Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO MADE THE EMBRYOSElena Marquez looked like someone who had not slept in weeks.
She was forty-two, according to Detective Ortiz, although fear had aged her.
Her dark hair was tied in a careless knot. She kept staring at the door.
Ortiz searched her bag before allowing her near me.
Elena sat beside my bed.
“I’m sorry.”
I had heard that phrase too many times.
“Tell me the truth.”
She nodded.
“I worked at Brighton for eleven years.”
“You created my embryos?”
“Some of them.”
“My real embryos?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Her eyes filled.
“The third cycle produced two blastocysts. They were poor quality.”
“I know.”
“No, Claire. You were told they were good quality.”
I stared at her.
She explained that my third IVF cycle had failed before transfer.
Grant had been informed.
I had not.
Dr. Reeve had been preparing to tell me when Richard Whitmore intervened.
“How does a real-estate investor intervene in a fertility clinic?”
“He had influence.”
“Money.”
“Yes.”
Richard proposed using donor eggs.
I had previously refused.
That should have ended the discussion.
It didn’t.
“Grant agreed?”
Elena looked down.
“Yes.”
The word cut deeper than I expected.
“Vanessa donated them?”
Elena hesitated.
“She provided eggs.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
The detective leaned forward.
“Explain.”
Elena clasped her hands.
“At the time, Vanessa was enrolled as an anonymous donor under an internal identification code.”
“Why anonymous if Grant knew her?”
“That was part of the fraud.”
“But she is the biological mother.”
Elena looked at my stomach.
“I don’t know.”
Every hair on my arms rose.
“The DNA says I’m not.”
“Yes.”
“And Grant is the father.”
“Yes.”
“So whose eggs?”
“Embryos 7A and 7B were labeled as Vanessa’s.”
“Labeled?”
“The chain-of-custody records were manipulated.”
By whom?
Elena had spent months trying to answer that.
Brighton maintained genetic screening data for donor eggs.
When Vanessa began threatening the Whitmores earlier that year, Elena secretly compared her archived profile with the embryos’ preimplantation screening.
They did not match.
Vanessa wasn’t the genetic mother.
I stared at her.
“So the woman who thinks these babies are hers…”
“May not be.”
“Then why did she push me?”
“Because she believed they were.”
Vanessa had donated eggs under an agreement organized through Richard’s attorneys.
She expected anonymity.
Then she began an affair with Grant.
Or perhaps the affair had already begun.
Nobody seemed certain.
Once I became pregnant, Vanessa became increasingly obsessed.
“She contacted the clinic constantly,” Elena said. “She wanted ultrasound information. Due dates. She wanted to know whether they were boys.”
“That’s how she knew my medical history.”
“Yes.”
Grant had been feeding Vanessa updates.
And Brighton employees had violated my privacy.
But something else had happened inside the laboratory.
On the morning of my transfer, Elena had prepared two embryos from Vanessa’s donor batch.
She left the lab for sixteen minutes because an alarm malfunctioned in another cryogenic storage room.
When she returned, Dr. Reeve was there.
So was another embryologist, Nathan Cole.
The embryos had already been moved.
“I questioned it.”
“What did Reeve say?”
“That Richard Whitmore had requested a final genetic quality-control review.”
“And you believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
She looked ashamed.
Months later, after Vanessa began demanding proof of maternity, Elena accessed backup lab data.
Embryos 7A and 7B matched Grant.
But not Vanessa.
“Who matched the eggs?”
“We didn’t have a name.”
“Why not?”
“Because the profile was stored under a research code.”
Ortiz asked, “Can you identify the code?”
Elena nodded.
“R-17.”
Maya opened her notebook.
“What does R mean?”
“Research archive.”
I felt suddenly cold.
Brighton had participated in several ovarian-tissue research programs.
Women undergoing procedures sometimes consented to donate unused cells for research.
But research material could never legally be used for reproduction without explicit consent.
“Are you telling me someone used a research donor’s eggs to create my babies?”
“I’m telling you that is what the genetic profile suggests.”
My stomach rolled.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena reached into her coat.
Ortiz stopped her.
Slowly, Elena removed a folded photograph.
It showed a Brighton staff holiday dinner.
Dr. Reeve.
Nathan Cole.
Vanessa.
Several nurses.
