“That would have been very bad for everyone,” he says, and I think,Yes, her taking my son away from me would definitely constitutebad.More than bad. The worst possible thing Gabe could do to me, even worse than what he’s already done. He’s still talking, still explaining. “I just thought that maybe if I granted her limited access, I could control the situation.”
Except now the situation has shifted, Barb in place of Regina. Barb, whom I’ve trusted. Barb, whom I’ve texted for help when she could be the most dangerous person to me, even more than Gabe. And this all leads to another impossible question, one I can’t believe I have to ask.
“And Opal?”
He casts me that confused look again.
“Is she mine?”
I hate the way I phrase this. Because either way, she’s mine. Jasper too. It’s not about biology or genetics or the law. I’m the one who wakes in the middle of the night a moment before my son does. I’m the one who checks his temperature when his cheeks are flushed, who feels loss commingling with pride at every milestone. Even if the egg was Regina’s, I’ve always been his mother. Opal’s too.
Gabe still has that contrite expression on his face, the one that makes him seem arrogant and entitled.
“You basically just told me I’m infertile. So, what, did you slip me something when I was sleeping, impregnate me with one of the eggs wehad on ice when I was passed out?” Because of course the four embryos we have frozen aren’t mine either. They’re Regina’s.
“You think I would do something like that?”
I’m so sick of staring at his face, that bruised veneer barely able to contain his indignance. I start to turn away, only that seems like retreating. So I gaze straight at him, straight through him, trying to make him feel an ounce of the disrespect and betrayal he’s made me feel.
Evidently, he doesn’t like my probing. He walks over to Opal. He hovers above her bassinet as she sleeps. “She’s our miracle.”
Outside, the sky has lightened enough to see the stout white buildings of Cedars’ campus through the hospital room’s only window.
“It happens sometimes. After IVF, even when it seems impossible. It happens.” Gabe caresses the air around Opal’s face, knowing better than to touch and risk waking her. His face is strained when he returns his attention to me, but his eyes are resolute, clear as ever. Despite myself, I believe him. Despite myself, when he says, “I never meant for any of this to happen,” I know it’s true. While it doesn’t change anything, I know he’s being honest with me about Opal.
Only, something about his word choice strikes me as off. It’s plurality.Any of this.And something else he said earlier when I was hardly listening, how it would be bad foreveryoneif Regina had gotten the courts involved.
“Is there more?” I ask. For a smart man, he’s incredibly gifted at looking stupid. “You said you never meant for any ofthisto happen. What else did you do?”
“What? No. Nothing. I just mean, this. Jasper.”
“You’d think after lying to me for the last two years, you’d be better at it.”
He shrugs like I’m being cute, and I continue to glare at him until he sighs and retreats to the couch.
“It was just supposed to be one time, with Bethany. I never meant for it to be—”
“Yes, yes, we’ve established this all just spiraled out of your control, that you’re an innocent bystander here.” He frowns. I’m not being unduly mean. He deserves anything, everything I want to throw at him. “Bethany Steinmann?” I ask. She’s the only Bethany I know.
He nods, tight lipped. I’m going to have to eke every bit of information out of him. Even now, when he’s cornered and his family is at stake, he won’t offer it freely.
Bethany Steinmann was my first private client in LA. First private client ever, in fact. In New York, I’d only ever designed for stores. Bethany found me through one of the jewelry stores that had commissioned my work. She liked my aesthetic. I liked her last name, “stone man” in German. She’d wanted to take the three-carat round diamond from her previous engagement ring and reset it for her new promise ring. I liked Bethany. I liked the way she thought about jewelry and life. I made her the perfect ring. When she wanted the perfect family to accompany it, I referred her to Gabe.
“Gabe, did you do this to her too?”
“Yes. I mean, no. Bethany knew.”
I release my balled fist, relieved that he isn’t that much of a monster.
“Her husband wanted a baby, but Bethany was too old.”
I cringe.Too old, as though at forty-four, Bethany had one foot in the grave.
“After six rounds of harvesting, it was clear she had no viable eggs. She was scared her husband would leave her, find a younger wife who could—” He spins his right hand in a circular motion that is meant to confer reproduction. “One time when he wasn’t at her appointment, she asked me about finding an egg. Only, she didn’t want her husband to know. Didn’t want any record.”
“So you were just like, ‘Sure, let me break my Hippocratic oath and do it off the books’?”
“No. I mean, I pushed back. I tried to convince her that her husband would come around, that the baby would need to know, for hereditarydiseases and predispositions, but she was adamant. She said, ‘Just find someone who looks like me, and no one will ever know.’”
