Chapter 2 - What Cole Already Knew
Security removed Megan from the maternity floor twenty minutes later.
She wasn’t arrested.
Brooke asked that the assault be documented, and hospital staff photographed the redness on her cheek and neck after explaining the process. A social worker named Dana Wells stayed while Brooke gave a brief statement.
Cole remained near the window.
He had not touched the baby.
He had not touched Brooke.
The white folder sat unopened on the counter between them.
Finally Brooke said, “You knew something.”
Cole looked at her.
“Not this.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
His jaw tightened.
Brooke had known Cole for twelve years, since the first Thanksgiving Megan brought him home. He was usually incapable of sitting still when frightened. He cleaned countertops. Checked locks. Reorganized whatever was nearest.
Now he stood perfectly still.
That frightened her more.
“Megan’s last retrieval failed,” he said.
Brooke blinked.
Megan had told everyone they still had two embryos frozen from an earlier cycle.
“We used donor eggs.”
Brooke stared at him.
Cole rubbed both hands over his face.
“I knew that much.”
“You let me believe I was carrying Megan’s child.”
“Megan told me you knew.”
Brooke gave a small, humorless laugh.
Cole flinched.
“She said the agency had explained everything,” he continued. “She said you didn’t want donor details because it might make the pregnancy emotionally complicated.”
“You believed that?”
“I wanted to.”
There it was.
Not innocence.
Cowardice.
Cole had spent five years watching Megan endure injections, retrievals, one miscarriage and two failed transfers. When her doctor finally told them another retrieval was unlikely to produce usable eggs, Cole had stopped asking questions because every question seemed to lead to another loss.
Megan handled the paperwork.
Cole signed what she put in front of him.
Brooke had always considered his passivity kindness.
Now she understood how convenient it had been.
“When did you know they were donor eggs?”
“Before the embryos were created.”
“And you never asked me whether Megan told me?”
“No.”
Brooke looked toward the bassinet.
The baby had settled again, one fist beside his face.
Megan and Cole had already named him Owen.
Brooke had whispered the name to him during contractions because she believed she was helping deliver her nephew.
Now even the word nephew felt unstable.
Dana returned with water and told Brooke the hospital could restrict Megan from visiting. Because Cole was already listed under the existing parentage documents, hospital staff could continue coordinating newborn care with him while the attorneys reviewed the new dispute.
No one promised a legal answer.
No one pretended the folder created one.
That helped.
Reality was frightening enough without false certainty.
After Dana left, Cole opened the file again.
Most pages contained abbreviations Brooke did not understand.
One line caught her eye.
OOCYTE SOURCE: DONOR B-417.
Brooke stopped breathing.
“What?” Cole asked.
She shook her head.
“Nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing.
Eight years earlier, when Brooke was twenty-four and struggling with student loans, she had donated eggs through a fertility bank in Boston.
Megan had driven her home after the retrieval.
Brooke had not thought about the donor number in years.
She could not remember all of it.
Only the beginning.
B.
Four.
Something.
Cole saw her face.
“Brooke?”
She reached for her phone.
“I need Nora to get something from my apartment.”
“What?”
May you like
Brooke looked again at the donor code.
“My old egg-donation records.”
