My stepsister begged me to be her surrogate after years of failed IVF — but at 8 months pregnant, I overheard her on the phone saying, “She can’t find out the truth before the baby is born.”

Someone laughed at the counter.

A chair scraped across the floor.

I put my hand flat on the table.

“Whose embryo is it?”

Diane looked at me steadily.

“That’s what Marcus came to me trying to find out how to tell you.

He said Penelope had made a decision without him.

He said she used a donor — a specific donor — without telling him the full details.

And without telling you anything at all.”

“Why would she hide that from me?”

“Because,” Diane said, “of who the donor is.”

She slid one more page across the table.

It was a clinic intake form.

At the top, in the field marked DONOR RELATIONSHIP TO INTENDED PARENT, someone had written four words in blue ink.

I read them.

Then I read them again.

My chair pushed back from the table on its own.

I wasn’t aware of standing up.

I was just suddenly standing.