Chapter 8
For the first time, the possibility changed shape.
Until then, I had believed Glen stole our embryo.
Now I had to consider that he and Clara might have created one without me.
A fresh embryo could have been created using Glen’s sperm and Clara’s eggs. But the timing did not fit easily. Egg retrieval required medication, monitoring, and a procedure that Ariel might have noticed. A genetically tested embryo would usually require additional time before transfer.
Unless the embryo had been created earlier.
Or unless the record was false.
Rebecca warned me against making accusations before the source was verified.
Northlake reported that the scanned sheet bore an old clinic logo and had been uploaded to my account two months earlier using Nadine Cole’s employee credentials.
The original paper document had not yet been found.
The blacked-out name was not a lawful privacy redaction. It appeared to have been electronically covered before upload.
Detective Ruiz obtained a warrant for Nadine’s work computer and clinic-issued phone.
Nadine herself had disappeared.
Not vanished in the cinematic sense. Adults were allowed to leave town. She had sent a resignation email, emptied her apartment, and stopped answering calls. Her sister told police that Nadine was visiting friends but did not know where.
The timing made her absence suspicious.
It did not make her guilty.
Clara agreed to meet me.
The meeting occurred in Rebecca’s office with attorneys present. Clara brought a lawyer named Vivian Ross and wore a loose cream dress that revealed no sign of pregnancy.
Her tattoo remained hidden.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
I had known her since she was five.
I remembered braiding her hair before middle school, driving her to urgent care after she broke her wrist, and lending her money when her salon failed.
Now every memory felt contaminated by questions.
Clara began.
“Glen said you signed.”
“You said that already.”
“He showed me papers.”
“Did he tell you he watched me sign them?”
“No.”
“Did you ask me?”
“He said you didn’t want to discuss it.”
“That sounded believable?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“You stopped discussing the embryo years ago.”
“So you agreed to carry it in secret?”
“I thought the secrecy was temporary.”
“How temporary?”
“Until the pregnancy was stable.”
“And then what? You would appear at my door carrying my child?”
Clara looked down.
“Glen said we would tell you together.”
“After it was too late for me to object.”
Vivian placed a hand over Clara’s wrist.
“My client is here voluntarily. She is not required to endure hostile questioning.”
Rebecca answered evenly.
“Then your client may leave.”
Clara did not move.
I asked about the genetic source record.
She looked genuinely confused.
“Glen told me it was your embryo.”
“Did you undergo an egg retrieval?”
“No.”
“Did you provide eggs at any time?”
“No.”
“Did you and Glen have sex?”
Her face changed.
The silence was answer enough.
“How long?” I asked.
“It wasn’t—”
“How long?”
“Twice.”
The word cut more deeply than a number would have.
“Before or after the transfer?”
“Before.”
“When?”
“March.”
The month of the forged notary acknowledgment.
Clara began crying.
“It happened after he told me you wanted a divorce.”
I looked at Glen’s absence reflected in every part of her explanation.
“I never told him that.”
“He said you were waiting until the company situation settled.”
“So you slept with him.”
“I was drunk the first time.”
“And the second?”
She closed her eyes.
“I was not.”
Her honesty arrived too late to be kindness.
“Why the tattoo?”
Clara touched her lower stomach.
“It was stupid.”
“That is not an explanation.”
“Glen said the compass meant finding your way back to what belonged to you.”
“To him?”
“To family.”
“And the heartbeat?”
She looked toward her lawyer.
Vivian nodded once.
Clara spoke more quietly.
“He wanted something permanent to mark the transfer. He said one day the three of us would laugh about how dramatic it seemed.”
“The three of us?”
“You, me, and him.”
There was something almost childlike in the fantasy.
Not innocence.
Avoidance.
Clara had accepted a version of reality in which I would forgive the theft because the result was a baby.
“Why did you receive almost half a million dollars?”
Her head snapped up.
“I didn’t.”
Rebecca slid copies of the bank transfers across the table.
Clara stared at them.
“Vale Strategic Consulting is your company,” I said.
“I formed it because Glen told me the surrogacy payments had to be processed through a business for confidentiality.”
“Did you receive the money?”
“Some of it.”
“How much?”
“Eighty thousand.”
“Where is the rest?”
“I don’t know.”
The company account, Clara explained, had been created with Glen’s assistance. He controlled the online banking. She received scheduled transfers to cover rent, medical appointments, and compensation.
She believed the total contract payment was $140,000.
She had never seen $497,000.
Rebecca asked whether she would authorize the release of her Northlake records and undergo noninvasive prenatal testing.
Vivian requested a private consultation.
When they returned, Clara agreed to release records relating to the transfer but not her full medical history. She would consider blood-based prenatal parentage testing after consultation with an independent obstetrician.
“That test carries no risk to the pregnancy,” I said.
“The blood draw does not,” Vivian replied. “The interpretation, chain of custody, privacy, and legal consequences require care.”
Clara stared at me.
“I want to know too.”
For one moment, we were connected by the same fear.
Then she added, “Because if it isn’t yours, Glen lied to both of us.”
The sentence exposed the boundary of her remorse.
She still understood betrayal primarily through what had been done to her.
After the meeting, Rebecca received preliminary records from Northlake under Clara’s authorization.
The transfer note identified the specimen as Embryo D.
The procedure was performed by Dr. Priya Shah, a reproductive endocrinologist who relied on identity confirmations entered by the embryology laboratory.
Dr. Shah’s note stated that she verbally confirmed the intended parents as Glen and Mara Bennett.
Clara had not corrected her.
When I confronted Clara through the open conference-room door, she whispered, “Glen told me Mara was the legal name they had to use.”
“Why?”
“He said the trust would not recognize the baby otherwise.”
There it was.
She had known the paperwork was designed to create a legal fiction.
Maybe she had not known my signature was forged.
But she knew the truth was being bent around money.
Before leaving, Clara handed Rebecca a flash drive.
“I copied this from the account Glen told me to use,” she said. “I didn’t open everything.”
“What is on it?” Rebecca asked.
“Emails. Invoices. A folder named after the embryo.”
That night, a forensic consultant created a verified copy before opening the files.
Inside the folder were medication schedules, clinic messages, and a spreadsheet tracking trust requirements.
There was also a video.
It showed Glen sitting in our home office, speaking directly to the camera.
“I, Glen Bennett, confirm that my wife, Mara Bennett, has consented to the transfer of our remaining embryo to Clara Vale.”
He paused.
Then he looked toward someone offscreen.
“Is that enough, Nadine?”
A woman answered.
“No. We still need Mara’s video.”
May you like
Glen smiled.
“Give me a week. I can make her say anything.”
