“I was.”
“Where?”
Silence.
“You sent me an ultrasound.”
Allison closed her eyes.
Sophia stood so quickly that her chair scraped the floor.
“Where did that ultrasound come from?”
Allison looked from face to face and found no friendly one waiting for her.
The family that had welcomed her because she was carrying their future now wanted evidence that future had ever existed.
Derek pulled out his phone.
He began scrolling through old messages, opening every photograph Allison had sent him.
Jason later said it was painful to watch because the clues were suddenly obvious once the belief was gone.
Some images had no identifying information.
Others had been cropped tightly.
Dates had been discussed in messages but never visible on original medical documents.
Appointments Derek had wanted to attend had always been moved, canceled, or described as unnecessary.
He had noticed every one of those things.
He had simply chosen the explanation he preferred.
Because Allison was offering him exactly what he wanted: a new life, an admiring partner, and the son his family kept calling an heir.
His mother sat back down.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
Allison wiped her face.
“You all made it clear what mattered to you.”
Nobody spoke.
She looked at Derek.
“When I told you I might be pregnant, you changed overnight.
You started talking about leaving Catherine.
You started talking about apartments.
Your mother started calling me.
Sophia invited me to things.
Before that, I was just the woman you were seeing.”
Derek’s expression hardened.
“So you kept it going?”
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of losing you.”
Sophia made a disgusted sound.
Allison turned on her.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t help build this.
Every conversation was about the baby.
Every gift was blue.
Every time Catherine’s children came up, you talked about them like they were baggage.”
That shut Sophia up.
For several seconds, according to Jason, nobody could look at anyone else.
Because Allison had lied.
But she had lied inside a room they had furnished for her.
The obsession with an heir had not created the deception, but it had rewarded it so quickly that nobody wanted to examine what they were being told.
Derek walked out of the examination room.
His mother followed.
In the hallway, she asked him what he was going to do.
He did not answer her.
He called me.
My phone lit up while the Mercedes was approaching the airport.
Derek.
Alex saw the name.
“Is that Daddy?”
