blood loss.”
“When can I go home?”
“In another day or two.”
I looked toward the NICU doors.
“I’m not leaving them.”
“You’ll be able to spend most of your time here, but you also need rest.”
“I can rest in the chair.”
“You just had major surgery.”
“They’re my babies.”
“And you are their mother, which means your health matters.”
I pressed both hands around the paper cup of tea cooling in front of me.
“What caused it?”
“The abruption?”
I nodded.
“Sometimes there isn’t one clear cause. High blood pressure can contribute. Trauma can contribute. In many cases, it happens without warning.”
“Was it the stress?”
Dr. Crawford sat across from me.
“No one can prove that.”
“That isn’t the same as no.”
“Emily, you did not cause this.”
“I should have stopped driving.”
“You were trying to reach a safe place.”
“I should have gone to Rachel’s.”
“You made the best decision you could with the information you had.”
I stared into the tea.
“Everyone keeps telling me what I should not blame myself for.”
“Because you’re trying to find a way to make an unpredictable event feel controllable.”
Her words were gentle, but they found the place I had been avoiding.
“If it was my fault,” I said, “then I could promise never to make that mistake again.”
“Yes.”
“But if it wasn’t…”
“Then you have to live with uncertainty.”
I looked through the glass wall toward the rows of incubators.
“I don’t know how.”
“You learn one hour at a time.”
Nicole came to the hospital that evening.
She entered carrying flowers and a bag from my favorite bakery. Her blond hair was pulled into a loose knot, and dark circles rested beneath her eyes.
The moment she saw me, she began to cry.
“Oh, Emily.”
She wrapped her arms around me carefully.
“I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“For bringing you that folder. For the timing. For everything.”
“You told me the truth.”
“But if I had waited—”
“I would still have been driving somewhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
Nicole wiped her face.
“Are the babies all right?”
“They’re stable.”
“Can I see them?”
“Immediate family only right now.”
“Of course.”
She placed the flowers on the windowsill.
“Is Michael here?”
“In the NICU.”
Her expression hardened.
“He has some nerve.”
“He’s their father.”
“He stopped acting like a father when he started sneaking around with her.”
I looked at Nicole.
The anger in her voice felt too sharp for the quiet room.
“I’m divorcing him,” I said. “I’m not erasing him.”
“You don’t owe him access to you.”
“I know.”
“Or sympathy.”
“I know.”
She reached for my hand.
“I’m only trying to protect you.”
“I appreciate that.”
Yet something unsettled me.
Maybe it was exhaustion.
Maybe it was the fact that, since arriving, Nicole had asked more about Michael than about the twins.
She began arranging the flowers.
“Did he admit everything?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“He said the affair lasted four months.”
Nicole’s hands stopped.
“That’s what he said?”
“Yes.”
She resumed trimming the stems.
“He’s lying.”
“How do you know?”
“The messages went back longer.”
“The messages weren’t romantic at first.”
“They were hiding lunches.”
“That isn’t the same as an affair.”
“It was the beginning of one.”
I watched her.
“Where did you get the photographs?”
“I told you. A private investigator.”
“No. You said a friend who worked downtown saw them together.”
Nicole turned.
“I gave the information to an investigator after my friend mentioned it.”
“Which friend?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because I never asked before.”
She placed the scissors beside the vase.
“Emily, you’ve just been through surgery. This isn’t something you need to worry about.”
“Then answer me.”
Her face softened.
“My cousin Daniel.”
“I’ve never met a cousin named Daniel.”
“He lives in Jackson. We aren’t close.”
“What investigation company?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You hired them.”
“Through a website.”
“Then you must have an email.”
Nicole stepped away from the flowers.
“Why are you questioning me?”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“Understand what? Michael cheated on you. The proof was real.”
“I know it was.”
“Then what difference does it make who took the pictures?”
I did not have an answer.
Not yet.
Nicole sat beside me.
“Look at me.”
I did.
“You are exhausted and frightened. Your mind is trying to focus on small details because the larger situation is unbearable.”
Her explanation sounded reasonable.
Almost exactly like something Dr. Crawford might have said.
But Dr. Crawford’s words had brought relief.
Nicole’s made the uneasiness inside me deepen.
A knock sounded at the door.
Michael stood in the hallway.
He did not look at Nicole.
“Aiden’s doctor wants to speak with us.”
I pushed myself upright.
“What happened?”
“He had another apnea episode. He recovered quickly, but they want to adjust his support.”
I reached for the wheelchair.
Michael stepped forward.
“I can help.”
“I have her,” Nicole said.
The two of them looked at each other.
For a fraction of a second, something passed between them.
Not anger.
Recognition.
Fear.
Michael recovered first.
“I’ll wait outside.”
After he left, I turned to Nicole.
“You’ve spoken to him.”
“What?”
“Recently.”
“No.”
“You looked at each other like—”
“Like I hate him?”
“No.”
She picked up her bag.
“You’re imagining things.”
Perhaps I was.
But as she pushed my wheelchair into the hallway, I looked at Michael.
His gaze dropped to Nicole’s hand on the chair.
And I knew, with sudden certainty, that they were both withholding something.
Aiden stabilized before midnight.
The doctor adjusted his breathing support and assured us that such episodes were common in babies born as early as he was.
Common did not make them less terrifying.
Afterward, Michael walked me back toward my room.
Nicole had left without saying goodbye. She had claimed she was tired and promised to return the following day.
We stopped near the elevators.
“How long have you been speaking to Nicole?” I asked.
Michael’s entire body went still.
“I haven’t.”
“Don’t lie to me again.”
