Chapter 5 - The Signature That Changed the Story
Bernadette read the consent form twice.
Colby Hale.
His signature authorized donor insemination.
His initials appeared beside a paragraph acknowledging that a resulting child would be legally and emotionally treated as his own.
Shana took the folder from Bernadette.
“He knew from the beginning.”
Bernadette felt a colder anger than the rage she'd felt in the family room.
“Then yesterday wasn't a discovery.”
“No.”
“It was punishment.”
Shana sat down.
“For years he was fine. Or he pretended to be.”
“What changed?”
“Milo started looking more like the donor as he got older. The hair. The freckles. Colby noticed.”
Bernadette remembered how often her son had joked that Milo must have inherited his copper hair from “some Viking on Shana's side.”
Everyone laughed.
Shana had not.
Another memory returned.
At Milo's seventh birthday, Colby had watched Bernadette give the boy her late husband's old baseball glove.
He had said, almost under his breath, “Funny how heirlooms work when blood doesn't.”
Bernadette had told him not to be ridiculous.
She had not asked what he meant.
Shana folded her arms.
“Then the fertility clinic sent the genetic notice.”
“And you contacted the donor behind Colby's back.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Colby threw the letter away.”
Bernadette stared at her.
Shana's voice dropped.
“He said we weren't turning Milo into some science project because of a stranger's genes.”
“So you went around him.”
“I was trying to protect my son.”
“You were protecting yourself too.”
Shana flinched.
Bernadette did not let her escape it.
“You could've called his doctor. You could've called me. You could've told Colby you were going anyway. Instead you put Milo in the middle and made him keep a secret.”
“I know.”
“No. You knew yesterday, when you hit him.”
Shana's face crumpled.
For the first time, Bernadette saw not a villain but a woman who had made one cowardly choice after another until a child became the easiest person to blame.
Then Shana said something Bernadette had not expected.
“Colby found out about the meeting three days ago.”
Bernadette stopped.
“Then what happened yesterday wasn't some sudden loss of control.”
Shana shook her head.
“No.”
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“He'd been angry for three days.”
“Yes.”
