Chapter 8
I don't confront Jordan on Saturday.
I wake up and I'm ready — jaw tight, stomach empty, the words already built in my throat like scaffolding. But then I stand in the shower with the water too hot and I think: what happens after?
If I confront her, she'll either deny it or confess. If she confesses, then what? I report her. And then: my badge was used. My credentials. My access.
I could lose my license. Not because I did anything wrong. Because the system says I did. My badge, my tank, my access, my responsibility.
So I don't go to Jordan on Saturday. I do something harder. I go to Devi.
* * *
She lives in a one-bedroom apartment above a dry cleaner on Milton Street. I've been here twice — once for her birthday, once when she was sick and I brought soup because she doesn't have family in the country and nobody should be sick alone.
She opens the door in shorts and a t-shirt that says PROPERTY OF NOBODY in faded letters. Her hair is down, which is wrong — I've never seen her with her hair down. She looks younger. Less armored.
"It's Saturday," she says.
"I know."
"You're at my house."
"I know."
She looks at my face. Whatever she sees there makes her step aside without another word.
Her apartment smells like oil and mustard seeds — she's been cooking.
There's a pan on the stove with something half-finished, and the small kitchen window is fogged from the heat.
A steel tumbler of chai sits on the counter, half-drunk.
Tamil radio plays softly from a phone propped against the spice rack — a woman singing something lilting, unhurried.
The whole place is warm in a way that has nothing to do with temperature — the warmth of someone mid-task, mid-life, interrupted but not bothered.
She turns the flame off, wipes her hands on a cloth printed with small elephants, and sits on the couch. Pats the cushion next to her.
I sit. And then I tell her everything.
The dates. The Nashville story. The ultrasound. The LMP. The conception window — early May, not June. Ryan's exoneration. Jordan's sperm donor story. The cryo log. My badge. May 3rd, 6:44 AM. Fourteen minutes. The security footage. The shoes.
Devi listens the way she does everything — still, focused, processing. She doesn't interrupt. She doesn't make sounds of shock or sympathy. She just takes it in, like data flowing into a system, waiting for enough information to form a conclusion.
When I finish, the apartment is very quiet. The dry cleaner below us thumps something — the industrial press, maybe, or the tumble of a dryer.
"??," Devi says softly. It's the Tamil sound she makes when a machine breaks. Disgust and disbelief in one syllable.
"Yeah."
"That's — Chloe, that's a crime."
"I know."
"Not a small one. That's theft of biological material. Unauthorized access to a medical facility. Fraudulent use of credentials. If she inseminated herself with that sample — that's reproductive fraud."
"I know."
"Does Ryan know?"
"No."
"You have to tell him."
"I know."
"And you have to report it. To Dr. Parekh. To the clinic director. This isn't optional."
"I know, Devi."
She's quiet for a moment. Then, softer: "But you're not ready."
I shake my head. Three times. Left, right, left.
"Because if you report it, they investigate you first."
"My badge. My access. I should have — I should keep it on me. I should lock it. Everyone leaves their badges in the cubbies. Everyone. But it's my name in that log."
"You were on the first floor at 6:47. Checking incubators. That's your documented routine. They'll see your keycard on the first-floor access log at the same time Tank 8 was opened on the second floor. You can't be in two places at once."
I look at her. "You thought of that already."
"I think of everything." She pulls her knees up, wraps her arms around them. "Chloe. This is bad. But it's not your bad. You didn't do this. She did this. And the longer you wait—"
"I know. I know. But I need to hear her say it first. Before anything official. Before lawyers and police and compliance officers. I need to sit across from her and hear her say why."
"Why does the why matter?"
"Because she's been my best friend for fourteen years. Because she sat on my bathroom floor while I bled. Because she bought me ice cream and held my hand and I thought — I thought she was the one person who would never—"
My voice breaks. It just cracks, like porcelain dropped from not very high. A small sound. Devi is next to me instantly — not hugging, she's not a hugger, but her hand is on my back. Flat. Warm. Steady pressure.
