Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN I HAD EVERY REASON TO HATE
Allison called me directly.
I almost declined.
Then curiosity won.
“I’m not asking you to help me,” she said.
“Good.”
“I’m asking what David knew.”
“About his fertility?”
“Yes.”
“For years.”
Silence.
“He told me he’d never had any issues.”
Of course.
“He told me you needed fertility treatments because of recurrent miscarriages.”
I closed my eyes.
“That’s not the whole story.”
Allison began crying.
I did not comfort her.
“Did you tell David your dates were certain?”
“Yes.”
“Were they?”
Long pause.
“I thought they were.”
“That isn’t the same answer.”
“No.”
She admitted she had stopped hormonal birth control several months earlier because it made her sick.
She and Ryan Mercer had still been sleeping together intermittently while she was beginning the affair with David.
“Did David know?”
“He knew Ryan and I were still untangling things.”
“Did he know you were sleeping with both of them?”
“No.”
“Does Ryan?”
Another pause.
“Not yet.”
I almost laughed at the symmetry.
Everybody protecting someone else from information until the truth became more dangerous.
“Why tell me?”
“Because Margaret says you manipulated the ultrasound.”
“How exactly would I do that?”
“I know.”
She sounded exhausted.
“And David thinks you somehow knew.”
“I didn’t.”
“I believe you.”
I did not know what to do with that.
Allison was the woman my husband chose over me.
She had lied.
She had slept with a married man knowing he had two children.
She had also become the newest woman inside a family that turned uncertainty into a test of loyalty.
I could hate what she did without needing her destroyed.
“You need your own doctor and your own lawyer,” I said.
“I have both.”
“Good.”
“Do you think the baby is David’s?”
“I have no idea.”
“He thinks you know something.”
“David thinks information is dangerous when he doesn’t control it.”
Allison went quiet.
“Did he do that to you too?”
That question was harder than it should have been.
“Yes.”
After the call, I told Erin everything.
“You should probably stop talking to Allison directly.”
“Agreed.”
The practical consequences continued.
David’s family trust amendment was paused.
William refused to finalize any inheritance changes until paternity was confirmed after birth or through whatever lawful prenatal testing Allison chose with medical guidance.
Margaret blamed me.
Allison blamed Margaret.
David blamed Ryan.
Ryan, once contacted by Allison, apparently blamed everyone.
I concentrated on Noah and Lily.
Noah asked why his father sounded sad.
“Adults are working through something.”
“Is it because of the baby?”
I looked at him.
“Some of it.”
“Do I still have to be his brother?”
My heart broke a little.
“If the baby is part of your family, nobody gets to make you responsible for the adults.”
Noah nodded.
That was the opposite of how the Coles operated.
May you like
Children existed inside family expectations before they could speak.
I wanted my son to understand he was allowed to be eight.
Related Stories
