Chapter 3 - The embryo that should never have existed
Andrew Brooks died five years before Lauren became pregnant.
He was Ryan’s older brother.
Thirty-eight.
Unmarried.
Funny.
Complicated.
And, as far as I knew, completely uninvolved in our fertility treatment.
Yet North Star’s preserved intake data showed a frozen specimen stored under his name.
The collection date was six months before his death.
Ryan claimed he knew nothing about it.
I confronted him only after Daniel had secured copies through the proper legal process.
“What was Andrew’s genetic material doing at our fertility clinic?”
Ryan went pale.
“I don’t know.”
“Try again.”
“He donated years ago.”
“For whom?”
Ryan said nothing.
I felt the answer before he gave it.
“For us.”
My chair scraped backward.
“You used your brother?”
“My counts were poor.”
“You told me we were using your sample.”
“I thought you’d refuse.”
“I would have!”
“That was the problem.”
There it was.
Consent treated as an obstacle.
Ryan explained that during our first treatment cycle, he learned his chances of biological conception were extremely low.
Andrew agreed to provide a sample privately.
Ryan intended to use it only if his own failed.
He never told me.
The clinic should never have proceeded without informed consent from both patients.
But someone altered the forms.
My digital authorization had been duplicated.
The embryo created from my egg and Andrew’s genetic material was frozen after that cycle.
Ryan later told me it had been discarded.
It had not.
Lauren had received it.
I stood up so quickly the room tilted.
“My sister gave birth to my biological child?”
Daniel stopped me.
“Potentially. We still need independent genetic confirmation.”
Legally and medically, the situation was complicated.
The person who gave birth was Lauren.
The embryo source records implicated me.
The consent records were disputed.
No one could reduce that to one dramatic sentence without verification.
But emotionally, something inside me was already breaking.
Then a worse question arrived.
“Does Lauren know?”
Ryan closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Since before transfer.”
My mother knew too.
Elaine had helped coordinate everything through Susan Whitmore after Andrew’s death.
Why?
Because Lauren had discovered she had diminished ovarian reserve.
And my mother had decided the stored embryo was “family property.”
“She said it would otherwise be wasted,” Ryan whispered.
My vision blurred.
“My body is not family property.”
“I know that now.”
“Now?”
He looked at me miserably.
“I thought if Lauren had the baby, maybe everyone could finally stop fighting.”
I laughed.
The sound frightened even me.
“You slept with her.”
His face changed.
That was not denial.
“How long?”
He looked down.
“Almost two years.”
Before the embryo transfer.
Before the pregnancy.
Before I ended fertility treatment.
My husband had not helped my sister become a mother because of family compassion.
He had built a second relationship with her while using my money and biological material to create the child they wanted.
Then Daniel called.
He had traced the strange engraving removed from Ryan’s wedding ring.
A jeweler had photographed it before polishing.
The original inscription was not mine.
It read:
R + L — Our real beginning.
Ryan had worn a private promise to my sister inside the wedding ring I put on his hand.
But Daniel had also uncovered something they had not planned.
The embryo-transfer date did not match Lauren’s claimed gestational timeline.
The baby had been delivered nearly eight weeks earlier than the family told everyone.
Not premature.
Earlier.
May you like
Which meant Lauren had been pregnant before the recorded embryo transfer.
Cliffhanger: If Lauren was already pregnant, then the embryo connected to Madison had never produced the newborn—and someone had lied about where Madison’s embryo actually went.
