Chapter 6: The Counterattack
Jocelyn’s phone lit in her hand.
She looked at the screen, and the color drained from her face. Whatever she’d opened in the old thread stayed turned toward her. I didn’t ask to see it. Not yet.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Grant.” She read the message again, lips barely moving. “He wants me to sign a statement.”
“What kind of statement?”
“That the clinic made a mistake. That the test result is unreliable.” She locked her phone. “He says it’ll protect Noah.”
Keller’s expression hardened. “A statement about a medical result should not be made to protect anyone’s public image.”
“He says people are already talking,” Jocelyn replied. “He says if I don’t sign, I’m letting strangers decide what kind of father he is.”
The word father landed between us. Jocelyn stared down at the little boy’s mitten tucked in her coat pocket, as if it might offer a better answer than either of us could.
I felt the anger come—not the hot, helpless kind that had once made me search my own body for the reason Grant was unhappy. This anger had edges. It told me where to stand.
“Don’t sign anything you don’t believe,” I said.
Jocelyn looked at me. “I know.”
I couldn’t tell whether she meant it or wanted me to believe she did. I only knew I was finished making her choices for her.
My own phone began to vibrate against the table. My mother’s name flashed on the screen. I answered.
“Laurel, what is going on?”
“Why?”
“Grant just called your aunt. He told her you’re harassing him and his family. She called me worried you were going to show up at his house.”
For one stunned second, I could hear the old story trying to assemble itself: Laurel too emotional, Laurel making trouble, Laurel unable to let go. Grant had always known which words made people look at me differently.
“I haven’t contacted his family,” I said. “I’m at the clinic with Dr. Keller.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m all right. Please don’t repeat anything he told you as fact.”
A pause. Then my mother’s voice softened. “I won’t.”
I ended the call and saw another notification: a voicemail from my office manager. Grant had called there, too. He’d said he was concerned I was fixating on his new family and wanted the company to know in case I brought “personal instability” into work.
The phrase looked clean on the screen. Almost reasonable. That was its purpose.
“I’m sorry,” Jocelyn said.
“Don’t be sorry for him calling my office.”
“I’m sorry I helped him make you sound like that.”
The admission hit harder than the excuse I’d expected. I looked at her, but she didn’t ask me to comfort her or take it back.
Keller shifted the tablet toward himself. “Laurel, you asked what the record can establish. With your written consent, our audit team can review access to your portal and the appointment cancellation.”
“Would it show who used it?”
“It may show which credentials were used and when. I can’t promise what the audit will find, and I won’t speculate before it’s complete.”
The caution didn’t feel like a wall this time. It felt like a line drawn around what was mine to learn.
“What do you need from me?”
“Your authorization. Only for the audit of your account activity.”
I signed where he indicated. My hand didn’t shake. When I returned the tablet, I noticed the corner of my fertility notebook peeking out from beneath my bag. I left it there. Dates and appointments were evidence of what I had done; they were not an invitation for Grant to own the story.
Outside the consultation room, people moved past with coffee cups, paper gowns, and tired faces. Ordinary life went on, indifferent to the fact that my ex-husband had just called my employer to warn them about me.
I stepped into the hallway and listened to his voicemail.
“Laurel, I heard you’re discussing private matters with people at the clinic. You need to stop before this gets uglier.”
The message ended. I saved it, noted the time, and wrote down what my mother had told me about the call to my aunt. Then I made a separate note of the office call, keeping the facts plain and the details mine.
No diagnosis. No test result. No mention of Noah.
I wasn’t going to answer Grant by spreading the private information he wanted me to use. I wasn’t going to hand him proof that his version of me was true.
Jocelyn came out with Noah asleep against her shoulder. Her phone was still clenched in her free hand.
“He wants my signature by tonight,” she said.
“You don’t owe me a decision tonight.”
Her eyes lifted to mine. “That’s not why I’m asking.”
I waited.
“I need to know whether you’ll believe me if I tell you what happened.”
I glanced at the phone in her hand. “I’ll believe what you can show me. And I’ll decide what I think after I’ve seen it.”
She nodded once, accepting the limit. Noah stirred, and his small fingers curled around the fabric near her collar. Jocelyn adjusted him gently, her face changing with the familiar tenderness of a mother settling her child.
I looked away before tenderness could start masquerading as forgiveness.
At home, I set my notebook on the kitchen table and opened a blank page. I wrote the date, the time of the office call, the name of the person who’d taken it, and the words I remembered. Then I copied the text of Jocelyn’s message about Grant’s demand without adding a single guess about what it meant.
My phone buzzed again.
A public post had appeared on Grant’s account. The photograph beside it showed him in a dark suit, his expression solemn and carefully wounded. The statement beneath it was polished enough to have been read aloud before it was posted.
“I have reason to believe Franklin Crest Medical Center mishandled archived records and produced an inaccurate result. I’m asking the clinic to correct its error. My family deserves privacy, and a former spouse’s unresolved grievances should not be allowed to endanger that.”
No names. No details. Just enough to point every curious eye toward me.
I set my phone beside the notebook. The post was already collecting comments.
For a moment, I could almost hear the reply my old self would have written: a furious paragraph, every fact flung at him like a stone. Instead, I added the time to my notes and took a screenshot.
May you like
The clinic’s records audit might tell me who had used my account. It couldn’t stop Grant from telling people what to think before the answer came.
His story was public now.
