PART 2
I stood up from the gift chair.
“Constance,” I said, loud enough for every guest to hear, “a surrogacy contract in North Carolina needs the signature of the woman carrying the baby. My signature. Made by me. You can’t forge one with your son’s laptop.” “Prove it,” she said.
“I just did,” I said. “The audit trail says it was signed from Bradley’s computer, in this house, while I was in a meeting downtown with twelve witnesses and a calendar invite.”
Nobody at that party said a word.
I picked up my purse and walked out. Bradley’s aunt followed me to my car and hugged me in the driveway.
“I’ll testify,” she whispered. “To whatever you need.”
The next morning, I called the hospital’s legal department.
I sent them the audit trail. My calendar. Screenshots of the meeting. A statement from my boss.
By that afternoon, Constance’s name had been removed from my delivery record. The hospital put a security note on my file. Only I could decide who could see my daughter.
Then I hired a family lawyer.
She looked at the contract for ten minutes and laughed.
“This isn’t a surrogacy agreement,” she said. “This is forgery. And attempted fraud. There’s no egg donor. No clinic. No independent lawyer for you. It’s your own biological child. They just tried to paper her away from you.”
We went to the police.
The investigation took three weeks. The detective found the website where Bradley had downloaded the surrogacy template. Constance had paid a notary from her church to stamp it without me there.
They’d planned it for five months.
Constance wanted a granddaughter she could raise “properly.” Bradley wanted his mother’s money. She’d promised to pay off his debts and leave him everything, if he gave her the baby.
My daughter was born on a Tuesday in December. Seven pounds, two ounces. Brown hair. My mother’s chin.
The nurse put her on my chest and said, “Hi, Mama.”
Nobody tried to take her.
Bradley and Constance were both charged with forgery and attempted fraud. The notary lost her commission. Constance’s lawyer begged for probation. She got it, along with a restraining order that keeps her five hundred feet from my daughter.
I filed for divorce two weeks after the birth. The judge read the contract out loud in court. Then she looked at Bradley for a long time.
“You tried to sign away your wife’s child to your mother,” she said. “I’m awarding full custody to Ms. Dutton.”
Bradley sees our daughter twice a month, supervised.
I went back to my maiden name. So did she.
Her name is Annabel Grace Holloway. She’s ten months old now. She laughs at the dog and pulls my hair and refuses to sleep.
Last week, she said her first word.
It was “Mama.”
Not one person in the world could forge that.
THE END.