“I’m not.”
“You recognized something in her face.”
He pressed the elevator button, though neither of us was leaving the floor.
“Emily, you need to rest.”
“You don’t get to decide what I need.”
“I know.”
“There it is again.”
“What?”
“You hiding behind calm words.”
The elevator opened. No one stepped out.
Michael waited until the doors closed.
“Nicole contacted me three weeks ago.”
The same week she had brought me the folder.
“Why?”
“She said she knew about Jessica.”
“And?”
“She told me I had forty-eight hours to confess or she would tell you herself.”
My fingers tightened around the wheelchair arms.
“You didn’t confess.”
“I tried.”
“No, you delayed.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Nicole tell me she contacted you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else did she say?”
Michael looked toward the NICU.
“She said the affair wasn’t the only secret I needed to tell you.”
A cold feeling moved through me.
“What did she mean?”
“I assumed she was trying to frighten me.”
“Was there another secret?”
He did not answer.
The silence between us became unbearable.
“Michael.”
He crouched in front of the wheelchair.
“I found something during our last fertility cycle.”
“What?”
“A document in the clinic portal. It appeared for only a few hours and then disappeared.”
“What kind of document?”
“A laboratory report.”
My heart began beating faster.
“About the embryos?”
He nodded.
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know if it was accurate.”
“What did it say?”
His face had gone pale.
“It listed the identification numbers for the embryos transferred during our final procedure.”
“Yes.”
“One number matched our records.”
“And the other?”
He swallowed.
“The other number didn’t.”
The corridor seemed to tilt.
“What are you saying?”
“I called the clinic. They said it was a clerical error. They replaced the document and told me both embryos were ours.”
“You believed them?”
“I wanted to.”
“So you said nothing to me.”
“You were already pregnant. The doctor said additional testing could wait and that there was no reason to alarm you.”
“No reason?”
“I was afraid the stress would hurt you or the babies.”
“You let me spend seven months believing something you weren’t certain was true.”
“I kept trying to get answers.”
“With Jessica?”
Michael looked away.
The pieces rearranged themselves.
“She works at the clinic,” I whispered.
“Not as a doctor. She worked in records administration until last year.”
“That’s how you met her.”
“Yes.”
“You went to her for information.”
“At first.”
The answer hurt because of its simplicity.
At first.
“And then you had an affair.”
He nodded.
“There is no excuse for what happened afterward.”
“What did she find?”
“She said the clinic had performed an internal review two years ago involving labeling discrepancies.”
“Two years ago? Before our transfer?”
“Yes, but she believed some of the same staff members were still there. She said she could access archived audit notes.”
“Could she?”
“She claimed she did.”
“And tonight she was giving you those records.”
Michael reached into his jacket pocket.
His hand emerged holding a small silver flash drive.
“This is what I went to get.”
I stared at it.
“Have you opened it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I got the divorce papers. Then the hospital called.”
The flash drive rested in his palm, an ordinary object no larger than my thumb.
It contained either nothing important or information that could change the way I understood my children’s conception.
I thought of Savannah’s fingers closing around mine.
Aiden’s foot moving beneath my touch.
Whatever was on that drive, they were my babies.
Nothing could alter that.
Yet someone had hidden a report.
Nicole had somehow known.
And Michael had kept the secret from me for months.
“Give it to me,” I said.
He hesitated.
“Emily—”
“Give it to me.”
He placed the drive in my hand.
I closed my fingers around it.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “we open it with my attorney present.”
“All right.”
“And you will tell me everything.”
“I will.”
“No omissions. No protecting me. No deciding which truth I can handle.”
“I understand.”
I looked at him.
“I don’t think you do.”
My nurse arrived to take me back to my room.
As she wheeled me away, Michael remained beneath the fluorescent lights, alone beside the closed elevator.
Rachel was asleep in the chair when I returned.
I placed the flash drive in the drawer beside my bed, beneath a stack of hospital forms.
Then I lay awake for nearly an hour.
At two in the morning, my phone vibrated.
A message from Nicole appeared on the screen.
I’m sorry I left so suddenly. I didn’t want to add stress. Please don’t let Michael confuse you. He has always been good at making his lies sound reasonable.
I read it twice.
Then another message arrived.
Whatever he tells you about the clinic, ask to see the original report.
My breath caught.
Nicole knew.
I typed a reply.
How do you know about the report?
The message showed as delivered.
No answer came.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
I called her.
The call went directly to voicemail.
I tried again.
Voicemail.
Something pulled at my memory.
The folder Nicole had brought to my house contained photographs, hotel receipts, printed messages, and a handwritten list of dates.
At the bottom of that list, beneath the dates connected to Michael and Jessica, Nicole had written a sequence of numbers.
I had assumed they were reference numbers from the investigator.
But there had been two sets.
One began with an A.
The other began with an S.
Aiden.
Savannah.
My hands began to shake.
I opened the drawer and took out the flash drive.
A small white label had been placed along one side.
Written on it were the same numbers I had seen in Nicole’s folder.
Before I could wake Rachel, my phone vibrated again.
This time the message came from an unknown number.
There was no greeting.
No explanation.
Only a photograph.
It showed Nicole standing in the lobby of the fertility clinic beside a woman wearing an employee badge.
Jessica Monroe.
The photograph had been taken nearly eight months before Michael claimed his affair began.
Beneath it was a single sentence.
Before you trust either of them, ask Nicole why she was at the clinic the day your embryos were transferred.
END OF PART 2 – LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT “THE ENTIRE STORY” IF YOU WANT TO READ THE FULL STORY
