I stood in the middle of Eleanor's living room, waiting for someone to tell me the truth.
Nobody seemed willing to begin.
The baby in Chloe's arms made a soft noise.
She rocked him automatically, her eyes fixed on the floor.
Julian walked toward the hallway.
"We're not doing this."
Eleanor rose from the chair.
"Sit down."
He stopped.
For a moment, I thought he might ignore her.
Then he turned around.
"This is a private matter."
"It stopped being private when you dragged Sarah into it."
He looked at me.
I had never seen him so uncomfortable.
That frightened me more than his anger.
Julian was usually at his best when he had control of a situation. He could turn a disagreement into a negotiation and a difficult question into a discussion about something else.
He was good at making people feel unreasonable for asking him to explain himself.
Now he seemed unable to find a way out.
I looked at Eleanor.
"What do you know?"
She took a slow breath.
"I know that the story Julian told you about the embryos doesn't make sense."
My mouth went dry.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I have questions about what happened at the clinic."
Julian gave a sharp laugh.
"This is ridiculous."
Eleanor ignored him.
She looked at Chloe.
"And I know she has been carrying a secret she should never have been asked to carry alone."
Chloe covered her mouth with one hand.
I could barely hear myself speak.
"Is the baby mine?"
The question came out before I had decided to ask it.
Nobody answered.
That silence told me more than their expressions had.
I stepped backward.
"No."
I shook my head.
"No, that can't be right."
I looked at the baby again.
The pale eyes.
The shape of his face.
The tiny crease beside his mouth.
I had spent years looking at photographs of children and wondering whether any of them might someday resemble me.
I had never expected to see those features in a baby my husband had presented as the child of his affair.
Julian finally spoke.
"Sarah, you need to calm down."
I turned on him.
"Don't tell me to calm down."
He closed his mouth.
I had spent so many years trying to make my pain manageable for other people that I had almost forgotten I was allowed to be angry.
I was angry now.
I was frightened.
And I wanted answers.
"Tell me what happened."
Julian looked toward Eleanor.
She didn't move.
He looked at Chloe.
She was crying too hard to meet his eyes.
Finally, he turned back to me.
"The situation isn't as simple as you think."
I felt a strange, cold clarity settle over me.
"Then explain it."
He said there had been complications during the fertility process.
He mentioned the storage transition.
He mentioned paperwork.
He used words that sounded familiar but seemed to have lost their meaning.
I listened until he stopped.
"You're telling me the same thing you told me in our kitchen."
He rubbed his jaw.
"Because that's what happened."
"Then why does your mother think there's more to it?"
He didn't answer.
Eleanor stepped forward.
"Because I've seen enough to know that someone has been lying."
Julian turned toward her.
"You need to stop."
"No."
She spoke quietly.
That made the word stronger.
"I have spent years making excuses for you. I'm finished."
He looked as though she had slapped him.
I watched them, struggling to understand how we had reached this point.
Eleanor had always supported her son.
Even during the divorce, when Julian and I fought over property and investments, she had kept her distance. She had not called to ask what he had done or whether I was managing.
Now she was standing in front of him, refusing to let him leave.
I didn't know what had changed her mind.
I only knew that she believed something terrible had happened.
Chloe shifted the baby against her chest.
"Sarah, I never wanted you to find out this way."
I looked at her.
"Find out what way?"
She began crying again.
"I thought I could explain it later."
"Later when?"
She didn't answer.
I felt my anger rising.
"You sat with me while I cried about losing those embryos. You watched me believe that they were gone."
Chloe's face crumpled.
"I know."
"No, you don't."
My voice broke.
"You can't know what it was like to believe that was my last chance."
She lowered her eyes.
I wanted to say more.
I wanted to list every conversation we had shared, every time she had touched my arm and told me I would be all right.
But the words crowded together, and I couldn't make them come out.
I looked at the baby again.
He had fallen asleep against her.
His tiny fingers were curled near his cheek.
I could not reconcile the child with the cruelty of the circumstances.
He had done nothing.
He had not chosen the people who brought him into the world.
I had to remind myself of that because everything else hurt so much.
"How did this happen?"
I looked at Chloe when I asked.
She pressed her lips together.
Julian answered instead.
"You're making assumptions."
I turned toward him.
"Then correct them."
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Eleanor walked to the side table and picked up a small envelope.
She held it without opening it.
"I asked Sarah to come because I couldn't keep pretending this was only about the affair."
I stared at the envelope.
"What is that?"
"Something that needs to be explained."
Julian reached for it.
Eleanor pulled it away.
"Don't."
He stopped.
I watched the exchange.
Whatever was inside that envelope mattered to him.
That much was clear.
My hands began to tremble again.
"Is it about the embryos?"
Eleanor nodded.
I felt as though the room had tilted.
For years, I had carried the loss as a fact. It was something the doctors had told us through Julian's account, something I had accepted because I had no reason to imagine a different explanation.
Now that fact had become a question.
And I was afraid of the answer.
I looked at Julian.
"Did you lie to me?"
He stared back at me.
Then he said something I would never have expected.
"Not everything is what it appears to be."
I felt a bitter laugh rise in my throat.
"You sent me a picture of your newborn children and told me I was incapable of giving you a family."
He looked away.
"You knew that would hurt me."
He didn't deny it.
I could no longer pretend there was a decent explanation waiting just beyond the next sentence.
The man I had married had deliberately used my grief against me.
Whatever else I learned, that would remain true.
But now I had to know what he had done before the divorce.
What he had done while I was still trusting him.
I looked at Eleanor.
"Tell me everything you know."
She glanced at Julian.
Then she looked at Chloe.
Neither of them spoke.
Eleanor set the envelope on the table.
"I will," she said. "But I need you to understand that some of this may be difficult to hear."
I looked at the sleeping baby.
I thought of the white socks with yellow stars.
I thought of the two embryos I had imagined becoming children.
I had spent years grieving a loss I believed was final.
If that loss had been something else, then the past I had been living with was not the past I thought I knew.
I pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.
"Start at the beginning."
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: The Explanation I Had Accepted for Years Began to Fall Apart When I Asked Julian to Tell Me What He Had Done
I Thought Losing the Chance to Become a Mother Was the Worst Thing My Husband Could Ever Do to Me
Part 6 of 16
