“He didn’t tell me. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“Veronica, listen. There was a seminar, years ago, at Evanston Northwest. About help for couples who couldn’t conceive. Do you remember?”
“No.” But I think about it. Maybe I do. We were having trouble. Micah sought a solution to the problem. Maybe Shell suggested we go. Maybe she even planned the event. I vaguely remember something.
“It was before you were ready to take extra steps. Micah was there. He said he couldn’t talk you into coming, but he was there to learn about your options. I was there, too, for the same reason. God, don’t you know he wanted children so badly with you?”
“And apparently with you.”
“We needed a donor,” she explains and reaches for me despite my pulling away. “Micah offered. I would’ve preferred he tell you, but by then, he thought it would be too much for you to handle. It worked on the first try. We were lucky.”
And I was very far from lucky.
“Why AI?” I pull a melon from the far end of the counter and select a knife from the block. “Why not just do it the old-fashioned way?”
“Veronica, I—”
“No, Natasha.” I lower my voice so the girls can’t hear and slice into the melon. “Betrayal is betrayal. And after all we went through—you and I, I mean—you don’t think you owed me the courtesy to tell me that you and Micah were creating children together? I’d almost rather you’d given him one last roll than a child, considering all the trouble I was having getting it done.”
She presses her lips into a thin line, her weary eyes rimming with tears. “His name isn’t on the birth certificate. We didn’t anticipate his being involved in Mimi’s life; it just sort of . . . happened.”
“You kept your distance after Micah and I got together, and I understood that. But to find out, all these years later, that the two of you were sharing a secret of this magnitude . . .” I shake my head in disbelief. Slice, slice, slice.
She was my only friend. Losing her was necessary in order to explore a life with the man I loved. And now that I know Micah didn’t have to make the sacrifice in reverse, I could scream.
“I wanted to tell you,” she says.
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re not the only one.”
She chews on her thumbnail.
“There was another woman. Her name was Gabrielle. She and Micah had twin boys.”
She’s nodding. Her tears intensifying. “Connor and Brendan.”
Of course she knows about them. Both women came to this house. There were no secrets between them. After a breath or two, I continue. “Can you imagine? All these years ago, I signed paperwork, and it turns out I was giving Micah power of attorney to buy this house. I didn’t know anything about it, and then I found the deed . . . and then I got here, and the hits kept coming. He’d stashed some hot little number and their children away here, in a house he hid from me. And his name is on their birth certificates.”
She’s nodding. “We knew at that point that he should be part of their lives. Of course his name is on their birth certificates. He gave us a family, Veronica. Gabby and I couldn’t have had a family without him.”
My heart pounds as realization dawns.
When I was finally ready to consider IVF, Micah knew which clinic to go to because he’d already been there with Natasha, with Gabrielle. Is his betrayal any less because he wasn’t sleeping with them, only donating his sperm?
I imagine Micah, Natasha, Gabrielle, and all their children sitting around this table, while I was zoned out on Xanax. It must’ve been quite a party, the three of them snickering about dumb, clueless Veronica bleeding out while they waited out the miscarriage in Key West.
What an idiot I’ve been.
“She was a special woman, Veronica. I wish you’d gotten the chance to know her the way Micah did, the way I did.”
Wait. The way she’s talking about her . . .
I replay Natasha’s words: she and Gabby wouldn’t have had a family without Micah. A family. Not families.
I meet Natasha’s gaze, and finally, I understand.
Gabrielle was Natasha’s life partner.
The sperm in storage. It wasn’t for Micah and me. It was in storage for Gabrielle and Natasha. That’s why it was paid with a separate card—probably Natasha’s. It was on a second account. My husband’s name was associated with the account. The clinic must have screwed up when they called me to settle the bill. And it explains the coincidence of her twin boys and mine. Assisted fertility often results in multiples.
All this time, I assumed Micah had been in love with Gabrielle, torn between two families. But all this time, Gabrielle was raising a family with my roommate from college. She wasn’t in love with Micah. She didn’t steal him from me.
And suddenly, I wonder if I stole Micah from Natasha . . . or if he stole me from her.
All the nights she and I spent curled up together, watching television . . .
The way Natasha looked at me, when she learned Micah and I had fallen love . . .
Micah’s words from the past resurface: Losing me wasn’t the problem for Natasha; losing you was. Was he right? When I was busy falling for Micah, had I neglected to notice Natasha might have been falling for me?
“I loved you,” she now says. “I never wanted to hurt you. He kept promising he’d tell you. Kept insisting he would. After you conceived again. After you’d reached your fertility goals. I would’ve told you myself, but Gabby thought it best to let him handle it. And when he didn’t handle it, she appealed to his mother.”
“Shell knew?”
“Of course Shell knew. She did charity work at Children’s Memorial, right? Gabby was a nurse there; she’d known Shell for years. When Micah and I were dating, we went with Shell to a benefit, and there she was. I think . . . sometimes I wonder if Micah knew what I was before I did. He must have seen the energy between Gabby and me. Maybe that’s why he so easily turned his back on me . . . for you.”
Maybe.
“Shell agreed with Micah,” Natasha says. “It was best not to tell you about the babies. You weren’t my business anymore. You were Micah’s, and Gabby was mine.”
“Gabrielle was up at the cottage because she knew Shell,” I say. “Not because she and Micah were screwing around.”
“Yes.”
“They found lake water in her lungs.”
Natasha lets out a whimper. “Yes. And now, they’re gone,” she whispers. “She was the love of my life. How do you move on, once you’ve lost the love of your life?”
I’m gravitating toward her. Pulling her into my arms.
“I haven’t told Mimi yet about her brothers,” she whispers at my shoulder. “How do you tell a child something like that?”
I’m crying along with her now.
“Will you go with me to identify them? I can’t bear the thought of going on my own, of Mimi having to be there, and you’re the only person I trust now that I’m constantly looking over my shoulder.”
“Of course.”
Micah had other children.
Micah had secrets.
But Micah loved me.
And I . . .
My mind drifts to a slow, sweaty dance at the Rum Barrel, to heated kisses on Simonton Street Beach. I can’t believe I did those things. Especially when it’s painfully clear now that Christian Renwick was not what he seemed.
“Veronica.” Natasha swallows over a fresh batch of tears. “What’s Micah involved in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Months ago, he asked Gabby to draw his blood,” she says. “He gave her a story—something about banking the blood for Bella. Do you know anything about that? Any reason Bella might need a transfusion?”
I don’t.
“And she wasn’t crazy about doing it and suggested he go to the hospital, but he insisted, and after all he’d done for us, she agreed. She did it for him. Two separate occasions, a pint each time. Why would he request something like that?”