And God help me, because I loved him, I said yes.

Now the man I had shielded from that truth for eight years had stood up at a dinner table and publicly claimed two children he was medically incapable of having fathered — and had used my supposed barrenness, the barrenness that was actually his, as the reason to discard me.

My phone vibrated against my hip.

The laboratory had received the samples.

“He thinks I signed away my life tonight,” I said to Evelyn.

“What I actually signed was permission to begin his audit.”