Chapter 13 - THE MAN FROM THE CLINIC
Emma left the hospital four days later.
She was physically weak but expected to recover fully.
Emotionally, she had changed.
She refused drinks unless she watched me open them.
She woke at night asking whether Aunt Rachel was coming.
Mark moved back into our house.
I slept in Emma’s room.
Neither of us discussed the future of our marriage.
We communicated through practical questions.
Medication times.
Police calls.
School arrangements.
Trust attorneys.
The silence between us was filled with everything he had hidden.
Detective Hayes called one morning with a new development.
The fertility doctor who handled Emma’s embryo transfer had disappeared.
Dr. Samuel Price had retired two years earlier.
His former clinic had closed.
Investigators discovered that my father paid him two hundred thousand dollars shortly after Emma’s birth.
The payment did not appear in any medical billing record.
I remembered Dr. Price clearly.
He was kind.
Patient.
He held my hand after the miscarriages.
He told me the donor wanted complete anonymity.
Now police believed he had falsified consent documents.
Rachel’s original agreement contained inconsistent signatures.
One page showed she had agreed to permanent anonymity.
Another suggested she retained the right to receive information about any child created from her eggs.
The altered pages created years of confusion that my father could manipulate.
Mark’s investigator located Dr. Price at a retirement community in New Mexico.
He agreed to speak after learning Emma had been poisoned.
Dr. Price claimed my father forced him to alter the file.
Dad threatened to expose unrelated billing violations at the clinic.
Dr. Price also revealed that Rachel had not been the only donor considered.
My mother’s name appeared in the laboratory records.
I stared at him through the video call.
“My mother was tested as an egg donor?”
“No.”
Dr. Price looked uncomfortable.
“Her genetic sample was used to confirm the relationship between Rachel and the embryo.”
“Why?”
“Your father asked us to verify paternity markers.”
Mark leaned forward.
“What paternity?”
May you like
Dr. Price looked at me.
“The clinic discovered that Rachel and Claire did not appear to have the same biological father.”
