Chapter 3 - The Woman He Chose
I called back immediately.
The number was unavailable.
Again.
Unavailable.
Again.
Nothing.
Garrison took the phone from my hand.
“Don’t keep calling.”
“She said the baby isn’t Julian’s.”
“I heard.”
“She sounded terrified.”
“I heard that too.”
I stared toward the rain-dark windows.
Three days earlier, I would have hated Chloe Bennett.
I had imagined her laughing in Julian’s bed while I slept beside a cold phone. I had imagined her helping him plan my humiliation.
But the voice I had just heard did not belong to a victorious mistress.
It belonged to someone afraid.
“Find her,” I said.
Garrison looked at me.
“I’m not sheriff anymore.”
“You found Julian’s medical file.”
“That was evidence I legally retained from an old investigation.”
“You know how to find people.”
He exhaled slowly.
“Yes.”
“Then help me.”
He studied my face.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
That answer seemed to satisfy him.
He picked up his phone.
Within twenty minutes, he had called someone named Deputy Alvarez, another person he referred to only as Mason, and my new divorce attorney, Rebecca Shaw.
Rebecca arrived before midnight.
She was in her early forties, wore dark jeans and a raincoat, and carried herself like someone who had never been intimidated by an expensive suit.
She did not waste time.
“Tell me everything Julian took.”
I listed it.
Joint checking.
Savings.
Insurance.
The car.
Access to the house.
Several pieces of jewelry that had belonged to my grandmother.
Rebecca wrote without reacting.
“How much was in the accounts?”
“About one hundred eighty thousand combined.”
Her pen stopped.
“All marital?”
“Mostly.”
“And he transferred it?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The morning he left.”
“Good.”
I blinked.
“Good?”
“For us.”
She looked up.
“People think moving money before divorce makes them clever. Judges usually call it dissipation of marital assets.”
For the first time in days, something almost like relief moved through me.
“Can I get it back?”
“We’ll ask for emergency financial relief first thing tomorrow.”
Then Garrison handed her Julian’s fertility report.
Rebecca read it twice.
“This alone doesn’t prove fraud.”
“I know,” Garrison said.
“But if he knowingly concealed it during fertility treatment…”
“That could matter.”
“And if he altered her medical records?”
Rebecca looked at me.
“That matters a lot.”
I swallowed.
“My medical records?”
Garrison opened the binder to another page.
Bellweather had listed “primary female infertility” in several insurance claims under my name.
But none of my doctors had ever given me that diagnosis.
Rebecca’s expression hardened.
“If this was fabricated and used for billing, someone committed insurance fraud.”
My hands felt numb.
I had spent years believing my body had failed.
What if even the diagnosis had been manufactured?
At 1:17 a.m., Garrison’s phone buzzed.
He checked the message.
“Chloe’s apartment is empty.”
My stomach dropped.
“Where is she?”
“Her car is there. Purse isn’t.”
“That’s bad.”
“Maybe.”
Rebecca stood.
“I’m going to say something neither of you will like.”
We waited.
“Do not play detective.”
Garrison almost smiled.
Rebecca pointed at him.
“Especially you.”
“I’m retired.”
“You’re breathing. That’s close enough.”
She turned to me.
“Tomorrow, we file. Tonight, you sleep.”
I almost laughed.
Sleep seemed impossible.
Still, Garrison showed me upstairs.
The room he had offered was simple.
White quilt.
Oak dresser.
A lamp beside the bed.
On the wall hung a photograph of a woman standing beside Garrison near a lake.
She had dark hair and a huge smile.
His late wife.
Margaret.
I remembered seeing her funeral announcement years before I moved to Cedar Hollow.
“She was beautiful,” I said.
Garrison stood in the doorway.
“She was.”
“Was she the one who had fertility problems?”
His face changed.
“No.”
I looked at him.
He leaned against the doorframe.
“We were told she did.”
My breath caught.
“Like me?”
“Yes.”
“We spent nine years blaming her body.”
“What happened?”
“A doctor finally ran tests somewhere else.”
“And?”
“The problem was mine.”
The shame in his voice was quiet but unmistakable.
I understood immediately.
“You blamed her?”
