Chapter 9 - Margaret’s confession
Margaret arrived at the mansion forty minutes later.
By then, the birthday party was over.
Guests had left.
Lawyers were involved.
Security footage was preserved.
Leo sat upstairs with my parents watching cartoons, protected from the adults dismantling his history downstairs.
Margaret entered looking ten years older.
Marco confronted her.
“What did you do?”
She sat.
“I didn’t switch anything.”
“Then why were you there?”
She looked at me.
“I wanted to know whose eggs were being used.”
I stared.
“Mine.”
“I know that now.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
Margaret looked at Marco.
“Because he told me you were considering donor eggs.”
I turned slowly toward him.
“I never said that.”
Marco frowned.
“I never told her that.”
Margaret looked confused.
“Yes, you did.”
“When?”
“Through your assistant.”
Everyone looked at Valerie.
Her face changed.
“No.”
Margaret continued.
“Valerie called me.”
Five years ago?
Valerie had not been my secretary then.
But she had worked at the fertility clinic.
I remembered suddenly.
Reception.
Only briefly.
I had forgotten.
Valerie stood.
“This is ridiculous.”
Margaret pointed.
“You told me Andrea was hiding donor conception from Marco.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“I remember your voice.”
Valerie headed for the door.
Security blocked her.
Again, nobody detained her unlawfully.
But my attorney told her plainly that records were being preserved and authorities might wish to speak with her.
Valerie looked at Marco.
Then at me.
Her confidence cracked.
I asked:
“What were you doing at that clinic?”
“Working.”
“Did you access our records?”
“No.”
“Did you know about the chain-of-custody breach?”
“No.”
“Did you contact Margaret?”
“No!”
Three answers.
Too fast.
Then Marco’s phone buzzed.
A message from the private DNA laboratory.
The original sample identifiers had been verified.
Marco had submitted his own DNA.
Leo’s.
And, bizarrely, a third sample.
I stared.
“Whose?”
Marco looked embarrassed.
“My father’s.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see whether the problem was my sample.”
The report showed something unexpected.
Leo was not Marco’s biological son.
But he shared significant biological markers consistent with a close paternal relationship to Marco’s family.
I felt cold.
“What does that mean?”
The genetic counselor refused to make a definitive conclusion without proper testing.
But one possibility was obvious.
If Leo was biologically related to the Vance family but not Marco...
Then the biological father might be another close male relative.
Marco had one brother.
Adrian.
May you like
And Adrian had died six years earlier.
Before Leo was conceived.
