Chapter 3

My hands trembled as I disconnected the feed.

Ashley.

A boy. A man.

How?

The adoption agency. Their records.

I called them the next morning, my voice tight with forced calm.

"Hi, this is Sarah Miller. I' m calling about Ashley Thompson' s records. Just a routine follow-up."

The caseworker sounded bored. "One moment."

I heard typing.

"Ashley Thompson, assigned female at birth. No medical anomalies noted. Standard adoption."

"No anomalies?" I pressed. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes, Mrs. Miller. The file is quite clear. Is there a problem?"

A problem? My whole world was a problem.

"No, no problem. Thank you."

I hung up, more confused than ever.

The records said female. The camera showed male.

I needed help. Someone I could trust.

Dr. Brenda Wyatt. My best friend from college. Now a respected endocrinologist.

I called her, my voice cracking. "Brenda, I need you. It' s... it' s an emergency."

We met at her office after hours.

I laid it all out. The rebirth, the false accusations, Mark' s azoospermia.

And then, the camera footage. What I saw.

Brenda listened, her expression shifting from concern to disbelief, then to intense focus.

She didn' t call me crazy. She knew me.

"Sarah," she said slowly, "what you're describing... if Ashley has developed male reproductive organs and was assigned female at birth, it points to a rare intersex condition."

Intersex?

"Something like Klinefelter syndrome, XXY, can sometimes manifest this way, though it' s incredibly uncommon for it to go undiagnosed and for fertility to be present if the individual presents as female."

She paused. "If she has functional male organs, she could potentially father a child."

Father a child.

Emily' s pregnancy.

My God.

"And," Brenda continued, her voice gentle but firm, "if she' s producing sperm... it' s medically conceivable, though extremely rare, that she could have... accidentally... self-impregnated."

Ashley' s own pregnancy.

The thought was grotesque, a biological horror story.

"We need proof, Sarah," Brenda said. "Undeniable proof. DNA. From Ashley, from Emily, from Mark, and from the fetuses, if possible, though that' s harder at this stage."

"How do I get DNA?" I asked, my mind racing.

"Hairbrushes, toothbrushes. Anything with their cells on it. Be discreet."

Discreet. My new watchword.

I went home, my head spinning with medical terms and horrifying possibilities.

That night, after the girls were asleep, I crept into their rooms.

Ashley' s hairbrush. Emily' s toothbrush.

I sealed them in separate plastic bags, labeled them.

I took one of Mark' s old toothbrushes too, just to be thorough, though I knew what his results would show.

The next day, I dropped them off with Brenda.

"It' ll take a few days," she said.

A few days.

It felt like an eternity.

The college health screenings were looming. Friday.

Three more days.

I had to act normal. Keep up the charade of the loving, slightly concerned mother.

It was the hardest thing I' d ever done.

Every smile from Ashley felt like a sneer. Every quiet word from Emily felt like a betrayal.

Mark noticed my tension.

"You okay, honey?" he asked, his brow furrowed with concern. "You seem... on edge."

"Just worried about the girls and college," I lied. "It' s a big step."

He squeezed my hand. "They' ll be fine. We raised them right."

We raised them right.

The irony was a bitter pill.