And Richard Whitmore.
But the person standing beside Richard made me stop breathing.
A woman around sixty.
Silver-blond hair.
Pearl earrings.
Perfect posture.
My mother.
Margaret Sinclair.
I hadn’t spoken to her in nearly three years.
“What is she doing there?”
Elena stared at me.
“You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Your mother was on Brighton’s ethics advisory board.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because reality had become absurd.
“My mother lives in Connecticut. She runs a museum foundation.”
“She used to be a geneticist.”
I knew that.
Before I was born, Mom had earned a doctorate in molecular biology.
She abandoned academia when my grandfather died and she inherited the Sinclair Foundation.
“What does my mother have to do with R-17?”
“I don’t know.”
But Elena knew one more thing.
The R-17 material had entered Brighton’s research archive twenty-eight years earlier.
I was thirty-seven.
Vanessa was thirty-two.
The donor could not be either of us.
Maya asked the obvious question.
“Can the archived genetic profile identify the donor?”
“Possibly, through relatives.”
I thought about my mother.
Her genetics background.
Her connection to Brighton.
My hands turned cold.
“No.”
Maya saw my expression.
“What?”
I looked at Elena.
“When I was nine, my mother had ovarian cancer.”
Elena became very still.
“She had one ovary removed.”
Nobody spoke.
My mother had undergone treatment at a university hospital affiliated with Brighton’s founding physician.
Suddenly Elena’s face changed.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
She looked almost afraid to answer.
“R-17 may not stand for Research Seventeen.”
“What else?”
“In the old archive system, the first letter sometimes identified the physician.”
“Which physician?”
“Dr. Samuel Reeve.”
Malcolm Reeve’s father.
The man who had treated my mother.
I felt the room contract around me.
“Are these babies my mother’s?”
Maya immediately interrupted.
“We don’t know that.”
But the possibility existed.
And somehow that possibility was more horrifying than Vanessa.
Because if the eggs belonged to my mother, then genetically—
I stopped.
I could not even form the thought.
Dr. Warren could.
When we explained everything, she ordered comparative testing.
My mother initially refused to come.
Maya threatened to subpoena her.
Twenty-four hours later, Margaret Sinclair walked into my hospital room wearing a cream wool coat and the expression she used when other people inconvenienced her.
She looked at my bruised face.
At my fractured shoulder.
At my pregnant stomach.
And began to cry.
That frightened me more than anything.
“Mom.”
She covered her mouth.
“What did you do?”
Her face collapsed.
“Claire…”
“What did you do?”
“I thought they destroyed them.”
The room went silent.
“What?”
“When I was twenty-eight, before my cancer treatment, I froze eggs.”
My heart hammered.
“With Brighton?”
“With Samuel Reeve’s research program.”
“You never told me.”
“I was ashamed of how frightened I was. Medicine was different then.”
“Were they supposed to use them?”
“No.”
The answer came instantly.
“Never.”
“So you didn’t authorize this.”
“No.”
For the first time since my fall, I believed someone completely.
My mother sat beside me and held my hand.
The genetic results returned the following afternoon.
Dr. Warren entered with Monica.
She did not sit down this time.
“Claire, we have a match.”
I gripped my mother’s fingers.
“The fetal maternal DNA is consistent with Margaret Sinclair as the oocyte source.”
My mother began sobbing.
I couldn’t.
I felt too numb.
Genetically, the twins I carried were my mother’s sons.
Biologically, they were my half-brothers.
Legally, emotionally, physically—
they were my children.
I had carried them for seven months.
And somebody had created them from my husband and my mother.
Without either woman’s informed consent.
Grant knew donor eggs were being used.
But had he known whose?
Before I could ask, Maya’s phone rang.
She answered.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She listened.
Then looked at me.
“Vanessa was released on bail two hours ago.”
My stomach tightened.
“Okay.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“What is?”
“She disappeared.”
Detective Ortiz stood.
Maya continued.
“And Brighton’s former medical director, Malcolm Reeve, was found dead this morning.”
I stared at her.
“Where?”
“In his car.”
“Suicide?”
“They don’t think so.”
The twins moved beneath my hand.
May you like
Then Maya said the words that pulled the whole nightmare into a darker place.
“Police found your name written on a piece of paper in his pocket.”
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