And in that moment—
I had my answer.
“I did it for Emma,” he said.
The words hit me like a slap.
“What?”
“I couldn’t let her go,” he said, his voice breaking. “I thought… if I put something of mine out there… maybe someone would have a child who looked like her.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“So you tried to replace her?”
“No!” he shouted. “I just… I needed to see her again.”
I shook my head.
“That’s not grief,” I said quietly. “That’s obsession.”
And then I asked the question I already knew the answer to:
“The owner of the clinic… were you grieving with her too?”
He flinched.
And that was enough.
The End of Us
“You should have gone to therapy,” I said. “We could’ve faced this together.”
“I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” he said desperately.
“But it did.”
I wiped my tears.
“You lied. You cheated. And you brought children into this world under false pretenses.”
“Claire, please—we can fix this.”
I shook my head slowly.
“No,” I said.
“You broke us the moment you chose all of this… over honesty.”
I walked out of his office without looking back.
Outside, I sat in my car.
For a long moment, I just breathed.
Really breathed.
For the first time in ten years.
Then I picked up my phone and made a call.
“I’d like to schedule an appointment,” I said. “I want to start the process of filing for divorce.”
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