Every divorce is painful in its own way, and mine wasn’t an exception.
Around a year following my separation with my ex-husband, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of the Westbridge Fertility Clinic in Denver. And yes, the last person I expected to see there was my ex MIL, Patricia. Yet, there she was. When I saw her, I prayed she wouldn’t notice me, but she did.
Being the person she was, she didn’t miss the chance to remind me how miserable I was to her.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” she said as she approached me. And then she practically yelled so the receptionist and the rest of the patients there could hear her. “Why am I not surprised you are still alone?”
I wasn’t in the mood of getting into any sort of argument with her, so I just closed the folder I was holding and said, “Hello to you, too, Patricia.”
But she didn’t stop there. As though she did’t hurt me enough, she leaned in and said, “Leaving you was the best thing my son has ever made in his life. Now he’s raising a beautiful baby daughter with Meghan, and he’s having the family you could never give him.”
I went completely blank.
You see, Ryan and I had been trying for a kid for years. It was a rough journey during which we went through endless injections, failed transfers, debt, and the heartbreak of two miscarriages.
There were only two frozen embryos remaining at that very same clinic when Ryan started backing away. My best friend at the time, Megan, was supposed to be there for me, but “there for me” turned into midnight phone calls with Ryan, which ultimately led to a speedy divorce.
Six months later, Megan told us all she was pregnant. “Miracle baby,” said Patricia. Almost convinced, except for the fact that a bill from the clinic somehow got sent to the old email address by accident. And it included a transfer date just two weeks after the divorce papers were signed.
My embryo, my storage account, my signature on the consent form.
Except, I had never signed a damn thing.
So, when Patricia gave me a glance at the waiting room and whispered, “That little girl is evidence that my son made the right choice,” I actually smiled at her.
“Is that what you really think?” I looked her straight in the eye.
No sooner had she gotten ready for an answer than the doors of the clinic opened. A tall guy entered holding a bunch of papers. The moment Patricia laid eyes on him, all the color left her face.
It was Detective Andrew Cole and the Parker family knew him all too well. He had been the one to investigate Ryan’s business partner a couple of years ago. He came up to us, nodded at me, and then turned to Patricia. “Mrs. Parker, it’s a good thing you are here too,” he said.
Patricia held onto her purse as if it were a shield. “Why would I need to be here?”
“Because your son’s daughter was conceived using Claire’s frozen embryo, and the consent form looks like it was forged.”
Everyone in the waiting room tried to overhear the conversation. Patricia sat in a chair as if her legs had given way. For the first time in her life, there was absolutely nothing that she could say.
Among the documents Detective Cole had in his hands was the handwriting report my attorney had requested. The forgery looked pretty convincing. They’d copied the general shape of my name, but they missed one massive detail. After our first IVF cycle, the clinic required me to use my middle initial on all legal medical forms. The forged document didn’t have it.
Patricia tried to say it was a “private family matter,” but I cut her off immediately. “It ceased to become private the moment your son stole my embryo.”
Then Detective Cole produced a security photo of the parking lot at the clinic on the day of the embryo transfer, showing Patricia’s silver Lexus waiting right outside. Her lips went starkly white, and she whined that “I only gave Megan a ride,” but her secret was outed. She had known all along what they were planning. She had been the one who’d urged Ryan to dump me because I was “too damaged” from the miscarriages, and she had facilitated their theft of the last bit of me that they could still take.
Twenty minutes later, Ryan came barging into the clinic seething with rage, with Megan following close behind him under a veil of sunglasses. Patricia stopped them in their tracks, whispering wildly, while I watched Ryan’s face change from annoyance to sheer panic.
We got hustled into a conference room where my lawyer came in via video link, and Ryan started yelling at me, “You abandoned the embryos! You never wanted to use them anyway!”
My lawyer cut him off instantly, reminding him that the legal agreement strictly required both parties’ written approval. I looked at Ryan and said, “I said I couldn’t handle another loss right away. I didn’t give you permission to hand my genetic child over to Megan.”
Finally, Megan removed her sunglasses; her eyes were red and teary and she stated in a whispering voice, “He told me that you agreed.”
I did not even care to hear the reasons why she did what she did. She had used our friendship as an instrument of concealing her true intentions of stealing my life.
However, the most difficult thing out of everything was not betrayal but the baby. Lily was innocent. She was a nine-month-old girl who possessed my DNA, my late mother’s dimples and my blood type, living in their house. Lily had been conceived as a result of a crime, but she was not any kind of stolen property – she was a person.
I not only pressed criminal charges of forgery against them; I also filled a custody and parentage petition.
It was never my intention to traumatize the baby, but I had the right to be legally recognized as her mother.
The moment Patricia became aware of the consequences of what they had done, she burst into tears. Their seemingly perfect family image had been totally ruined. Ryan would have to forfeit his license as a financial advisor, Megan would be in trouble with the law, and Patricia would become a witness of fraud.
Some two weeks later, I was sitting on the carpeted floor of a supervised visitation room painted in soft blues and filled with toys. Lily was brought in. Nine-month-old Lily, with chubby cheeks, just looked at me with an expression like she was trying to identify a dream image.
I didn’t push her. I simply sat down quietly and held my hand out.
She scooted over and grasped it firmly with her little fingers. And there, I finally allowed myself to cry about all the damage they’d done and about all the good I was going to restore.
Patricia had walked into that clinic believing she was going to shame a lonely, heartbroken woman. But the joke was on her. Ryan hadn’t moved on to build a brand-new life; he was just a thief who got caught.
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