Chapter 11 - THE GIRL I CARRIED
The court ordered the current arrangements preserved.
June stayed with me.
Ava stayed with Rebecca.
No one could remove either child from the county.
All contact between families had to occur through counsel or supervised mediation.
We returned to the same building and closed the connecting door.
For three days, Rebecca and I communicated through text despite living one floor apart.
June had gas.
Ava needed the pediatric appointment number.
A package arrived for Rebecca.
The practical messages kept us from saying what we feared.
I watched June sleep and searched her face for Rebecca.
I found details I had once believed came from Luke.
The curve of her upper lip.
The long fingers.
The pale crescent under her ear.
Genetics changed the origin of those details.
It did not change the nights I had already spent learning them.
Milk came slowly after the C-section and infection. June rooted against me, impatient and trusting.
My body did not ask whose embryo she had been.
Luke requested genetic-parent visitation with Ava.
He also requested continued legal recognition as June’s presumed father until the court resolved parentage.
His lawyer argued that he had bonded with both babies during pregnancy.
I nearly laughed at the cruelty of the claim.
He had spoken to my belly.
Read stories to June.
Then decided the child inside me could be transferred to another woman without my knowledge.
The judge denied immediate visitation and ordered a parenting-risk evaluation.
Eli asked the question everyone avoided.
“Is June still my sister?”
“Yes.”
“Is Ava also my sister?”
I looked toward the closed connecting door.
“Genetically, yes.”
“Then do I have two?”
“You have two relationships that adults need to protect carefully.”
“Dad said June wasn’t ours.”
“Dad was wrong.”
“Even if the test says she isn’t?”
“A test can tell us biology. It cannot erase who carried her or who loves her.”
Eli thought for a long time.
“Does Rebecca love June?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love Ava?”
The answer frightened me.
“I don’t know her yet.”
That evening Rebecca knocked.
She held Ava.
“I need to see June.”
My first instinct was no.
Then I saw the same terror in her face that had lived in mine.
I stepped aside.
She approached June’s bassinet but did not touch.
“She has my mother’s ears,” Rebecca whispered.
I looked at Ava in her arms.
Ava opened her eyes.
They were the same deep gray Eli’s had been as a newborn.
The room became too small for both truths.
Then Rebecca said, “Luke contacted me before delivery.”
May you like
I turned.
“He offered me money to leave the hospital without asking for genetic testing.”
