Chapter 14
He sighed.
“Paige wanted a child. You wanted a child. I was trying to make everyone happy.”
I stared at the wall.
“By telling me our embryos were destroyed?”
“It was complicated.”
“By letting another woman carry our embryo without my consent?”
“Don’t make it sound like that.”
I stood up so abruptly that my chair struck the desk.
“That is exactly what you did!”
He said nothing.
For a moment, I could hear the television playing in the background.
Then he spoke again.
“Look, we can work this out. You and Paige don’t have to fight. Matty can have both of you in his life.”
I closed my eyes.
He was still negotiating.
Still treating people like assets he could distribute between separate households.
“Alistair, I’m filing for divorce.”
His voice hardened.
“If you do that, I’ll make sure you never see Matty.”
I felt a cold stillness settle over me.
“Goodbye, Alistair.”
I ended the call.
Then I forwarded the call details and a contemporaneous note of his threat to Rebecca.
For the first time since the hospital, I felt completely certain about what I needed to do.
The months that followed were difficult.
The authorities pursued the financial and medical-consent investigations.
Alistair and members of his family faced criminal charges arising from the alleged forgery, financial transactions, and unauthorized embryo transfer.
The former medical director also faced legal and professional proceedings.
I filed for divorce and challenged the disputed financial documents.
Rebecca helped me separate my finances from Alistair’s business affairs and pursue remedies for the fraudulent use of my signature.
The process was slow.
There were hearings, interviews, document requests, and days when I felt as though my entire life had become a legal file.
But I was no longer facing it alone.
Paige and I began speaking regularly.
At first, our conversations were uncomfortable.
We were two women who had loved the same man.
Two women who had believed different versions of his lies.
And now we were connected through a little boy who deserved a future free from those lies.
Paige apologized repeatedly for the affair.
I told her that I wasn’t ready to forgive everything.
But I believed she had not known the truth about the embryo.
And I knew that Matty loved her.
Whatever Alistair had done, Paige had been the person who carried him, fed him, comforted him, and raised him.
I wasn’t going to pretend those years didn’t matter.
With professional guidance, we agreed to introduce me into Matty’s life gradually.
At first, I was simply Jacqueline.
A friend of his mother’s.
May you like
Someone who visited occasionally and brought books about dinosaurs.
He was shy around me.
