Page 116 of Destiny

“I imagine it was probably the brainchild of Wendy Madigan,” I say.

Ruby nods. “That’s what we think as well. She probablyisthe Fleming Corporation, which would make her the trustor. She changed the beneficiary when Ava was born.”

“Why Ava?” I ask. “She told me she thinks that Wendy feels the two of them share some kind of connection.”

“I don’t know,” Ruby says. “Somehow, Wendy got to my mother while she was alive. My mother never mentioned it.”

“She probably threatened her,” Ryan says.

“I don’t think so,” Ruby says. “If my mother felt threatened, she would’ve come to us. No. What Wendy did was much more sinister. I believe she befriended my mother and somehow got her to keep their friendship a secret. I’m sure she probably used a fake name. Perhaps Dyane Wingdam, which was what she was going by at that point, or maybe even Sabrina Smith. But I don’t think she threatened my mother.”

“Your mother’s been gone for a while,” Ryan says. “There’s certainly no way to corroborate anything.”

“Unless…” I say.

“Unless what?” Ryan asks.

I look to Ryan and then back to Ruby. “Unless your mother’s not actually dead. People in your family have a tendency not to stay dead.”

“Believe me,” Ruby says, “I’ve thought of that. My mother’s gone. I was with her when she passed, and I stayed with her body. After Ryan’s father turned out to be alive twice, I learned to do that with everyone in our family who passed.”

I rise from the table and pace across the tile kitchen floor. “I don’t like Ava in there alone with her.”

“Neither do I,” Ryan agrees.

Ruby sighs. “We’ve talked about this, both of you. This is what she feels she needs to do. We have to trust Ava.”

Ruby is right, of course. I do trust Ava.

But I don’t trust Wendy Madigan.

“It’s my mother I don’t trust,” Ryan says, voicing my thought.

“None of us do, but the nurse is right outside, and Wendy’s bedridden.”

I pull out the paper with the name of the family-planning clinic on it. “It’s possible that she’s storing the actual sperm samples here.”

“We can destroy those,” Ryan says. “If we can get our hands on them.”

“Do we want to destroy them?” Ruby says. “I mean, it’s a question of ethics at this point. Bioethics.”

Ryan shakes his head. “It’s fine to destroy them. If they were fertilized embryos, there would be a question. We’d have to look to science, philosophy, theology—and that would be a nightmare, trying to figure out the best thing to do. But they’re not. If they’re just sperm, it’s no different from jacking off.”

“True,” I agree. “But they’re from dead people. People who maybe wanted their specimens preserved.”

“I agree with Brendan. I don’t think we can ethically destroy them.” Ruby taps on her cheek. “Plus, I’m afraid of what we may find. What if wedofind frozen embryos? I wouldn’t put it past Wendy to have frozen her own eggs and fertilized them with Brad’s sperm. For all we know, that’s how Lauren came about.”

“We don’t know,” Ryan says. “We still don’t know if William Steel was a figment of Wendy’s imagination. The only way we’ll know that for sure is if Lauren agrees to a DNA test.”

“I can have Jack ask her. She adores her son, and she would do anything for him.” I text Jack quickly.

“And what now?” Ryan asks.

“We wait,” Ruby says. “We trust Ava, and we wait.”

Ryan rises. “I can’t wait. Come on, Brendan. You and I are going to visit this family-planning clinic.”

“Okay. That’s fine with me. I hate sitting around anyway.”

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