Chapter 5 - The Sister Who Said She Was Protecting Me
Rebecca arrived furious.
Not frightened.
That almost reassured me.
Guilty people sometimes arrive angry because anger lets them control the first five minutes.
My sister had spent her life being better at first five minutes than almost anyone I knew.
“Nathan, you put lawyers into Mom’s medical history?”
“This isn’t Mom’s medical history.”
“You’re treating her like a criminal.”
“Did you authorize an embryo release?”
She stopped.
Evelyn was in the doorway behind me carrying coffee.
Rebecca noticed her.
“Can we speak privately?”
“No.”
Her face hardened.
“I’m your sister.”
“That stopped being an answer this week.”
She sat.
Then she told me her version.
Three years earlier she discovered the cryogenic-storage payments.
Judith explained Caroline’s letter.
Rebecca was furious that I had never been told.
For months, she urged Judith to confess.
Judith refused.
Then, according to Rebecca, Caroline’s old reproductive records contained an additional instruction suggesting she had once wanted one embryo transferred to a gestational carrier if she did not survive pregnancy herself.
“Where is that instruction?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“I have a copy.”
“Original?”
“No.”
“Signed?”
“Yes.”
“By Caroline?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“At the family office.”
“Why would you have it there?”
She looked at me.
“Because Mom gave me everything.”
Then came the sentence I still could not decide whether she believed.
“I thought I was finishing what Caroline wanted.”
I stood slowly.
“You used one of our embryos?”
Rebecca shook her head immediately.
“I arranged the release. I did not perform the transfer.”
I almost laughed at the distinction.
“Who carried the pregnancy?”
“A woman named Melissa Lane.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who selected her?”
“An agency.”
“Under whose authority?”
Rebecca looked away.
There it was.
The part no explanation could soften.
“You forged my consent.”
“I did not forge anything.”
“Then who signed my name?”
“The paperwork came through a reproductive coordinator.”
“You submitted it.”
“I submitted documents I was told were sufficient.”
“By whom?”
Another pause.
“Mom’s former attorney.”
Judith denied that within an hour.
So did the attorney.
Rebecca’s version was already fracturing.
But one hidden truth had surfaced.
A woman named Melissa Lane had been pregnant with an embryo created by Caroline and me.
If the records were genuine.
If the embryo identifiers matched.
If Rebecca was not lying about something larger.
I contacted Detective Ortega.
She already knew the name.
A gray SUV registered to Melissa Lane had been found abandoned at a Stamford urgent-care center the night Lily found the baby.
Melissa had arrived alone, heavily bleeding, shortly after eight p.m.
She was transferred to a hospital.
She had given a false name at first.
Then she disappeared before police could interview her.
My skin went cold.
“She’s alive?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Not yet.”
The baby at Greenwich Hospital suddenly had a possible gestational carrier.
The case also had something else.
Rebecca had said she lost contact with Melissa days before the birth.
But phone records showed twelve calls between them in the forty-eight hours before Lily knocked on my door.
May you like
My sister had not lost contact.
She had been trying desperately to keep control of it.
