Chapter 10 - GLEN CONFESSES
I asked Glen to meet me the next day at the park near Ariel’s preschool.
He arrived looking hollow.
For the first time since this started, I did not see my husband.
I saw a man who had built his own ruin and finally realized there was no door out.
We sat on opposite ends of a bench while children shouted from the swings.
Normal life can be offensively indifferent.
He spoke first.
“Daniel called my lawyer.”
“Good.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“I never meant for you to get hurt like this.”
I turned to him.
“You moved one of my embryos into my stepmother’s body and stole from our daughter. Explain to me the version of this where you imagined I felt cherished.”
He stared at the ground.
Then, maybe because there was no point lying anymore, he told the truth in pieces.
After Ariel was born, we said we wanted another child someday.
Then came my difficult pregnancy recovery, his startup stress, my father’s illness, my indecision after two embryo consultations where I said I wasn’t ready.
Clara started asking questions.
At first she framed them as concern.
Would we use the embryos?
Would we donate them?
Would we discard them?
Then she shifted toward Glen alone.
She told him he deserved the family he wanted.
Told him I would “drag uncertainty out forever.”
Told him some women use postponement as a form of control.
He should have walked away.
Instead, he listened.
Then, according to him, the impossible began sounding practical.
Clara offered to carry “our baby” so I wouldn’t have to go through pregnancy again.
I laughed in his face when he said that.
“Your baby, you mean.”
He closed his eyes.
“I told myself it would still be yours too.”
“No,” I said quietly. “You told yourself a lie that made it easier to betray me.”
He had used my trust.
My distracted signatures.
My exhaustion.
My history of wanting another child.
He let Clara reshape all of it into permission.
“And the affair?” I asked.
He went silent.
I waited.
Finally he said, “It started after the transfer.”
Something inside me went cold enough to become almost calm.
“So once she was carrying the embryo you stole from me, you started sleeping with her too.”
He nodded once, ashamed.
“Why?”
He laughed bitterly at himself.
“Because she already knew the worst thing about me.”
That answer infuriated me more than almost any other.
Not because it was poetic.
Because it was cowardly.
He chose the woman who already shared his corruption.
Then he added, “Clara said once the pregnancy was stable, we would tell you together and work out a way to keep Ariel close.”
I stared.
“Keep Ariel close?”
He nodded.
“Like she was some asset in the transition.”
That was when I stood up.
He rose too.
“Rachel—”
“No.” I stepped back. “You do not get to use my name like a prayer anymore.”
Then I looked at him with every ounce of grief I had left.
“My daughter was slapped because she saw the truth before I did. Friday night, everyone else is going to see it too.”
He went pale.
“What are you planning?”
I smiled for the first time in days.
May you like
And there was nothing kind in it.
“What you should have been afraid of from the beginning.”
