CHAPTER 2: THE FOLDER THEY NEVER WANTED ME TO SEE Every eye remained fixed on me. No one moved. No one dared. The beige folder sat beneath the reception table like a secret that had grown too heavy to hide. I bent down and picked it up. Ethan lunged forward. "Claire, don't." Too late. My name was written across the front in Ethan's handwriting. Inside were divorce papers. Already signed. Not by me. By Ethan. Attached was another document. A petition requesting sole custody of any future children conceived through frozen embryos we had created before my miscarriage. My hands turned cold. We had frozen those embryos after years of fertility treatments, promising each other that no matter what happened, we'd become parents together someday. Another page slid onto the marble floor. An affidavit. It claimed I suffered from severe emotional instability after losing our baby. It described me as unpredictable. Unable to care for a child. Every sentence was a lie. My own therapist's name appeared on the page. Forged. I slowly raised my eyes. "You planned to erase me." Ethan swallowed hard. "It isn't what you think." Vanessa began crying harder. "I told him not to do it," she whispered. "You still stood beside him." The priest quietly stepped away from the altar. Guests exchanged horrified glances. Aunt Linda buried her face in her hands. Then another envelope slipped from the folder. A DNA report. Probability of paternity: 99.9999%. Oliver was Ethan's son. No rumor. No misunderstanding. Scientific proof. Silence crashed over the chapel. Finally I looked directly at Vanessa. "How long?" She couldn't answer. Ethan did. "Almost three years." Three years. Almost the exact amount of time since I buried our daughter. The realization hollowed me from the inside. While I had been mourning one child... He had been raising another.

2 chapters