Chapter 10 - THE REAL REASON MARGARET NEEDED AMY GONE
Julia Meyers now worked at a small fertility laboratory in Vermont. She agreed to speak after Rachel sent her the court order unsealing the B-21 case. Her first question was whether I was still married to Daniel.
“Technically.”
“That may matter.”
Julia explained the phrase maternal specimen substitutions. Northstar required a blood sample from both genetic contributors before transferring embryos to a gestational carrier. Three years earlier, when Margaret attempted to release B-21, the maternal confirmation sample submitted under my name did not genetically match the stored egg-source profile.
It belonged to another woman.
“Who?”
Julia had never been told.
The mismatch stopped the transfer.
Margaret argued that Northstar’s original egg-source record must be wrong.
Julia compared archival samples and proved it was not.
My eggs had created B-21.
The new blood belonged to someone else.
That meant Margaret had tried to substitute another woman’s identity for mine.
Why?
The answer sat inside the parentage strategy.
Margaret knew a successful pregnancy using my embryo could leave me with powerful parentage claims. If she could make future records show Vanessa—or another chosen woman—as the egg source, she could reduce my connection to the child on paper.
She was not merely trying to create descendants.
She was trying to create descendants without me.
The real motive finally came into focus.
Margaret believed I had spent years preparing to leave Daniel.
She had known our marriage was deteriorating long before Daniel admitted it to himself. She watched me stop attending family weekends, withdraw from the foundation board, and refuse further IVF.
In her mind, I had become a future threat to the Bennett family.
If Daniel and I eventually divorced with a child, I could take that child emotionally and geographically outside Margaret’s influence.
Vanessa was different.
Vanessa depended on Bennett Group for her career and had spent a decade seeking Margaret’s approval.
Megan was family through Stephen.
Both were women Margaret believed she could control.
The heir explanation from Chapter 5 had been incomplete.
Margaret wanted grandchildren.
But she wanted grandchildren raised inside systems she controlled.
My pregnancy at the gala therefore represented the one outcome she had failed to anticipate: Daniel and I had created a child naturally, beyond the clinic, beyond her paperwork, beyond her ability to choose the mother.
No wonder she turned pale when she saw my ultrasound.
It was not simply surprise.
My baby made her entire reproductive scheme unnecessary and much harder to hide.
Then Julia gave us the unexpected connection.
The substituted maternal blood sample belonged to Margaret.
Daniel stared at her. “My mother?”
Julia nodded.
Margaret had tried to make a genetically impossible record showing herself connected to B-21’s maternal profile, apparently hoping later paperwork could be manipulated around a “family donor” explanation.
The attempt was scientifically absurd.
But it revealed how far her sense of ownership had gone.
She did not see my embryos as mine.
She saw them as Bennett family material.
Then another motive surfaced.
Daniel found old messages between himself and Margaret from three years earlier. During one argument about our fertility treatments, he had written: Amy is done. If we never have children, then that’s our life.
Margaret replied:
That may be your choice. It is not mine.
At the time Daniel thought she meant disappointment.
Now the sentence read like a declaration.
We had the motive.
We had Northstar’s complicity.
We had proof of forged consent.
What we lacked was Margaret admitting she knew I had never agreed.
Without that, her lawyers could continue arguing she relied on documents prepared by others and believed Daniel’s power of attorney covered the rest.
Rachel wanted direct evidence.
Daniel suggested a confrontation.
I suggested a trap.
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For years Margaret had been most honest when she believed everyone else had already accepted her logic.
So we decided to let her believe I was ready to negotiate.
