Chapter 6 - THE FAMILY PICKED SIDES
Richard’s daughter, Lauren, called me three days later.
We had never been close.
Lauren was forty, divorced, and ran a museum foundation in New Haven. Richard described her as “too sensitive for business.”
That should have told me more about Richard than Lauren.
“I need to ask you something,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Did you have an affair?”
“No.”
She breathed out.
“Did Evan ever accuse you directly?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“Dad told me the baby wasn’t Evan’s.”
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
Exactly when Richard’s behavior changed.
“What did he say?”
“That Evan had proof.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What proof?”
“A lab report.”
Everything inside me went still.
“I’ve never had a paternity test.”
Lauren was silent.
Then: “Claire, I saw the report.”
“What did it say?”
“That Evan was excluded.”
I stood from Natalie’s couch.
“That report is fake.”
“I don’t know what it is. I’m telling you what I saw.”
“Who showed it to you?”
“Dad.”
“Who gave it to him?”
“You already know.”
Evan.
The relationship shifted in that call.
Lauren had spent days believing I had betrayed her brother.
Now she was unsure.
That was enough.
“I need a copy,” I said.
“I don’t have one.”
“Can you get it?”
She hesitated.
“If Dad finds out I’m helping you—”
“I’m not asking you to steal anything.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t.”
Another pause.
“I can tell investigators I saw it.”
That mattered more.
Meanwhile, Evan’s attorneys responded to the separation filing.
They argued that I was using a “marital dispute” to damage Richard’s company.
They pointed to prenatal messages where I complained about anxiety and insomnia.
They highlighted a text I once sent Evan:
I don’t even know what’s real anymore. I’m exhausted.
I had written it after three nights of barely sleeping.
Now it appeared in legal correspondence as evidence that I might be unstable.
The tactic worked on at least one person.
My mother called from Pennsylvania.
“Could you have misunderstood something on the boat?”
I nearly hung up.
Instead I said, “Mom, I have an audio file.”
“I know. But people say things when they’re fighting.”
“Richard blocked me from leaving.”
“Evan says he was trying to calm things down.”
That hurt more than I expected.
I had reached the stage of family betrayal where every old relationship had to decide whether my discomfort was more inconvenient than the facts.
Natalie did not hesitate.
Lauren started moving toward me.
My mother stayed uncertain.
Evan weaponized that uncertainty.
Then the fertility clinic called.
Their privacy review found something.
Someone had requested copies of Evan’s old fertility records six weeks earlier.
The request included a signed authorization.
Evan’s signature.
That was legal.
But attached to the request was a second demand.
A request for genetic information associated with my pregnancy.
The clinic refused because it did not have any.
The person who submitted the request was not a doctor.
Not Richard.
Not a lawyer.
North Sound Advisory.
Evan’s shell company.
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The false paternity story and the money story were no longer separate.
They were the same story.
