Chapter 5 - The Confrontation
For five days, I slept next to Grant Sorensen knowing he might have sold my baby to pay off his own debts.
He noticed something was off. "You've been quiet lately."
"Work stuff."
"You always complain about work stuff. This is different."
"I'm just tired, Grant."
He let it go. I hated how easy that was for him.
Law enforcement opened a formal investigation once they reviewed the DNA results and the medical records. Then came the final piece — a hospital security archive from eight years back, no video left, but access logs still intact. Grant's visitor badge had been used repeatedly in the neonatal unit. Not strange on its own; he was the father.
But on the fourth day after delivery, Grant had signed an infant release acknowledgement. Not an adoption consent form — a release. Filed under Milo's temporary hospital ID number. The receiving organization on the form no longer existed.
Signature: Grant Sorensen.
Nora sat with me when I first saw it. "That's his signature."
"I know it is."
"You're certain?"
"I watched that man sign mortgage documents for fifteen years, Nora. I'd know his signature blind."
I looked at her. "He did this."
She didn't answer, because we both already knew.
The confrontation happened at a Fairhaven police station, not at our house, and not anywhere near Eli. Grant thought we were meeting an accountant about old business taxes. When he walked in and saw Nora, two detectives, and me sitting at the table, he stopped in the doorway.
His face changed instantly.
"What is this?"
I slid a photograph across the table. Eli and Milo, sitting side by side after their DNA appointment, matching faces, matching frowns.
Grant went white as paper. I watched his body understand the truth a full second before his mouth could build a lie to cover it.
"Who is that," he said, and it came out flat, not really a question.
"You know exactly who that is."
"No, I don't."
"His name is Milo Reyes."
Grant sat down hard, staring at the photo, his breathing gone ragged.
"Did our second baby die?" I asked him directly. No preamble. No softening.
Silence.
"Grant. Answer me."
He closed his eyes.
That was answer enough.
I started crying — not because some small part of me had still hoped, but because hearing the truth arrive without a single word attached to it was somehow worse than any confession could have been.
"Say it," I told him. "Say it out loud."
He whispered, "No. He didn't die."
The room went completely still.
I'd imagined this exact moment for days. I thought I'd scream at him. Instead my voice came out low and steady, which scared me more than screaming would have.
"Why," I said. "Why would you do this to me."
Grant covered his face with both hands. "I was drowning, Maren."
"So you gave away our son to keep from drowning?"
"It wasn't like that —"
"Then tell me exactly what it was like," one of the detectives cut in, arms crossed.
Grant looked at me instead of the detective. "The business debt was almost two hundred thousand dollars. Insurance wasn't covering half of what the NICU was billing us. Creditors were calling every single day, multiple times a day —"
"So?" I snapped. "So you decided our son was expendable?"
"So Dale said there was a couple desperate to adopt, and —"
"You planned this before I even woke up."
"Not before."
"Then when, Grant? When exactly did you decide to sell my baby?"
His jaw tightened. "The second day."
Two days. Forty-eight hours. That was all the time it took him to decide our son belonged in somebody else's life.
"I thought one baby would be manageable," he said. "Two wouldn't."
"You weren't thinking two babies were unmanageable — you were thinking two babies were inconvenient."
"I wasn't thinking clearly at all."
"You were thinking clearly enough to invent fake names for a legal document."
"That was Dale's idea, not mine —"
"You signed it, Grant."
"...Yes."
"You took money for our son."
He started crying, finally, ugly and unguarded. "The money was supposed to be reimbursement, Maren, that's all it was supposed to be —"
"Eighteen thousand dollars landed straight into your company's account."
"I used it to keep us out of bankruptcy!"
I laughed — one short, awful sound with nothing funny behind it. "You monetized our child."
"No —"
"Yes, Grant. That's exactly what you did."
"I told myself he'd have a better life somewhere else."
"You never once asked me what I wanted."
"You were barely conscious!"
"I woke up."
He looked down at the table, unable to hold my eyes. "That's what made it harder."
I went cold all over. "What does that mean?"
"If you'd known he was alive... you never would have agreed to any of it."
The truth of that sat so nakedly on the table between us that nobody in that room said a single word for a long moment.
"Exactly," I finally whispered.
Grant cried harder. "I thought once it was done, telling you the truth would only destroy everything we had left."
"So you told me our son died."
"...Yes."
"You let me grieve a baby who was alive."
"Yes."
"You watched me light a candle every single October nineteenth for eight straight years."
He put his face in his hands. "I know."
"You watched me wonder if I should have fought harder to hold him, just once, before he died."
"I know, Maren."
"You told me seeing his body would have traumatized me. There was no body."
"I know."
Something inside me went completely silent. "Did you ever check on him? In eight years?"
Grant stared at the photograph like it might change if he looked long enough. "...Once."
My stomach dropped. "When?"
"When he was around two."
"How?"
"Dale found an address."
"Why would you do that?"
"I needed to know he was okay."
I stared at him, something in my chest turning to ice. "You knew where my son was."
"Not exactly, not for certain —"
"You knew he was alive."
"...Yes."
"And every single day after that, you kept choosing the lie anyway."
May you like
Grant had nothing left to say to that.
That was the moment our marriage actually ended — not when I found out Milo was alive, and not when the bank records surfaced. It ended the moment Grant admitted the lie had stopped being panic years and years ago. It had become routine. A decision he renewed quietly every single morning he woke up next to me.
