Lisa extended the folder with shaking hands. “The baby might not be his.”
Emily didn’t invite her inside.
She stepped onto the porch and pulled the door mostly closed behind her, leaving only a narrow strip of hallway visible. The March air was cold, and Lisa stood in it without a coat, as if she had rushed over before she could change her mind.
Emily folded her arms. “You have thirty seconds.”
Lisa nodded, swallowed, and handed over the folder. Inside were lab slips, appointment summaries, and a printed message thread from a fertility clinic in Dayton. Emily scanned the pages, frowning.
“I don’t understand.”
Lisa spoke quickly, as if trying to outrun her own shame. “After my divorce, I froze embryos. Aaron and I had been trying for years, and before everything fell apart, we did one IVF cycle. There was one viable embryo left. After the divorce, I kept the storage agreement in my name. In January, I… I made a reckless decision.”
Emily looked up. “What decision?”
“I had it transferred.”
The words landed strangely—not because they were hard to hear, but because they rearranged everything. “You got pregnant through IVF?”
Lisa nodded, crying again. “I didn’t tell anyone. Not you, not Mom, not Daniel. I was ashamed. It felt desperate. I thought if it worked, I’d explain later and pretend I had planned single motherhood calmly. But then everything with Daniel got worse, and when I found out I was pregnant, he assumed it was his. I didn’t correct him right away.”
Emily stared. “Right away?”
Lisa flinched. “I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds insane.”
“It was insane.” Lisa wiped her face. “I should have told him the moment he said the timing lined up. Instead I froze. Then he started talking about confessing to you, about how maybe the baby meant something, and every day I waited, it got harder.”
Emily looked back at the paperwork. The embryo transfer date was clearly listed. So was the estimated gestational age. It matched. Biologically, the pregnancy could belong to Lisa’s ex-husband, Aaron Monroe—not Daniel Parker.
Not her husband.
The truth should have felt like relief. Instead, it arrived tangled with fresh disgust. Daniel had still betrayed her. Lisa had still betrayed her. The only difference was that the baby wasn’t another piece of Daniel growing inside her sister.
“When were you planning to tell me?” Emily asked.
Lisa said nothing.
Emily answered for her. “Never. You were never planning to.”