"Okay," she says. "Okay. You confront her first. Then we report it. But I'm going with you."
"Devi, you don't have to—"
"I'm going with you because you're going to want a witness. And because if she lies again — and she will try to lie again — you're going to need someone who isn't emotionally compromised to say 'that's not what happened.'"
She stands up. Goes back to the stove. Relights the flame. Stirs whatever she was making before I arrived.
"Have you eaten?" she asks.
"No."
"Sit. I'll make you something."
I sit. I watch her cook — quick, efficient, no wasted motion.
Mustard seeds popping in oil. Curry leaves — she tears them off a stem that's stuck to her fridge with a magnet.
Onions, already diced, from a bowl she must have prepared before I arrived.
The hiss of everything hitting the pan at once.
The smell rising — sharp, layered, alive.
"Devi."
"Mm." She doesn't turn. Flips something in the pan with a practiced jerk of the wrist.
"Thank you."
She glances over her shoulder. A small smile — the first one I've seen from her all morning. "You'd do the same for me. Now stop talking. The dosa batter needs silence."
"That's not how batter works."
"That's how my batter works."
I almost laugh. Almost. It's the closest thing to laughter I've had in days — a shape of it, forming in my chest, not quite ready to surface but present. Alive.
* * *
We eat at her tiny kitchen table — dosa with potato filling and sambar that makes my eyes water.
The table is small enough that our elbows almost touch.
There's a plant on the windowsill — a basil, leggy and overgrown — and a stack of Tamil novels with cracked spines.
Devi eats hers plain, without chutney, the way she always does.
I watch her tear the dosa with her right hand, precise, deliberate. Three pieces before she dips.
"When?" she asks.
"Tomorrow. I'll ask her to come over."
"Time?"
"Afternoon. Ryan will be at his brother's."
"I'll come early. So it doesn't look like an ambush." She pauses. Wipes sambar from the corner of her mouth with her thumb. "It is an ambush. But it shouldn't look like one until it is one."
"You're terrifying."
"I'm practical. There's a difference." She takes a sip of water. Sets it down with a small click. "What if she cries?"
"She'll cry."
"What if she says sorry?"
"She'll say sorry."
"And what if she does both and then says something that sounds reasonable? Something that sounds like friendship and concern and good intentions gone wrong? Because she will. That's what people like this do — they frame the crime as care."
I think about this. I think about Jordan's face at brunch — the glow, the hand on the belly, the I thought about you before I told anyone.
I think about the ultrasound room. Her hand finding mine.
The squeeze. The way she said "thank you for being here" with wet eyes and genuine warmth and the baby she stole growing inside her like evidence wrapped in love.
"Then I'll have to remember that love doesn't steal," I say. "No matter how it explains itself."
Devi nods. Once. Final.
"Good," she says. "Now eat your dosa before it gets cold. Cold dosa is a tragedy."
I eat. All of it. The first full meal I've finished in over a week. Three pieces of dosa, two servings of sambar, one glass of water. Devi watches me clear my plate with something that might be satisfaction, or might just be the face she makes when the centrifuge finishes a clean run.
"I'll be there at one," she says as I leave.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. Thank me after it's done."
I walk to my car. The afternoon sun is direct, honest, the kind that doesn't allow shadows. My phone buzzes. Jordan.
Brunch next Saturday? Mara wants to try the new place on Oak.
I stare at the message. The casual rhythm of it. The assumption of normalcy. The way she's still living inside the story she built — the one where she used a donor and everything's fine and we're all just women going to brunch.
I type back: Can you come over tomorrow instead? Just us. 2 PM.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. She's typing. Deciding what to say. Deciding how casual to be.
Then: Of course! Everything ok?
Yeah. Just miss you.
Heart emoji. Jordan sends a heart emoji. And I put my phone in my pocket and I drive home and I set my keys in the bowl by the door and I sit on my couch in my quiet house and I wait for tomorrow to come.