Chapter 3 - The Report Was Real
Police arrested Michael and Linda that night.
Robert was questioned and released pending further investigation.
Ashley gave a statement.
I was not allowed to read it.
Good.
For once, nobody wanted my reaction before collecting facts.
The paternity report became evidence.
It was not printed at home.
Not a crude forgery.
The laboratory existed.
The specimen numbers existed.
My name was attached to one sample.
Michael’s to another.
And the conclusion was exactly what Linda had screamed at me.
Michael was excluded as the biological father.
My attorney, Maya Collins, put the report on the table between us.
I stared at it.
“There’s no other man.”
“I believe you.”
“That doesn’t make this disappear.”
“No.”
I had married Michael five years earlier.
I had never cheated.
Not emotionally.
Not physically.
Not once.
We had spent two years trying to conceive.
That part mattered.
At twenty-eight, Michael had survived testicular cancer.
Surgery.
Chemotherapy.
Before treatment, he banked sperm because doctors warned fertility might be affected.
Three years later, when we wanted a child, testing showed his fertility was severely impaired.
So we used IVF.
His frozen sperm.
My eggs.
Our embryo.
At least that was what we had been told.
I looked at Maya.
“This baby was conceived in a clinic.”
She wrote something down.
“Which clinic?”
“Riverside Fertility Center.”
Her pen stopped.
“Riverside?”
“Yes.”
“Any connection to Michael’s family?”
“Robert helped fund one of their expansion projects.”
“How involved?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer started becoming embarrassing.
I had married into a family with money spread across dozens of companies.
Medical offices.
Commercial real estate.
Private lending.
I learned not to ask how every piece connected.
Michael usually said:
“Dad handles that side.”
I used to think that meant Robert handled investments.
Now the phrase sounded different.
Maya asked:
“Did Michael know about this paternity report before the confrontation?”
“I think Linda showed him that morning.”
“You think?”
I remembered his face in the garden.
Not rage.
Fear.
Something else.
“He wasn’t surprised enough.”
Maya looked up.
That thought had arrived too late.
When Linda shoved the report toward me, Michael never asked whether it could be wrong.
He never said:
We used IVF.
He never asked:
How did anyone even get Sarah’s sample?
He simply looked at the page.
May you like
Then at me.
As though he had been waiting for it.
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