Chapter 4 - The File About My Mind
Kenneth had been building a file.
Not a medical file.
A narrative.
He saved text messages from nights I could not sleep.
He photographed two prescription bottles from the months after my miscarriage.
He kept screenshots of arguments where I told him I hated our house, hated fertility appointments, and sometimes wished I could disappear for a week.
None of those things meant I could not make decisions about my embryos.
Taken out of context, they looked frightening.
He also had a consultation with a divorce attorney four months earlier.
His lawyer’s notes, which remained privileged, were not available to me. But the consultation date appeared on a charge Kenneth had paid from a business card he forgot I could see.
Three days later, he began asking me to sign “updated clinic paperwork.”
I refused because I wanted to read it first.
He called me paranoid.
After speaking with my own divorce lawyer, Claire Donnelly, I made the first decision that permanently changed the balance between us.
I filed for divorce.
I also requested temporary financial restraints, preservation of marital records, and an order preventing either party from acting unilaterally regarding the embryos while ownership and disposition remained disputed.
Kenneth responded within hours.
His filing described me as volatile.
Vindictive.
Medically fragile after pregnancy loss.
He cited the hospital incident as proof.
I had handed him evidence.
That was mine to own.
But he also claimed I had “repeatedly expressed a desire to destroy the embryos.”
I never had.
The clinic’s records would eventually show the opposite: I had paid storage fees from my own account two weeks before the forged request.
Luke came to my apartment that evening.
He looked as though he had not slept.
“Maya admitted the affair.”
I said nothing.
“She said it started after you told Kenneth the marriage was over.”
“I never told him that.”
“She said you wanted the embryos destroyed.”
“I didn’t.”
Luke sat down.
Then I showed him Maya’s signature.
He stared at it for a long time.
“What is this?”
“She witnessed a document pretending I agreed to discard them.”
His face changed.
“Maya told me she was helping Kenneth with fertility paperwork because you wouldn’t answer calls.”
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Did she tell you why she was in those hotel rooms?”
He stood too quickly.
“Don’t.”
“Luke—”
“I know what she did to me.”
He looked at the form again.
“I don’t know what she did to you.”
That was the first moment my brother separated the two betrayals.
May you like
And it forced him to ask a question worse than whether his wife loved someone else.
What had she helped Kenneth take from me?
