Chapter 8 - MY BEST FRIEND HAD KEPT ONE PROMISE TOO MANY
Rachel met me at my house that evening.
She did not lie.
That was the only reason I did not ask her to leave.
“Yes,” she said. “Claire spoke to me.”
“When?”
“Two weeks before the accident.”
“And you never told me?”
“She made me promise.”
I laughed.
Everyone had made promises around my life except me.
“What did she tell you?”
“Not the embryo story.”
“Then what?”
“That if anything happened to her, she wanted you to raise Lily.”
“Why?”
“She said Lily belonged with the person she should’ve known from the beginning.”
My chest tightened.
“You didn’t ask what that meant?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“She said it wasn’t her secret to tell yet.”
Rachel looked ashamed.
“I thought it was about Lily’s father.”
Reasonable.
Wrong.
“What else?”
“She gave me an envelope.”
Of course.
“Where is it?”
Rachel reached into her bag.
Still sealed.
My name.
I stared.
“You had this for three years?”
“She told me to give it to you if anyone from Hawthorne ever came back.”
“Tiffany came back.”
“Yes.”
“So now.”
“I’m sorry.”
I opened it.
Claire’s handwriting.
Jessica,
I have tried to write this six times.
If I tell you, I risk losing Lily before anyone decides what is right.
If I stay silent, I steal truth from you.
I cried before reaching the second paragraph.
Claire described the embryo transfer.
The Whitmores.
Daniel.
Tiffany’s warning.
Then:
I found you because I needed to see what kind of person you were.
That hurt.
Not maliciously.
She had investigated me too.
Then:
I planned to tell you after Lily turned one. I kept moving the date because I was afraid.
Claire knew fear was not noble.
She admitted it.
Then the sentence that broke me:
If I die before I become brave enough, please do not think I wanted to take motherhood from you. I was trying to keep Lily from becoming property in another lawsuit.
I pressed the letter against my mouth.
Rachel cried beside me.
At the bottom, Claire wrote:
Mike Carter signed away storage contact, but Daniel told me he never signed away genetic parentage. If Mike returns, be careful. He may have rights neither of you understand.
That mattered.
Mike was biologically Lily’s father.
He had never consented to the transfer either.
His wrongdoing was different.
He had withheld the embryo’s existence from me.
But Daniel had used his ambiguous storage authorization for something Mike never approved.
Legally, Mike might also be a victim of the transfer.
Emotionally, he was still the man who abandoned me.
Both could be true.
Then my phone rang.
Marissa.
The court had received an unexpected filing.
Mike had petitioned for emergency recognition as Lily’s biological father.
My hands went cold.
May you like
He had promised to give me time.
Instead, he had gone to court.
