**Part 3**
My phone rang.
Dana.
I nearly ignored it.
Then I answered.
“Victoria.”
Her voice was calm.
“We finished the preliminary review of Sonoran Strategy Partners.”
I looked at Michelle.
“And?”
“The vendor is not a consulting firm.”
My stomach tightened.
“What is it?”
“A pass-through billing company.”
“For what?”
“Among other things, medical expenses.”
I closed my eyes.
“How much?”
“Just over one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
Michelle went still across from me.
Dana continued.
“Some of the payments appear connected to Desert Bloom.
Christopher approved them as corporate consulting expenses.”
“That needs to go to outside counsel.”
“It already has.”
“Good.”
“There’s something else.”
I stood and walked away from the table.
“What?”
“One payment predates Michelle’s treatment.”
“How far?”
“Nearly two years.”
I frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s why I’m calling.”
“What was it for?”
“We don’t have the underlying clinic record, only the payment reference.”
I waited.
Dana read it aloud.
“Directed donor consultation and cryogenic storage.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
Two years earlier.
Before the affair.
Before Michelle.
Before Christopher had told anyone our marriage was failing.
At that time, Christopher and I had still been actively trying to have a child.
“Dana,” I said slowly, “whose name is on the reference?”
There was a pause.
Then she answered.
“Not Michelle’s.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
The café around me seemed to disappear.
I looked down at the old date.
Two years earlier, while Christopher and I were sitting together in fertility clinics being told there was no obvious reason we could not conceive, someone had arranged and paid for a directed-donor consultation in Tucson.
Using Vextor money.
Using my name.
And suddenly Owen’s letter in front of me seemed to belong to a story that had started much earlier than anyone had admitted.
I returned to the table and looked at Michelle.
“What is it?” she asked.
I turned the phone slightly away.
Because one question had replaced every other question in my mind.
If Owen Lawson had originally been contacted as a donor two years before Michelle’s pregnancy—
then who had Christopher intended the donor to be for?
And why had he never told me?
THE END
