I closed the page immediately.
Then I went back to work.
I thought that was the end of the story.
It wasn’t.
Three days later, I received an email from someone I didn’t know.
There was no subject.
Only one sentence.
“Please don’t trust the story Blake told you about the twins.”
I stared at the screen.
There was an attachment.
A photograph.
I opened it.
It showed Blake standing beside Lauren in a hospital room.
Nothing unusual.
Then I zoomed in.
A hospital bracelet was visible around Lauren’s wrist.
The date was clear.
I looked at the date again.
Then I checked the birth announcement Blake had published.
The dates didn’t match.
Not by a few hours.
By nearly three weeks.
My heart began pounding.
I immediately forwarded the photograph to my attorney.
Within minutes, he called.
“Where did you get this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know the person who sent it?”
“No.”
“Don’t respond to them yet.”
“Why?”
“Because if this is real, somebody is trying to tell you something they couldn’t tell you through official channels.”
That night, another email arrived.
This time there was no photograph.
There was a name.
Dr. Melissa Grant.
Underneath it was a phone number.
I didn’t call.
Instead, I searched the name.
Dr. Melissa Grant had been a fertility specialist at the clinic Blake and I had visited during our marriage.
My hands went cold.
The clinic.
The fertility testing.
The unexplained infertility.
Lauren.
The twins.
Something wasn’t adding up.
The following morning, I called my attorney.
“I need you to find out whether Dr. Grant is still practicing.”
He did.
She was.
And she agreed to meet me.
We met at a quiet café outside the city.
She arrived carrying a thin folder.
The moment she sat down, she looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen in years.
Guilt.
“Natalie,” she said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
I stared at her.
“For what?”
She opened the folder.
“I should have contacted you years ago.”
“About what?”
She looked around before lowering her voice.
“About your fertility results.”
I felt the room become strangely quiet.
“My results were normal.”
“Yes.”
“I already know that.”
“No,” she said.
“You know what we told you.”
My throat tightened.
“What are you saying?”
She slid a document across the table.
I looked down.
It was my original laboratory report.
Then she placed another document beside it.
Blake’s.
I read the first page.
Then the second.
Then I stopped breathing.
There were two sets of results.
One had been included in the medical file.
The other had been removed.
“Blake’s test,” I whispered.
Dr. Grant nodded.
“His results were not normal.”
“How abnormal?”
She hesitated.
“Severely.”
I stared at her.
“Then how are there twins?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she opened another section of the file.
“We need to talk about something that happened during your treatment.”
My hands began trembling.
“What?”
Dr. Grant looked directly into my eyes.
“There was a specimen mix-up.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Years ago,” she continued, “during one of the procedures, another patient’s genetic material was mistakenly entered into the system.”
I swallowed.
“Whose?”
“We don’t know.”
“But you said there was a mix-up.”
“Yes.”
“And Lauren?”
Dr. Grant shook her head.
“Lauren wasn’t your patient.”
My mind raced.
“Then why are you telling me this?”
She leaned forward.
“Because after the twins were born, another doctor reviewed their records.”
She pushed one final document toward me.
I looked at the page.
There was a phrase highlighted in yellow.
PATERNITY DISCREPANCY.
My entire body went numb.
“Whose children are they?” I whispered.
Dr. Grant looked at me.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Does Blake know?”
Her silence answered the question.
Then my phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number appeared on the screen.
You need to come home, Natalie. Before Blake brings those babies to his family.
I stared at the words.
The message had been sent that morning.
But the date attached to the photograph I’d received was from three weeks earlier.
And suddenly, one thought terrified me more than anything else.
What if the person who sent me the message wasn’t trying to protect me?
What if they were warning me because someone had already discovered the truth?
I looked back at Dr. Grant.
“Who knows about this?”
She closed the folder.
“That’s the problem.”
“Why?”
“Because the first person who asked for the twins’ records wasn’t Lauren.”
My blood ran cold.
“Who was it?”
Dr. Grant hesitated.
Then she said:
“Diane Calloway.”
My ex-mother-in-law.
The woman who had spent years believing I was responsible for her son’s infertility.
The woman who had welcomed Lauren into the family.
The woman who had just become grandmother to twins.
I stood so quickly that my chair scraped against the floor.
“Why would she request their records?”
Dr. Grant looked at me with something close to fear.
“Because she already suspected the babies weren’t Blake’s.”
I stared at her.
“And if she suspected that…”
Dr. Grant nodded.
“Then someone else probably did too.”
That evening, I received one final message.
This time, there was no photograph.
No warning.
Just six words.
Blake knows who their father is.
PART 4
Blake knows who their father is.
I read the message three times.
Then I turned the phone face down on the café table.
For several seconds, neither Dr. Grant nor I spoke.
The noise around us seemed distant.
Coffee machines hissed.
People laughed at nearby tables.
A waiter dropped a spoon.
But all I could hear was that sentence repeating in my head.
Blake knows who their father is.
I looked at Dr. Grant.
“Did you send that message?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
I took a slow breath.
“Then tell me everything.”
Dr. Grant opened the folder again.
“This is difficult to explain because some of what happened was discovered after you left the clinic.”
“I don’t care how difficult it is.”
I pointed at the papers.
“I’ve spent years believing I was incapable of giving my husband a child. If there’s something you know, I want the truth.”
She nodded.
“After your divorce, a quality-control review was conducted at the fertility center. Your treatment records were among several files flagged for inconsistencies.”
“What inconsistencies?”
“Your original records showed that your fertility testing was normal. But there were changes in the electronic system.”
“Changes made by whom?”
“We couldn’t establish that immediately.”
I stared at her.
“But you know now.”
She hesitated.
“We know someone accessed your file using credentials associated with a physician who wasn’t involved in your treatment.”
My stomach tightened.
“Blake?”
“No.”
“Lauren?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
She slid another document across the table.
A name appeared on it.
Dr. Samuel Pierce.
I stared at it.
“Pierce?”
Dr. Grant nodded.
“Lauren’s father.”
I felt the air leave my lungs.
“He was a physician?”
“A reproductive endocrinologist. He retired several years ago.”
I leaned back.
“So Lauren’s father had access to the clinic?”
“Not directly. But he had professional relationships with several physicians there.”
“Why would he access my records?”
“We don’t know.”
I looked at the documents again.
“Then what do we know?”
Dr. Grant’s voice became quieter.
“We know that your husband’s sperm analysis was significantly worse than what he told you.”
I frowned.
“How much worse?”
“He had extremely low viable sperm counts in multiple tests.”
I remembered Blake sitting across from me after our second appointment.
His expression.
His irritation.
His words.
Maybe your body knows you don’t have room for a baby.
I suddenly felt sick.
“He knew.”
Dr. Grant nodded.
“He was informed.”
“And he blamed me anyway.”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
For eleven years, I had carried shame that never belonged to me.
I opened them again.
“What happened after that?”
“Blake requested that his records remain confidential.”
“That makes sense.”
“But then there was another test.”
“What test?”
“A private genetic screening.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because someone requested confirmation of paternity.”
My heart began pounding.
