Chapter 8 - STORAGE UNIT 318
We reached the records facility seventeen minutes after Margaret.
Police reached it three minutes before us.
Unit 318 was already open.
Metal boxes covered the floor.
Folders had been ripped apart.
A steel trash container burned near the loading bay.
Margaret was nowhere in sight.
Officer Daniels stopped me at the entrance.
“Stay here.”
“I’m not staying anywhere.”
“There may be evidence inside.”
“It is evidence about my child.”
She studied me.
Then she handed me gloves.
“Touch nothing.”
James tried to follow.
I turned around.
“No.”
His face tightened.
“Emily.”
“You lied to me for two years.”
“This concerns Lily.”
“It concerns my body.”
He stopped.
That was the first time he understood that I was not simply angry.
I no longer trusted him beside me.
I entered with Daniels and Martin.
Most of the records were medical.
Patient numbers.
Financial transfers.
Embryology logs.
Then I saw my name.
WHITMORE, EMILY.
A folder lay beneath a overturned cardboard box.
Daniels photographed it before lifting it.
Inside were copies of my fertility records.
Several pages contained signatures.
Mine.
James’s.
Margaret’s.
But one consent form contained a signature that looked like mine and was dated during the embryo transfer.
I knew immediately it was forged.
“I didn’t sign this.”
Daniels photographed it.
“What does it authorize?”
Martin read the heading.
“Third-party embryo transfer.”
My stomach twisted.
A second page listed the embryo code.
CW-MW-01.
Charles Whitmore.
Margaret Whitmore.
There it was.
Proof.
Then Martin found another sheet.
He read it twice.
“What?”
I asked.
He did not answer.
“Martin.”
He handed it to me.
It was a laboratory inventory form.
Three preserved embryos had originally existed.
Two were marked destroyed.
One was marked transferred.
But beneath the third entry was a handwritten correction.
EMBRYO 02 NOT DESTROYED.
TRANSFERRED TO SECOND FACILITY.
I stared at it.
“There was another embryo.”
Martin nodded.
“Apparently.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniels found a ledger.
Payments to Reeves appeared every three months.
Most came from a Whitmore charitable foundation.
But the most recent payment was different.
It had been made only nine days ago.
James Whitmore.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
I stopped breathing.
“James paid him.”
Martin looked at me.
“He said he hadn’t spoken to Reeves.”
I walked out of the storage unit.
James stood near the police cars.
He saw the paper in my hand.
His face changed.
I crossed the distance between us.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Emily.”
“You paid Reeves nine days ago.”
“I can explain.”
“You said you hadn’t spoken to him in years.”
“I didn’t speak to him.”
“What did you pay him for?”
James looked toward Martin.
Then toward Daniels.
“James.”
He lowered his voice.
“To leave town.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“Because he called me.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“What did he say?”
May you like
James swallowed.
“He said my mother had found the second embryo.”
