Chapter 5 - THE EMBRYOS THAT WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO MOVE
I do not remember sitting down.
One moment I was standing outside Unit 214.
The next I was on the concrete floor with my back against the opposite wall.
Daria crouched in front of me.
"Angela, look at me."
I did.
"This is a copy."
I could barely understand her.
"We do not know whether the transfer happened."
I stared at the paperwork inside the unit.
"It has my signature."
"A forged signature."
"It looks like mine."
"So did the line-of-credit application."
Her voice stayed calm.
"That does not make it yours."
Todd stood in the storage unit with both hands on his head.
"Why would Megan want Angela's embryos?"
Nobody answered him.
Because every possible answer was horrifying.
The police officer called a supervisor.
The unit was sealed.
We were instructed not to remove anything while detectives obtained a warrant.
Daria immediately called Charlotte Reproductive Medicine.
The clinic's legal department joined the call within twenty minutes.
At first, they would confirm almost nothing.
Then Daria sent them the police report number and a photograph of the transfer form.
The attorney on the call became very quiet.
"Mrs. Dorsey," she said, "I need to verify your identity before I discuss protected records."
I answered every question.
Date of birth.
Address.
Last four digits of my Social Security number.
The name of our reproductive endocrinologist.
The date of our last transfer.
Then the attorney asked me to hold.
Eight minutes passed.
When she returned, another person was on the line.
Dr. Helen Shah.
The physician who had treated Nick and me.
"Angela," she said softly.
My throat closed.
"Dr. Shah."
"I am so sorry about Nicholas."
For a moment, I hated him all over again.
Not because he was dead.
Because people still spoke his name gently while I was finding forged documents beside photographs of myself.
Dr. Shah continued.
"I reviewed your cryostorage record."
I closed my eyes.
"Were embryos transferred?"
There was a pause.
"A transfer request was initiated seven months ago."
"Were they moved?"
"No."
Air rushed out of me.
I started crying before I realized I was crying.
Daria put a hand on my shoulder.
Two embryos.
Still there.
Still ours.
Still untouched.
Dr. Shah explained that the clinic had rejected the paperwork because its policy required live video verification from both genetic contributors for third-party transfers.
Someone had tried to satisfy that requirement.
A woman had appeared on a video call claiming to be me.
The lighting was poor.
The connection repeatedly failed.
The nurse became suspicious when the woman could not answer a question about our treatment history.
The clinic froze the request and demanded an in-person appointment.
The nurse who handled the suspicious video call had written a contemporaneous note.
Patient appeared unfamiliar with prior cycle details.
Could not identify treating physician without prompting.
Requested expedited release despite incomplete verification.
Voice did not match prior telephone interactions.
I read the note three times.
A stranger at a clinic had protected my consent because she remembered how I sounded.
That moved me more than I expected.
Megan had known my childhood, my handwriting, my address, and my security questions.
The nurse knew only my voice.
Somehow, that had been enough to recognize I was missing from my own decision.
No one came.
"Why didn't you call me?" I asked.
Dr. Shah sounded pained.
"We did."
"No one called me."
"Three messages were left on the mobile number listed on the transfer request."
I felt cold again.
"What number?"
She read it.
It was not mine.
Todd swore softly.
Daria wrote it down.
"Do you recognize that number?" she asked him.
He shook his head.
I did.
I had seen it in Nick's phone under a fake contact name.
SERVICE TECH.
It was one of the numbers he texted late at night.
Daria asked the clinic to preserve every email, call log, video recording, IP address, and document related to the attempted transfer.
Then she asked the question I was afraid to ask.
"Was Megan Harper listed as the intended recipient?"
Dr. Shah hesitated.
"The receiving paperwork identified a patient named Megan Harper at the Greensboro facility."
Todd sat down beside me.
"She tried to take your embryos."
His voice was barely audible.
I thought of Megan holding Knox.
I thought of her telling twenty-five people that her son belonged to my husband.
I thought of her saying I hated him because I could never have children.
The cruelty was no longer random.
It had architecture.
Daria ended the call and immediately contacted the Greensboro clinic.
