Chapter 8 - THE STATEMENT SHE COULD NEVER TAKE BACK
Lucía left Santa Clara that afternoon.
Not because she was expelled.
Because she chose to.
The apartment belonged to the order and sat above a parish outreach office in Lancaster. It had two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a fenced backyard.
For the first time since entering religious life, Lucía had a front-door key that belonged only to her.
The next morning she met her attorney, Rachel, and a victim advocate.
Then she went to the Pennsylvania State Police.
She gave a formal statement.
I was not in the room.
Later, she told me the hardest part had not been describing the tea or the memory gaps.
It had been admitting the first pregnancy.
After Andrew died, she had spent months moving between grief and religious formation.
One night, more than three years earlier, she had told Carmen that joining Santa Clara did not erase the future she had imagined with Andrew.
A husband.
Children.
A kitchen table with homework piled across it.
Carmen told her the stored samples still existed.
Lucía initially refused.
Then, during a period when she had not yet taken permanent vows, she changed her mind.
Once.
She arranged one insemination using Andrew’s stored sperm.
Beatriz, still licensed as a nurse at the time, helped facilitate it privately.
Mateo was conceived.
Lucía told almost no one.
Not even me.
When she became pregnant, she said only that she had not slept with a man.
Technically true.
Emotionally dishonest.
“I thought you’d make me leave,” she told me.
I wanted to deny it.
I could not.
After Mateo was born, Lucía decided she would never repeat the procedure.
She wanted to raise her son and continue discerning whether religious life was still possible.
She said she had written to Keystone withdrawing authorization for any additional release.
Then Emiliano was conceived.
She had no explanation.
Carmen convinced her that perhaps she had been confused, had consented while overwhelmed, or had forgotten something during postpartum exhaustion.
Lucía had begun doubting her own memory.
Now she authorized investigators to obtain every account record, shipment request, password reset, billing charge, and release form connected to Andrew’s samples.
Signing that authorization ended any chance of keeping the first insemination private.
Her attorney asked one final time whether she understood.
Lucía looked at her children.
“Yes.”
Then she signed.
Three days later, Keystone’s preliminary records arrived.
May you like
Every shipment appeared to have been authorized through Lucía’s account.
Including the second.
Related Stories
