Chapter 12 - Michael Asked Whether He Was Still the Father
Our mediated conversation happened before the baby was born.
Michael looked twenty years older.
Protective order conditions remained in place.
No physical contact.
No private conversation.
He looked at my stomach.
Then away.
“I’m sorry.”
I said nothing.
“I should have believed you.”
“No.”
He looked confused.
“That’s not the main thing.”
“What is?”
“You knew there could be another explanation.”
His face collapsed.
“My dad said the chance was tiny.”
“So?”
“I had that report.”
“So?”
“It said zero percent.”
“And Riverside said their records might be wrong.”
Michael rubbed both hands over his face.
“I thought you’d cheated.”
“You wanted me to have cheated.”
He stared.
“That’s not fair.”
“Yes, it is.”
I leaned forward.
“Because if I cheated, you were humiliated.”
He swallowed.
“If the clinic made a mistake, then you were powerless.”
Silence.
“And you would rather punish me than sit inside uncertainty.”
Michael cried.
I did not.
Then he asked:
“If the baby isn’t mine genetically…”
He stopped.
“What?”
“Am I still his father?”
That question was bigger than either of us.
We had consented together to assisted reproduction.
We had intended to create a child together.
But a laboratory error introduced genetics neither of us agreed to.
Attorneys explained that legal parentage would require analysis under the state’s assisted-reproduction and family-law rules.
DNA alone did not answer every legal question.
But Michael was asking something else.
Moral.
Relational.
I looked at him.
“You stopped being safe before we learned anything about DNA.”
He closed his eyes.
“That’s the question you need to answer first.”
Not:
Is he mine?
May you like
But:
What kind of father could I ever safely be?
