Chapter 5 - The Safe in the Basement
Kenneth and I kept one fire-resistant safe in the basement.
Both our names were on the purchase receipt.
Both of us knew the combination.
He stored passports, insurance records, house documents, and sentimental things he believed were too valuable for drawers.
After the court entered a temporary preservation order, my attorney arranged for agreed retrieval and documentation of personal records from the house.
I was not alone.
A neutral property professional was present.
Inside the safe, beneath our marriage certificate, we found a folder labeled DTC.
Denver Tech Center.
The fertility clinic.
It contained three versions of the embryo-disposition form.
One had no signatures.
One had Kenneth’s.
The final version had my forged signature and Maya’s witness signature.
Beside them were bank records showing transfers from our joint savings to an account owned by Maya.
$8,500.
$11,200.
$6,400.
All within five months.
The memo lines were disguised as consulting payments to an interior-design business Maya had closed two years earlier.
Luke had never seen them.
Neither had I.
Another envelope contained invoices from a reproductive-law attorney in Boulder.
Those invoices did not mention destroying embryos.
They referenced “consent dispute,” “future genetic material claims,” and “risk mitigation before marital dissolution.”
Claire read the pages twice.
“Kenneth was preparing for an embryo fight before he filed for divorce.”
“Why pay Maya?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The answer came partly from Maya herself.
Through her attorney, she sent a written statement claiming Kenneth paid her because she had been “assisting with confidential family planning.”
Family planning.
The woman sleeping with my husband had signed documents about embryos created from my eggs.
Then Luke found something on an old shared tax drive.
Maya had received reimbursement from Kenneth for a private gynecology appointment.
He confronted her.
She finally admitted she and Kenneth had discussed having a child.
Not someday.
Now.
“But not using your embryos,” Luke told me quickly, as if that distinction could save something.
I looked at the forged discard form.
Kenneth wanted my embryos gone while paying for Maya’s medical appointments.
The hidden truth had started surfacing.
But one piece still made no sense.
If Kenneth simply wanted to leave me for Maya, why had he spent months making me look mentally unstable instead of filing for divorce?
May you like
Claire answered quietly.
“Because he needed something from you first.”
