Chapter 8 - The Edited Ultrasound
Arthur swore he had never touched an ultrasound report.
When Mara showed him the metadata, he looked less offended than terrified.
"Nathan used my computer whenever he visited."
"You also gave him your passwords," Mara said.
Arthur looked down.
He had shared access freely because Nathan was family and because convenience mattered more to him than controls.
Now his carelessness had become a pathway for alleged fraud.
Priya demonstrated that the altered file had been saved through Arthur's account, but the associated device identifier belonged to a laptop issued to Nathan's studio.
That was evidence of access, not conclusive proof of authorship.
Investigators would have to establish who had been at the keyboard.
I asked Arthur a question I had postponed since the first photograph.
"When did you start seeing Brooke?"
His face tightened.
"A little over a year ago."
"Before the anniversary trip?"
He nodded.
I remembered that trip.
We had stood on a balcony above the sea and spoken about adoption, about whether our marriage could be enough without children.
He had held my hand and told me there was no hurry.
All the while, he had been sleeping with my best friend.
"Did you ever think about telling me?"
"I was afraid you'd leave."
"So you waited until you believed you had replacements."
He had no defense for that sentence.
I pushed my chair away.
"I need you to leave now."
He remained seated.
"Please.
I need you to believe I didn't know about Nathan."
"I believe you didn't know everything.
That isn't the same as innocence."
He left without asking again.
Later, Mara received a sworn declaration from the fertility coordinator, a woman named Elise Warren.
Elise said she had been hired to arrange a transfer involving donated genetic material and a gestational carrier.
The paperwork named Brooke as the intended recipient of services.
Nathan handled billing and communications.
Elise said she never spoke with me and had assumed my authorization had been verified by the clinic.
The detail explained why an intermediary might have facilitated the process without ever noticing my absence.
But her declaration carried another surprise.
A separate donor form identified Nathan as the intended biological father only if the frozen embryos failed.
That form had been activated three weeks before Brooke conceived.
There had been two separate plans.
One involved stolen embryos.
The other involved Nathan.
One of them had succeeded.
Elise had asked Brooke which route to use.
Brooke's written reply consisted of five words.
"Whichever gives us the twins."
At 11:48 p.m., a detective called Mara.
The original embryo container had been located in a clinic's discarded-storage inventory.
It was sealed and unused.
Which meant Brooke's babies were not the result of the embryos taken from me.
May you like
But someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to make me believe they might be.
