Chloe took the pink filling out of the cake and at that very moment began crying with such an expression, as if not the child’s sex but something far more terrible had been revealed before us.
In the yard, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the guests were applauding. The white cream glittered in the sunlight, while the glass cups on the table lightly clinked against one another.
“We’re going to have a girl!” Spencer shouted and put his arms around Chloe’s waist.
Chloe looked at him.
“I know,” she said quietly.
There was not a trace of joy in her voice.
She had waited four years for this day. She had lost two pregnancies, three treatments had failed, and every time she returned home from the hospital, I saw a small folded baby blanket on her bed. And now, when she was finally expecting a healthy baby, there was only fear on her face.
I walked toward her, but Chloe shook her head.
“Mom, please, not now.”
Spencer immediately smiled at me, although his fingers were gripping Chloe’s shoulder so tightly that her white skin had reddened.
“It’s just emotions,” he told me. “After waiting this long, it would happen to anyone.”
At fifteen minutes past four in the afternoon, by the gate of the yard, I saw the baker Nora. In the morning she had brought the cake herself, and I remembered that then she had decorated the top layer with small pearl-colored sugar leaves. Now she held that leaf in her hand and kept folding it.
When our eyes met, she carefully nodded at me.
“I need to speak with you.”
“Now?”
“If possible. Alone.”
I followed Nora to the van. The metal of the vehicle was hot from the evening heat, and when I put my hand on it, my fingers burned.
“Spencer came in the morning,” she said.
My heart tightened.
“Why?”
“He said that they had mixed up the answer in the doctor’s envelope. The filling was supposed to be pink because he thought the baby was a girl.”
“But the result was sent to us by the doctor, wasn’t it?”
Nora took out her phone.
“Another woman was with him. I was seeing her for the first time. They offered us five hundred lari to change the filling of the cake and use this envelope.”
Spencer was visible on the screen. Beside him stood a dark-haired woman holding a sealed envelope.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But after Spencer left, she came back.”
“What was she doing?”
Nora lowered her voice.
“She told me to attach something under the cake.”
I looked into the yard. Spencer did not take his eyes off Chloe. Chloe was speaking with a friend, but her right hand was pressed against her stomach.
“We have to check now,” I said.
Nora walked with me toward the table. The guests’ laughter was growing quieter. Crumbs of cream lay on the plates, while the edge of the tablecloth caught beneath the cake was swaying on the floor.
I slid both hands beneath the cardboard support and slowly lifted it. The cardboard creaked. Something white appeared underneath.
Nora held her breath.
And I reached toward the sealed envelope…
The envelope was firmly glued beneath the cardboard. When I removed it, I felt something hard inside.
“Open it here,” Nora told me.
“What if Spencer sees us?”
“Then he should see us.”
At that moment Chloe looked toward us. Spencer stood behind her with such a smile, as if he already knew what I would find.
I opened the envelope. Inside were a small memory card, two photographs, and a folded letter. In the first photograph was the unknown woman. In the second was Spencer in the clinic corridor, by the doctor’s office door.
The letter contained only one sentence: “Chloe must know before she loses the baby.”
“Mom, what are you doing?” Chloe’s voice came from behind.
Spencer immediately moved toward me.
“That is mine,” he said.
“Then why was it under the cake?”
His face changed.
“It’s just a misunderstanding.”
Nora turned on the recording on her phone. First the woman’s voice was heard, then Spencer’s.
“If she finds out the truth today, everything will be over.”
Chloe became pale.
“That is your voice,” she told Spencer.
He reached toward her, but Chloe stepped back.
At that moment the phone rang. The clinic’s number appeared on the screen. When I answered, the woman on the other end said only this:
“Please do not let Chloe find out that her signature has been forged…”
Then the connection was cut…
For several seconds after the connection was cut, no one could move. In the yard, the paper streamers hanging in the wind touched one another and made a sound as if someone were quietly knocking.
“What signature?” Chloe asked.
Spencer immediately looked toward Nora’s phone.
“Don’t listen to them. This woman is asking us for money.”
“I have never asked you for money,” Nora said. “My sister worked at the clinic. She called me this morning and told me that someone had changed the records.”
Chloe leaned against the table. In front of her, the pink cream was slowly melting and making a small river on the white tablecloth.
“Spencer, what did you change?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing. The answer was simply mixed up.”
“Then why were you at the clinic?”
He did not answer.
Nora inserted the memory card into the phone. The video began. A small clinic office appeared on the screen. Spencer was sitting at the table, while the doctor and the unknown woman stood in front of him.
“This is the wife’s signature,” Spencer was saying. “She has already given me consent.”
“You have forged the signature here,” the doctor answered.
“Chloe has been waiting four years for a baby. If you tell her the truth, she will break.”
Chloe covered her lips with her hand.
In the video, the unknown woman placed a second sheet of paper on the table.
“You must tell her that the embryo was created with her own egg,” she said. “Otherwise I will reveal everything.”
Spencer whispered:
“You received money. What else are you demanding?”
The woman smiled bitterly.
“What was left for my child.”
The video stopped.
Chloe looked at Spencer.
“It wasn’t my egg?”
Spencer lowered his eyes.
“The treatment was difficult. The doctors said we would need a donor cell.”
“And you told me that they used my egg.”
“Your heart would not have endured it.”
“My heart?” Chloe’s laughter broke strangely. “For four years I blamed myself every morning. And you knew that the baby was from a donor?”
Nora spread out the photographs. In one, the unknown woman stood in front of the clinic. In the other, the same woman held a picture of a newborn.
“Her name is Marika,” Nora said. “She is the donor. But that is not everything.”
She turned over the back of the letter. There was a statement certified with a court seal: Spencer had requested in advance the right to take the baby from the clinic, and had presented Chloe as a psychologically unstable guardian.
Chloe’s knees gave way.
“You wanted to take my child?”
Spencer leaned toward her.
“I was only trying to protect her.”
“From whom?” I asked.
For the first time he looked at me.
“From you and your family.”
At that very moment a new message arrived on my phone. The clinic’s lawyer was sending me a document that Spencer still did not know about.
Beneath it was only one sentence: “If you do not submit this evidence today, the baby is in danger…”
ქლოემ მისი ბოლო შეტყობინება წაიკითხა და ტელეფონი ჩაკეტა…
მე მეგონა, რომ სიმართლე იმ კონვერტში დასრულდებოდა. მაგრამ ყველაზე მძიმე არჩევანი შემდეგ დაგველოდა.
„ელენეს შენი ახსნა კი არა, სიმართლე სჭირდება.“
სპენსერმა პასუხი ვეღარ იპოვა.
👇 ისტორიის ფინალი უკვე გახსნილია
