Chapter 4 - What the Whitfields Didn't See ComingHours later, somewhere over the Atlantic, Derek's new life kept quietly falling apart without me anywhere near it.
After the ultrasound, he'd cornered Brianna in the clinic hallway. Eventually she admitted she'd kept seeing her ex-boyfriend, an architect named Nathaniel, well into early February.
"I was confused, Derek!"
"You told me this baby was mine."
"I thought he was!"
"No. You told me he was."
Diane overheard the entire fight from the waiting room. The same woman who'd spent months proudly announcing her long-awaited grandson to every friend she had sat down in a plastic chair and cried. Renee, who only hours earlier had told me Derek was finally getting the family he'd always wanted, didn't say another word to anyone that day.
Derek requested a paternity test on the spot. Within days, the entire fantasy the Whitfield family had built around their "male heir" started collapsing in on itself.
Two weeks after that, Renee sent me a message. Vanessa, I know you probably can't stand any of us right now, and I don't blame you. What I said in that office was cruel. I understand now that we treated Isabella and Lucy like they mattered less, just because they were girls.
May you like
I read it twice. Then I put the phone away.
I didn't ignore her to punish her. I genuinely didn't need anything from any of them anymore.
