“And that was enough to convince you?”
“It was just supposed to be that one time.”
“But it wasn’t.”
He subtly shakes his head. “A few months later, Bethany’s friend came in, asking for what Bethany had. I tried to dissuade her, but she wouldn’t be reasoned with, and she could have gotten my license revoked.”
“So it’s her fault? The great Dr. Irons, undone by some unstable woman with baby fever.” He frowns, disappointed in me again. “Do I know her? Bethany’s friend?”
He shrugs. “Her name was Liv, Liz. Something like that.”
“You don’t even remember her name?”
“It was five years ago. Do you know how many patients I’ve seen since then? I think she had an Italian accent. Or maybe Spanish?”
Liv Russo. I made her an engagement ring. And anniversary earrings. And a push present.
“And then, from there? What, anytime a woman wanted to use a donated egg without telling anyone, she came to you because you would do it off the books?”
Even before I see the recalculation on his face, I startle at my own naivete.
“Wait, did some of the women not know?”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Please stop saying that.”
“Do you know the odds of getting pregnant in your forties? At forty-one, forty-two, you have a thirteen point eight percent chance. After that it’s even worse. Four point two. They were all hoping for a miracle. No, not hoping. Expecting. With donor eggs, it’s over fifty-five percent right off the bat. They didn’t have to ask. I knew what they wanted. When a woman comes in and says, ‘Bethany recommended me,’ or ‘Tara’ or ‘Dianne—’” He starts rattling off names I recognizefrom my own client roster. Gabe and I used to joke that we were a packaged deal. I’d get them hitched, and he’d get them knocked up. It had sounded so innocent. The whole time, he knew what he was doing. “When they were over forty and had a referral, I knew what they were really asking for.”
His words send a chill right through me. Not just for what he’s done but how it all leads back to me. It started with Bethany. I recommended my husband.
I don’t want to listen to him anymore as he tries to justify what he did, insisting that he gifted his clients a motherhood they would never otherwise have, the choice he stripped from them and made on their behalf, a choice that could possibly be taken away from them again, if the donors ever found out and decided they wanted their genetic children back. In the files, I didn’t find any release forms relinquishing their right to their eggs. Gabe built in no protection for the women he’d violated.
“Gabe.” I can’t hide my horror.
He glowers at me. “You aren’t in the room with them every day. All they want, more than anything in the world, is to be pregnant. They’ll do anything. Pay anything. No questions asked.”
I glance over at Opal, who sleeps peacefully. I’m glad she’s sheltered from this, even if she can’t possibly understand.
“Besides.” His face goes smug. “They all knew, even if they didn’tknow.”
“I didn’t know.” I scan my body for instincts I ignored. My bond with Jasper wasn’t immediate. When we brought him home from the hospital, I was tired, stressed. All he did was cry. I didn’t know how to help him. That disconnect, the way anxiety overshadowed affection—it wasn’t because I feared I wasn’t his mother. It’s because I knew I was. I wanted to protect him, and I didn’t know how.
“I had no idea,” I insist again.
Gabe leans toward the window, the early-morning sunlight outlining the expanse of his broad back, defined from surfing, as he stares out at Cedars’ quiet campus.
“So Aram was in on this too?” Aram would have had to be in on it. Other than to extract the eggs from the follicles, Gabe doesn’t touch the eggs. He wouldn’t have been able to swap them, to fertilize them on his own. “He was fine with you deceiving countless clients?”
Gabe spins toward me, frowning at my interpretation. I will keep reframing his story away from the heroic version he harbors. He deceived his clients. He broke his medical vow and made a shitload of money along the way.
“Aram understood that we were helping these women.”
“Only, now he’s dead. And Regina?”
“She was the reason it all worked.” He relishes some memory before his face falls as he realizes it didn’t work, not in the end. “Regina came up with the idea for a separate business, of casting calls. It was brilliant, really. We could advertise for phenotypic and genetic matches for clients. And the donors liked her. They trusted her.”
“Because she was one of them?”
