Chapter 12
In reality, he had been managing two women, two relationships, and two entirely different versions of the same future.
I hadn’t simply married a liar.
I had married a man who believed everyone around him existed to provide whatever he wanted.
The genetic testing was conducted through an accredited laboratory with Paige’s consent and appropriate legal guidance.
The results took several days.
Those days were unbearable.
I went to work.
I reviewed contracts.
I answered emails.
I sat through meetings and smiled when colleagues asked whether I was feeling better.
At night, I lay awake imagining two possible futures.
In one, the test would show no genetic relationship.
I would have to accept that the embryo transfer records, however disturbing, did not mean Matty was my biological child.
In the other, the test would confirm what I was almost afraid to hope.
I didn’t know which outcome frightened me more.
Then, on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Rebecca called.
“The results are here.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Would you like to come to my office?”
I drove there without turning on the radio.
Paige was already sitting in the conference room when I arrived.
Her attorney sat beside her.
She looked as frightened as I felt.
Rebecca placed the laboratory report on the table.
“Before we discuss the results, I want both of you to understand that genetic parentage does not, by itself, resolve every legal or family question concerning Matty.”
I nodded.
Paige gripped her hands together.
“Please,” she whispered. “Just tell us.”
Rebecca looked at me.
“Jacqueline, the results establish that you are Matty’s biological mother.”
The room disappeared.
For a moment, I couldn’t see anything.
I couldn’t hear anything.
My entire body went numb.
Then I heard Paige sob.
I stared at the report.
There it was.
The truth.
Not a suspicion.
Not a missing document.
Not a terrible possibility.
The little boy who had stood beside my husband’s hospital bed was biologically mine.
The child I had spent four years mourning had been alive all along.
I covered my mouth.
A sound escaped me that I didn’t recognize.
It was somewhere between a sob and a scream.
Paige was crying too.
“I didn’t know,” she kept saying. “Jacqueline, I swear I didn’t know.”
I looked at her.
For the first time, I understood the full horror of what Alistair had done.
He had given Paige a child while allowing her to believe the embryo had been donated anonymously.
He had allowed me to believe our embryos had been lost.
He had watched me grieve.
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He had watched Paige become a mother.
And for three years, he had moved between our homes, enjoying the life he had stolen from one woman and secretly given to another.
