I run my finger down the list of names, stopping on Nancy Clark. She’s been my client through three engagements. The call goes to voicemail. Before I can leave a message—what can I possibly say in a recording?—she texts that she’s in a movie.
Anything urgent?she writes.
There’s no urgency between a jeweler and her client, which only makes my call stranger.
No rush,I write back. This isn’t news for a text either.
I try three more clients, feeling a strange mix of relief and impatience when their voicemails pick up. Then panic when Lucy, one of my most regular clients, answers with “Tessa,” like she was just thinking about me. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I have these diamond studs I want to get reset into something a little hipper.”
I have loyal customers. It’s because I do good work. Gabe had loyal customers too. It’s because he did good work. Too good.
“Hi, Lucy.” I tread carefully. “I’d be happy to do that. I’m calling for another reason, though.”
“Oh?”
Suddenly, the script I was practicing just moments before has vanished.
“Listen, this is going to sound crazy.” I cringe. Why did I start that way? “You went to my husband, Gabe Irons, for fertility issues?”
She pauses, then mutters, “That’s confidential.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. There’s something you need to know about Gabe. He hasn’t been entirely honest with his clients. I don’t want to worry you, but he may have—”
“Well then, let’s not worry me, all right?” She hangs up before I can finish my sentence.
Gabe was right. Sheknows.
My phone buzzes. Gabe’s picture fills the screen. It’s one of my favorites, even though I have no idea when I took it. He looks impossibly handsome and confident. Now I can see how his smile is too even, his expression too pleased with itself. It’s like a switch. Everything I loved about him now disgusts me. I send his call to voicemail.
As I’m dialing Trixie next, a text comes through.When can I see the kids?I ignore him again.
I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to Trixie, that she’d silently stopped being my client, until she picks up. “What do you want, Tessa?”
I forgo our normal small talk and start to tell her that Gabe has been lying to his patients.
“You’re serious?” Trixie barks. “After your husband convinced me to do five rounds of IVF with no results? What happened to ‘one and done’? To ‘the man who can get any woman pregnant’? You have some nerve.”
Her name blinks across my screen as she disappears from my life. She’s angry because Gabe couldn’t get her pregnant, not because he implanted her with another woman’s egg. I’ll happily lose a client if it means there’s one less woman out there whom Gabe has violated.
The call with Trixie gives me the conviction I need to continue. I choose Ciara next.
“Tessa?” she says, confused. Ciara is a newer client.Wasa newer client? It’s hard to know whether it’s a one-off project versus the start of an ongoing relationship. I made her a pendant with a teardrop opalescent stone, lab-created from breast milk.
“Ciara, I—” I stumble, remembering she was Gabe’s client first.Your husband mentioned you’re a jeweler,she said when we met to discuss the project.He’s a godsend.Even then, her words had sounded too zealous.
“It’s so funny you called,” she interrupts. “I found another bag of milk at the bottom of my freezer. I’m getting it made into a stone now. Can we set up a meeting to go over ideas?”
Two weeks ago, I would have dived at this offer headfirst, all in. I would have viewed it as a sign that I could claw my way back. That rather than ruining my career, motherhood and pregnancy have tapped me into projects like breast milk jewelry that I wouldn’t have understood so intimately before. Breast milk that Ciara produced because Gabe had made her fertile. Gabe, whom she isn’t about to turn against now.
“Why don’t you give me a call when the stone comes in, and we’ll set something up?”
“It shouldn’t be more than a few weeks.”
I try to imagine my life in a few weeks. Opal losing her nocturnal rhythms, sleeping longer stretches. Jasper, adapting to the reality of our new family dynamic. Where will Gabe be then? And Barb? Will I have found a mother to come forward? Will the killer have been caught? Will I have kept my children safe?
As she’s hanging up, Ciara says, “Oh, and tell Dr. Irons I say hi. He’s probably responsible for half my friends’ children at this point.”
I picture a playground, a birthday party, full of children with betrayals in their DNA. This isn’t a random woman here or there but entire communities of mothers who’ve been deceived.
