TRUTH #3
The drive to Dr. Broussard’s office wasn’t long, fifteen minutes if traffic behaved, and it didn’t behave, so I had extra time to sit with the radio low and my hand resting over my stomach.
I felt nothing yet but knew there was so much happening under my palm that I couldn’t feel at all—cells deciding things, biology writing answers I hadn’t asked for but needed anyway.
Whatever waited in that office, I was about to know it.
By the time I hit St. Charles, I’d already caught three different people staring.
One man damn near ran his bike into a streetcar pole, trying to keep his eyes on me instead of the road.
I let the window down a crack, let the afternoon air move through the car, let the sun catch the diamonds in my ears the way it was supposed to.
The Mercedes-AMG rode like something out of a dream I didn’t know I was allowed to have—matte black, growling low, even at a stop, and I’d picked it on purpose over the Bentley or the Range Rover because this one made people look.
I had on my dress that hugged everything pregnancy hadn’t taken from me yet, gold hoops big enough to swing when I laughed, and my hair laid so good I’d caught my own reflection twice just to admire it.
Behind me, two car lengths back, my detail kept pace—driving, unbothered, sunglasses on, doing sixty like it was nothing. I knew all their names. That had been part of the deal.
I glanced in the rearview and smiled at myself, just a little.
Girl, you were born for this muthafuckin’ life.
I didn’t know if that was true. But sitting in that car, dressed the way I was dressed, moving through the city like the I owned it—it felt true enough to enjoy for the drive to Dr. Broussard’s office.
I parked in visitor parking, let Marcus circle the block twice before he found a spot he liked, and walked into the building with my chin up and my bag on my shoulder like I had all the time in the world.
The receptionist—Deja, sweet girl, always remembered my name—buzzed me back to the waiting area without me having to say a word.
“Dr. Broussard will call you back shortly, Ms. Renois,” she said.
I thanked her and took a seat near the window, crossing my legs, feeling good, feeling powerful, feeling like maybe—maybe—today was going to be a day where something finally went my way clean, no complications, no Landry chaos trailing behind it like smoke.
I should’ve known better. I always should’ve known better.
“Truth?” The nurse, Angela, poked her head out. “She’s ready for you.”
I followed her back, still riding that high, still feeling myself right up until I stepped into the exam room and saw Dr. Broussard’s face.
She wasn’t smiling.
Dr. Broussard had a way about her—warm, direct, the kind of doctor who told you the truth even when the truth wasn’t pretty, but always with her hand steady on your arm while she did it.
Today, her hand wasn’t on my arm. Today she was standing by the counter with a folder closed against her chest like she was bracing herself before she even opened her mouth.
“Have a seat, Truth.”
The good feeling in my chest curdled quickly, the way milk goes bad before you even catch the smell.
“That bad?” I said, trying to keep my voice light while sliding onto the exam table anyway.
“Let’s talk first,” she said and pulled her rolling stool close, close enough that if I leaned forward, our heads would bump. “Before I show you anything.”
“Okay.” My heart was doing something ugly now, thumping high in my throat. “The babies are okay, right? Nobody’s—nobody’s in trouble?”
“Both babies are healthy,” she said immediately, and some of the air came back into my lungs.
“Growing well. I checked before you even walked in, because I know that’s your first question every time, and it should be.
” She paused. “This isn’t about their health.
This is about the paternity tests you asked me to run. ”
I nodded slowly. “Okay.”
She opened the folder.
“Truth, I want you to understand the science before I tell you the conclusion, because I don’t want this to feel like something happening to you without you understanding why it’s happening. Is that alright?”
“Just tell me, Dr. Broussard.” My hands were flat on my thighs, pressing down like I could hold myself together through my palms. “Please.”
She held my eyes.
“The genetic testing confirms that the twins you’re carrying have two different biological fathers.
This is called heteropaternal superfecundation—it happens when two eggs are fertilized by sperm from two different men, typically during the same cycle.
Given what you’ve told me about the fertility clinic and the specimens that were used without your full knowledge, this explains everything the ultrasound already suggested when we first found two separate gestational sacs. ”
The room got very quiet. I could hear the air conditioning ticking somewhere behind the wall.
“Two different fathers,” I repeated, like saying it slow would make it smaller. It didn’t.
“Yes.” She reached out, finally, and put her hand over mine. “The girl is a genetic match to Amai Landry. The boy is a genetic match to Kaisen Landry.”
I don’t know what sound I made. I don’t think it was a word. My hand came up over my mouth on its own, and my eyes burned instantly. The exam room tilted a little, the fluorescent light too bright and too white.
“Both babies are currently doing well,” Dr. Broussard said again, gentle but firm, the kind of steady she probably learned from delivering bad news a thousand times before mine.
“I want to be very clear about that. There is no indication that either twin is in danger because of this. This is simply—this is the truth of their origin. Nothing more, nothing less.”
The truth of their origin.
I almost laughed, the kind of laugh that isn’t a laugh at all, just grief wearing a different coat.
Because that was the joke of it, wasn’t it?
My whole life, I’d been Truth, and here I was, sitting on a table, and finding out the truth was, two brothers, two different men, two different daddies knitted into two different bodies inside the same womb, inside me, and I hadn’t asked for a single bit of it.
“How,” I said, and my voice cracked right down the middle. “How does that even—how does that happen, Dr. Broussard? Like physically, mechanically, how—”
“During the IVF procedure, if specimens from two different donors were mixed up, mislabeled, or intentionally combined without proper protocol, and two separate eggs were fertilized and implanted—it’s rare, but it’s documented.
It happens most commonly in cases of infidelity in natural conception, but in a clinical setting like yours, it means someone made a catastrophic error. Or a deliberate one.”
Deliberate. That word sat in my chest like a stone.