Part 2:
Six weeks earlier, I woke up in my Brooklyn studio to my neighbor’s dog barking through a wall thin enough to hear his owner apologize to it.
My apartment was 380 square feet. The radiator knocked in winter. The window unit barely worked in summer. The kitchen had two cabinets and one drawer that stuck unless you kicked it with your hip. Rent was $1,100 a month, which was cheap by New York standards and criminal by human ones.
I worked mornings at Pete’s Diner from seven to three, then evenings at Barnes & Noble from five to ten. On good days, I slept six hours. On bad days, I slept four and told myself coffee counted as a personality.
That morning, I had seventeen dollars in checking until Friday.
Breakfast was a day-old bagel from the diner and black coffee so bitter it felt like punishment.
The building superintendent knocked at 7:15.
“Certified letter, Miss Monroe.”
Certified mail always feels like bad news wearing a suit.
I signed for it and opened the cream envelope at my tiny kitchen counter.
Mr. Garrett Michael Sullivan and Miss Tessa Lynn Brightwell request the honor of your presence…
I read the first line and laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes life becomes so cruel it circles around into absurdity.
Garrett had chosen June 15th for his wedding.
Our anniversary.
Inside was his note.
I almost threw it away after the first sentence, but one word stopped me.
Twins.
We think it would be healthy for the twins to see their father’s past and present come together.
I stood there in my cheap robe, coffee going cold, staring at that word until it stopped looking like English.
Twins?
Garrett did not have children.
At least, not that I knew.
We had tried. God, how we had tried. Fertility clinics. Needles. Bloodwork. Embryo updates. Waiting rooms full of women who smiled too tightly because hope and terror were sitting beside them too. I had lost pregnancies. One early miscarriage. One ectopic that almost killed me. By the time our marriage collapsed, I thought motherhood had become one more thing Garrett could blame me for.
I called my sister Diane.
She answered with kids screaming in the background.
“Becca, it’s early. Is someone dead?”
“Garrett invited me to his wedding.”
“That son of a—”
“He mentioned twins.”
Silence.
“What twins?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
I searched online for Garrett Sullivan children.
Society pages appeared first. Garrett and Tessa at charity galas. Garrett and Tessa at the Met. Garrett and Tessa looking polished and wealthy while I wore diner shoes with cracked soles.
Then I found the photo.
Garrett at Greenwich Point with two small children. A boy and a girl, maybe four or five. The caption called them Emma and Ethan Sullivan.
The boy looked like Garrett.
The girl looked like me.
Not vaguely. Not in the sentimental way people say all babies look like family.
She had my chin. My childhood expression. My exact suspicious side-eye.
My body went cold.
I paid five hundred dollars, every dollar of my emergency savings, to a private investigator named Marcus Taylor.
“Who’s their mother?” I asked him. “When were they born? How does Garrett have children I’ve never heard of?”
Marcus worked fast because I was broke.
Forty-eight hours later, he called.
“Sit down.”
“I’m already sitting.”
“No, Becca. Really sit down.”
The twins had been born five years earlier at Greenwich Hospital. Legal father: Garrett Sullivan. Mother listed as confidential surrogate under sealed records.
Then Marcus said the sentence that changed everything.
“They came from embryos you created during your marriage.”
I could not speak.
“Garrett authorized the transfer five years ago. Two embryos. Both implanted. Both survived.”
“I never signed.”
“I know. The signature is forged.”
I screamed so loudly my neighbor called 911.
The ambulance took me to Brooklyn Methodist with a stress-induced arrhythmia and blood pressure high enough to make the doctor stop asking polite questions. When I tried to explain that my ex-husband had used my embryos to make children without telling me, he recommended psychiatric consultation.
I do not blame him completely.
The truth sounded insane.
But that is something people need to understand. Some women are not “hysterical.” Their lives are simply so horrifying that the truth comes out sounding impossible.
When I woke up hours later, Diane was beside me.
“The twins are real,” she said. “Marcus sent the documents.”
I turned my face toward the wall and whispered, “He stole my babies.”
Diane took my hand.
“Then we get them back.”

Leave ANY ICON if you found this story engaging and want more! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments to help us improve. Thanks for reading! 👇👇👇