First me.
Now Paige.
I never told Carol.
Even divorced, I had kept his medical history private because it was his to disclose.
But I also knew my own history was mine to defend.
And tonight Carol had forced the distinction into the open.
Back in the hallway, Mark finally spoke.
“We used a donor.”
Carol looked as though she hadn’t understood the sentence.
“A donor?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes moved to Paige.
Paige nodded.
“The baby is Mark’s son,” she said carefully.
“He’s his father.
But genetically, we needed help.”
Carol sat down hard on the bench beneath the window.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
I felt no satisfaction.
That surprised me.
For a year, I had imagined what it might feel like if someone finally forced Mark to admit the truth.
I thought there would be vindication.
Maybe even pleasure.
Instead, all I felt was tired.
Carol looked down at the medical page trembling in her hands.
“So all those years…”
Mark answered before I could.
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t the reason?”
He looked at me.
“No.”
One word.
Six years late.
Carol’s face crumpled slightly.
“Then why did you let me believe she was?”
Mark leaned against the wall.
“Because I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
“Of needing help.
Of disappointing you.
Of hearing you talk my whole life about carrying on the Bishop name and giving you grandchildren.
Pick one.”
Carol shook her head.
“I would never have—”
Mark cut her off.
“You did.
Just to the wrong person.”
The words left her silent.
Paige remained at the doorway.
I could barely look at her without remembering sleepovers, birthdays, residency celebrations, and the night she held me after one of my worst losses while assuring me that Mark and I would survive anything.
Months later, she began sleeping with him.
That betrayal had nothing to do with fertility medicine.
No test result could excuse it.
No diagnosis had caused it.
That belonged entirely to them.
