Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Engineered Our DivorceNathan didn't speak for several seconds.
Neither did I.
Cars moved through the country club parking lot behind us. Somewhere nearby, children laughed.
It seemed obscene that the rest of the world could keep functioning.
Nathan finally said, “What does that mean?”
Brianna wrapped both arms around herself.
“I can't do this here.”
“You started it here,” Rachel replied.
Brianna looked at me.
“I'll tell you everything. But not with thirty people watching through those windows.”
She was right.
Half the baby shower guests had migrated suspiciously close to the glass.
Rachel insisted we use a private conference room inside the club.
Nathan sat at one end of a long table.
I sat at the other.
Brianna remained standing.
She looked like someone preparing to confess to a crime.
Maybe she was.
“Victoria contacted me nineteen months ago,” she began.
That placed it nearly a year before our divorce.
“How?” Nathan asked.
“My aunt knows her from the Hadley Foundation. Victoria knew I'd just lost my job at a pharmaceutical marketing company.”
“What did she want?”
“At first? Nothing outrageous. She said her son was miserable. His marriage was failing. She wanted someone outside the family to become his friend.”
Nathan gave a bitter laugh.
“And you thought that was normal?”
“She offered me fifteen thousand dollars.”
Rachel muttered, “Apparently friendship has gone up.”
Brianna ignored her.
“I was drowning in debt.”
“That doesn't excuse it,” I said.
“I know.”
She met my eyes.
For once, I believed her.
“She gave me information about Nathan,” Brianna continued. “Where he got coffee. Which gym he used. Professional events he'd attend.”
Nathan's jaw tightened.
“The Whitmore charity auction.”
Brianna nodded.
“That was the first time we met.”
I remembered that night.
Nathan had come home unusually animated and mentioned a woman who knew one of his law-school classmates.
Brianna.
“She told you what to say to him?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What kinds of things?”
“She said Nathan felt trapped by fertility treatments. That he wanted children naturally. That you were obsessed with IVF and wouldn't let the marriage move forward.”
My nails pressed into my palm.
None of that was true.
Nathan and I had both wanted treatment.
He had been the one who begged me to try our final cycle after I said I couldn't endure another miscarriage.
Nathan leaned forward.
“My mother told you I resented Emma?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“She wanted me to listen. To become somebody you could talk to.”
“You mean manipulate.”
Brianna didn't argue.
“Eventually.”
My stomach tightened.
Not a contraction.
Stress.
Rachel noticed.
“Emma?”
“I'm okay.”
Nathan looked alarmed.
I held up a hand.
“Keep going.”
Brianna inhaled.
“Three months after I met Nathan, Victoria started giving me information I shouldn't have had.”
“What information?” I asked.
“Your fertility treatments. Appointment dates. Test results.”
My blood turned cold.
“Medical test results?”
“Yes.”
Nathan stood so abruptly his chair scraped backward.
“How?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She emailed screenshots sometimes. Sometimes she told me things over the phone.”
“What did she want you to do with them?”
Brianna's silence was enough to frighten me.
“Answer me,” Nathan demanded.
“She wanted me to bring up subjects when you were vulnerable.”
Nathan's face twisted with disgust.
“Like what?”
“When Emma's third transfer failed, Victoria told me the exact day you got the result.”
I remembered that day.
I had sat alone on our bathroom floor staring at the test despite already knowing the clinic bloodwork had been negative.
Nathan arrived home after midnight.
He said a client emergency had kept him out.
Now his expression told me where he'd actually been.
“With you?” I whispered.
Brianna nodded.
“We had dinner.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“You told me you happened to be near the courthouse.”
“Victoria told me where you'd be.”
He pressed his palms against the table.
For the first time, he looked ill.
Brianna continued.
“She kept saying you needed to associate home with pressure and me with relief.”
“That is disgusting,” Rachel said.
“Yes.”
I looked at Brianna.
“But you did it.”
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt more than excuses would have.
“Did you sleep with him?”
“Not while you were together.”
Nathan looked at me.
“That part is true.”
I didn't care.
Emotional betrayal had done enough.
“What about the embryo?” I asked.
Brianna swallowed.
“That was later.”
“How did you know?”
“Victoria told me there was one viable embryo left.”
“When?”
“Early November.”
My pulse quickened.
That was before my transfer.
“She said you were planning to implant it without Nathan's consent.”
“I wasn't.”
“I know that now.”
“What did she ask you to do?”
Brianna looked at Nathan.
“She told me to convince you Emma had become unstable.”
His face went rigid.
I remembered the change in him that month.
The careful way he started watching me.
His suggestion that I take time away from work.
The night he asked whether grief had made me irrational.
I had thought he was cruel.
Now I realized he might have been fed lies.
“What exactly did my mother say?” Nathan asked.
“That Emma had told the clinic she'd raise a child alone if you left. That she was hiding money to finance treatments. That she wanted to use the embryo to keep you trapped.”