They would not discuss patient records without legal process.
That was expected.
What we did not expect was a call from Detective Lena Morales two hours later.
She had been assigned to the home burglary and bank fraud because the cases were now clearly connected.
She met us at my house.
Morales was compact, direct, and uninterested in family drama unless it produced evidence.
I liked her immediately.
She sat at my kitchen table and asked for a complete timeline.
I gave it to her.
The hidden credit card.
Nick's death.
The six women.
The voicemail.
Megan's birthday-party announcement.
The fake will.
Gerald.
The attempted bank draw.
The storage unit.
The embryo paperwork.
Morales listened without interrupting.
Then she asked one question.
"Who benefits if Mrs. Dorsey is financially ruined?"
Daria answered first.
"Someone trying to force a settlement."
Todd looked at me.
"Megan."
I said nothing.
Morales tapped her pen against her notebook.
"Or someone trying to make a fraudulent estate claim look cheaper than fighting."
That made sense.
If I believed my house was buried under debt, if I believed Nick's estate was insolvent, if I believed my embryos had been taken, maybe forty percent would begin to sound like survival instead of theft.
Megan did not need to win in court.
She needed to terrify me before court.
At 3:40 p.m., my father called.
I let it ring.
He called again.
Then my mother.
Then Aunt Rebecca.
Finally, Daria said, "Someone told them something."
I answered my father's fourth call.
He did not say hello.
"Angela, you need to stop the police from treating Megan like a criminal."
I actually laughed.
"Dad, there were forged documents in a storage unit rented in Todd's name."
"She says Gerald handled all of that."
"She says a lot of things."
"She is your sister."
"And Nick was my husband."
My voice rose for the first time.
"That did not stop either of them."
My father went quiet.
Then he said the sentence that split something open inside me.
"Megan has a baby to think about. You don't."
Daria's eyes closed.
Todd looked away.
I stared at the wall.
"Say that again."
"Angela, that's not what I meant."
"Say it again."
"I meant there is an innocent child involved."
"There were innocent children involved when she tried to steal my embryos."
My father did not answer.
The silence told me more than any denial could have.
My parents had not known the mechanics.
They had not watched Megan copy my signature.
They had not arranged a courier.
But they had accepted a version of events in which my reproductive material was somehow available for negotiation because I had not used it quickly enough.
That realization hurt in a different place.
I had spent years protecting them from the full ugliness of infertility.
I did not tell them every hormone level.
I did not describe every failed transfer.
I did not explain how long I sat in the clinic bathroom after negative bloodwork because I could not bear to walk past pregnant strangers in the lobby.
They saw only that Nick and I had stopped treatment.
Megan filled the silence with her own story.
Angela is done with the embryos.
Angela will never use them.
Angela has moved on.
Maybe my parents wanted to believe something useful could come from what they thought I had abandoned.
But embryos are not a casserole left in a freezer after a party.
They were not family property.
They were not available because discussing them made other people uncomfortable.
When I finally spoke, my voice was quiet.
"You do not get to decide what I was going to do with them."
My father whispered, "I know."
"No."
I looked at the phone.
"You know now."
That difference mattered.
"Do you know about that?"
Silence.
I stood.
"Dad."
He exhaled.
"Megan said you were going to destroy them anyway."
Every sound in the kitchen disappeared.
I looked at Daria.
She had heard him.
So had Todd.
"When did she tell you that?" I asked.
My father began backtracking.
"I don't remember."
"When?"
"Months ago."
My knees weakened.
"You knew she was trying to get my embryos?"
"I did not know the details."
"You knew enough."
"Angela, listen to me."
I ended the call.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Detective Morales's phone rang.
She answered, listened, and looked directly at Todd.
"Mr. Harper, we located your wife."
Todd stood.
"Where?"
Morales's expression remained unreadable.
"At a hotel near the airport."
"Is Knox with her?"
"Yes."
He exhaled.
Then Morales continued.
"Gerald Croft is there too."
Todd's relief disappeared.
Morales looked at me.
May you like
"And they have requested to speak with Mrs. Dorsey before they surrender any devices."
