“I didn’t know at first,” she whispered.
Connor’s face hardened. “Stop talking.”
But she did not stop.
Maybe she was too tired.
Maybe Kenneth’s folder had done what guilt could not.
Maybe seeing me in my lab coat, in my own hallway, still standing, had reminded her that I was not just an obstacle in Connor’s version of the story.
I was a person she had once loved.
“He told me you had signed the release,” she said.
My heart pounded against my ribs. “What release?”
“He said you didn’t want anything connected to the treatments anymore. That it hurt too much. That you wanted the embryos destroyed but he convinced you to donate them anonymously.”
I pressed my palm against the table.
Donate them.
As if they were old furniture. As if they were not pieces of a future I had mourned.
Melinda’s voice broke. “He said there was one option. That we could use them, because they were partly his. He said you agreed because you wanted him to have the family he deserved.”
