Chapter 5 - THOMAS’S LETTERS
Dad had been dead for twelve years.
I wanted answers from someone who could no longer give them.
Rachel found the closest thing.
Letters.
After Dad died, Margaret stored his personal papers in her attic.
Under court-approved discovery in the civil matter, relevant documents were produced.
Among them were letters Dad had written to himself.
Not diary entries exactly.
Drafts.
One addressed to me but never sent.
Emily,
There is something about Sophie’s conception I should have told you the day I learned it.
I stopped reading.
Michael sat beside me.
Rachel was across the room.
I continued.
Dad wrote that Dr. Parker contacted him after Sophie’s pregnancy was confirmed.
He admitted using Dad’s stored specimen when Michael’s processed sample failed.
Dad described himself as horrified.
He claimed he had told the doctor he was willing to donate only if Michael and I explicitly agreed.
Dr. Parker told him consent had been “handled.”
Dad believed him until later.
Then he learned no donor-consent discussion ever occurred with us.
He considered telling me.
Margaret begged him not to.
Dad wrote:
I chose silence because I feared destroying Emily’s marriage and becoming something in Sophie’s life I had no right to be.
Then:
That silence may have been cowardice disguised as protection.
I cried.
Not because Dad was innocent.
He wasn’t.
He had enough suspicion to tell us.
He chose not to.
But the letter clarified something.
He had not knowingly arranged to impregnate his own daughter.
The clinic used a stored sample after a vague family-donor discussion.
Margaret encouraged bloodline preservation.
Dr. Parker crossed the central medical boundary.
Dad discovered the truth afterward and hid it.
Different responsibilities.
All serious.
May you like
Not equal.
Accuracy mattered.