“I never said the cruel things Julian said to you.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He looked toward the photograph.
“I let her blame herself.”
There are confessions people make to earn sympathy.
Garrison’s was not like that.
He seemed to dislike himself more with every word.
“She forgave me,” he said. “I had more trouble doing it.”
“What happened after?”
“We adopted a daughter.”
I blinked.
“You have a daughter?”
His eyes shifted away.
“Had.”
I did not ask.
Something in his face warned me not to.
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded once.
Then he left me alone.
I lay awake until almost three.
At 3:08, headlights swept across the bedroom wall.
I got up.
A car had stopped outside.
Garrison was already downstairs.
By the time I reached the porch, a woman was stumbling through the rain.
Chloe.
She wore pajama pants beneath a long coat.
No shoes.
Her hair clung to her face.
One side of her cheek was red.
“Chloe!”
She nearly collapsed into me.
Garrison caught her before she hit the ground.
“Inside.”
We brought her into the kitchen.
She was shaking so violently that I wrapped a blanket around her.
“Did Julian do this?”
She looked at me.
Then started crying.
“I’m sorry.”
I felt no satisfaction.
None.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I believed everything he told me.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That you were unstable. That you refused treatment. That you used infertility to control him. That your marriage had been over for years.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
“What happened tonight?”
“He saw the call log.”
Her hand went protectively to her stomach.
“He asked why I called you.”
“And?”
“I told him I was scared.”
“Of what?”
Her face crumpled.
“The pregnancy.”
Garrison sat across from her.
“Who is the father?”
Chloe looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
The room went silent.
I stared.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean…”
She started breathing too fast.
Garrison lowered his voice.
“Take your time.”
Chloe pressed both hands over her face.
“I went to Bellweather for egg freezing last year. Julian said the clinic offered a discount through the company. I wasn’t sleeping with him then. Not yet.”
A terrible feeling moved through me.
“What happened at Bellweather?”
“They recommended insemination.”
“Why?”
“I wanted a baby someday.”
“Whose sperm?”
“A donor.”
She began crying again.
“I selected an anonymous donor.”
My skin prickled.
“Then why does Julian think the baby is his?”
“Because three months later we started sleeping together. When I found out I was pregnant, he told me it had to be his.”
“But you knew about the insemination.”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you tell him?”
“I did.”
She looked at me.
“He said he had checked with the clinic.”
My stomach dropped.
“What did the clinic say?”
“That the insemination failed.”
Garrison and I exchanged a look.
Chloe continued.
“Julian said the pregnancy proved he was fertile. He said it proved you were the problem.”
My fists clenched under the table.
“He used you to humiliate me.”
“I think he used both of us.”
Then she reached into her coat pocket.
“I took this before I ran.”
A flash drive.
Garrison stared at it.
“What is it?”
“Files from Julian’s laptop.”
Rebecca had warned us not to play detective.
But no warning on earth could have prepared me for what was stored on that drive.
We opened the first folder.
Bank transfers.
The second.
Emails to Bellweather.
The third.
A spreadsheet.
At the top were six names.
Mine was first.
Chloe’s was second.
Beside each woman’s name was a dollar amount.
And beneath the list, one phrase appeared again and again.
PREGNANCY LIABILITY.
Chloe whispered, “What does that mean?”
Garrison did not answer.
He clicked another file.
It was an email from Julian to Martin Hale.
The message was seven years old.
Make sure Emma never sees the male panel.
Then another.
Change primary diagnosis.
Then another.
And finally:
If she gets pregnant naturally, everything falls apart.
I stared at those words.
“If I got pregnant?”
Garrison’s face had gone pale.
He opened the attachment.
For the first time that night, the former sheriff looked frightened.
“Emma…”
“What?”
He turned the screen toward me.
It was a medication order issued during my third fertility cycle.
A drug I had never been prescribed.
A drug listed beneath my name.
Garrison whispered, “You need a doctor to explain this.”
I looked at the dosage.
Then at the warning printed beneath it.
PREGNANCY CONTRAINDICATED.
May you like
And suddenly, six years of miscarriages no longer felt like tragedy.
They felt like evidence.
