Chapter 4 - Ethan Lied About Why They Needed the Clinic
Ethan finally agreed to meet my attorney and me two days later.
No Savannah.
No babies.
No audience.
He looked exhausted.
I did not care.
My attorney, Hannah Price, placed the receipt on the conference-room table.
Ethan stared at it.
“You took that from my things.”
“It was inside a garment bag delivered to our apartment.”
He stopped.
Hannah said:
“Let’s stay with the substance.”
Good.
I asked:
“Why did you tell Savannah we had undergone fertility testing?”
His face changed.
“She told you that?”
“Yes.”
He looked away.
That was answer enough.
“Ethan.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“I needed an explanation.”
“For what?”
“Why we were using IVF.”
“Why were you?”
He hesitated.
Then finally:
“Because timing was complicated.”
I stared.
That was not a medical answer.
He continued.
“Savannah wanted children soon.”
“And?”
“I wasn’t ready to leave you yet.”
The sentence landed brutally.
Not because I misunderstood.
Because I understood perfectly.
A naturally conceived pregnancy would have been unpredictable.
Harder to schedule.
Harder to hide.
A fertility clinic allowed appointments, controlled cycles, and some planning.
Not certainty.
But more structure.
“You used IVF because you were trying to run two lives on a calendar?”
Ethan flinched.
“When you say it like that—”
“How should I say it?”
Silence.
He finally admitted Savannah had no infertility diagnosis requiring IVF.
Neither did he.
They had chosen clinic-assisted conception partly because Savannah had previously frozen eggs and wanted to use them.
That was believable.
But Ethan had added the false story about his own fertility because Savannah asked why he and I had never had children.
He needed to make our childlessness sound permanent.
“So you told her I didn’t want children.”
“Yes.”
“And that you were infertile.”
“Subfertile.”
I almost laughed.
“You had never been tested.”
“No.”
The lies were almost absurd when laid out side by side.
Then Hannah asked:
“When did you decide to proceed with embryo transfer?”
Ethan went still.
“Why does that matter?”
Because timing always matters.
He finally answered.
“About nine months ago.”
I did the math.
Two months after our courthouse wedding.
While legally married to me.
While sending save-the-date cards for our formal wedding.
While telling Savannah the public wedding would never happen.
I asked:
“Why didn’t you leave me then?”
Ethan looked toward the window.
“My father had just invested in my company.”
I stared.
There it was.
Not romance.
Structure.
Our families had intertwined business interests.
A public breakup immediately after the legal marriage would have exploded through both families.
“So you waited.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For the right time.”
I thought of the ballroom.
The babies.
The divorce papers.
May you like
The perfect public humiliation.
The “right time” had apparently meant the moment he believed I would be too devastated to fight back.
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