I laughed.
It sounded ugly.
“Meanwhile she told me Nathan wanted to destroy the embryo.”
Brianna closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Rachel stood.
“I'm getting water.”
The door closed behind her.
For the first time, the three of us were alone.
Nathan looked across the table at me.
“Emma, I never wanted it destroyed.”
“I know that now.”
“I thought you wanted to use it to force me to stay.”
“And I thought you wanted to erase the last chance we'd ever have a child.”
We had been living in different realities.
Both manufactured.
I turned back to Brianna.
“You said Victoria wanted to make sure I never had Nathan's baby.”
Brianna's hands trembled.
“She wanted the embryo discarded.”
Nathan's chair moved again.
“What?”
“She said if it existed, Emma would always have a way back into your life.”
“That's insane.”
“She was obsessed with the idea that Emma had stolen your twenties and thirties.”
Nathan laughed without humor.
“Emma didn't steal anything. I proposed to her.”
“I know.”
“Did my mother forge my authorization?”
“I never saw her forge anything.”
“But?”
Brianna reached into her purse again.
This time she removed her phone.
“Three days before the transfer, she sent me this.”
She opened an old message.
Nathan came around the table.
I joined him.
The message contained a photograph.
A document.
Hawthorne Reproductive Center.
At the bottom was Nathan's signature.
Above it, authorization for embryo transfer.
Nathan stared.
“That's not my signature.”
I looked closer.
It resembled his.
Very closely.
But I had seen Nathan sign thousands of birthday cards, tax forms and mortgage documents.
The N was wrong.
His real signature always looped the first stroke backward.
This one didn't.
“Who sent this?” I asked.
“Victoria.”
Beneath the photograph was her message:
Problem solved. She'll believe he approved it. He'll believe she went behind his back. Afterward, they'll never forgive each other.
My knees weakened.
Nathan caught my elbow.
I pulled away automatically.
Not because I hated him.
Because touching him suddenly felt too complicated.
“There’s more,” Brianna said.
“There’s always more,” I whispered.
She scrolled.
Another message.
Once Emma does the transfer, Raymond will serve Nathan's petition. Melissa will make sure Emma receives the right version of events.
Nathan stared at her.
“Raymond?”
“Your divorce attorney.”
My skin went cold.
“And Melissa,” I whispered.
“My attorney.”
Brianna nodded.
Nathan picked up his phone.
“I'm calling the police.”
“Wait,” I said.
He stared at me.
“You want to wait?”
“I want copies of everything first.”
Brianna nodded rapidly.
“I've backed them up.”
“Send them.”
“To you?”
“To both of us.”
She did.
My phone vibrated.
Ninety-three screenshots.
Emails.
Text messages.
Bank transfers.
Photographs.
A blueprint for destroying a marriage.
I sat down.
Our divorce had not happened because of one forged document.
The document was only the match.
For nearly a year, Victoria had fed each of us carefully selected lies.
Nathan was told I blamed him for our infertility.
I was told he regretted marrying me.
Nathan was shown messages suggesting I wanted his money.
I received emails implying he was planning to leave before our embryo transfer.
When we argued, Victoria comforted us separately.
She had become the trusted interpreter between two people who stopped speaking directly.
And we had let her.
That part belonged to us.
Manipulation explained our destruction.
It did not erase our mistakes.
Nathan sat beside me.
“I should have talked to you.”
“Yes.”
“You should've talked to me too.”
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
For the first time in almost a year, neither of us was trying to win.
Brianna wiped her face.
“I didn't know how far she would go.”
“You knew enough,” I said.
“I did.”
“Why are you telling us now?”
She stared down at her phone.
“Because three weeks ago she asked me to do something else.”
Nathan's voice hardened.
“What?”
Brianna unlocked another message.
This one was recent.
Victoria had written:
Emma is showing now. Nathan cannot discover that child may be his until after birth. If she contacts him, stop it.
Nathan read it twice.
Then the next message.
If necessary, tell him the baby belongs to someone else. I need time to finish the trust amendment.
I looked up.
“What trust?”
Brianna shook her head.
“I don't know.”
Nathan did.
I could see it instantly.
His face became frighteningly still.
“What trust?” I repeated.
He looked at my belly.
“My grandfather's.”
“And what does that have to do with our daughter?”
Nathan swallowed.
“Everything.”
He sat down.
“My grandfather left a family trust worth approximately forty-two million dollars.”
I stared.
Nathan rarely discussed his family's wealth.
“The trust divides among my mother's descendants when certain conditions are met.”
“What conditions?”
“One of them involves grandchildren.”
I felt the baby move again.
Nathan looked at me.
“If I have a biological child, my mother loses control of nearly half the trust.”
Silence.
Rachel returned carrying three bottles of water.
She saw our faces.
“What happened now?”
May you like
I answered without taking my eyes off Nathan.
“We just found twenty million reasons his mother didn't want this baby to exist.”
Related Stories
