Chapter 4: Twenty-Three Names
I didn't show Grant the message.
I texted Diane Marsh back from the hallway while Grant sat at the kitchen table not moving.
I kept my voice level and my typing quiet.
*How did you find me?*
Her reply came in under a minute.
*The clinic's patient records were leaked two months ago by a former employee.
A small group of us have been cross-referencing DNA results.
Your daughter's profile appeared in a database three weeks ago.
We've been waiting to see if you would reach out first.*
I leaned against the wall.
*How many families?*
*Twenty-three confirmed.
Possibly more.*
Twenty-three children.
Twenty-three families who had walked into that clinic believing they were choosing a donor.
Believing in a process.
Believing in a doctor.
I walked back into the kitchen.
"There's a group," I said.
"Other families.
At least twenty-three of them.
They've been organizing."
Grant looked up.
"Rachel, if this goes public—"
"It should go public."
"My mother—"
"Grant." I set the phone on the table face-up so he could see the message.
"Your mother protected a man who @bused his position to father children without consent.
She knew.
She stayed silent.
She let those families believe a lie for decades." I paused.
"She let me believe I was a bad wife and a bad mother because your family needed a cover story."
He read the message.
He read it again.
"I need to call her," he said.
"You can call her.
But I'm meeting with Diane."
"Rachel, please don't do anything yet.
Give me one day."
"You've had years."
He flinched.
It was small, but I saw it.
"I know," he said.
"I know I have."
I met Diane Marsh two days later at a coffee shop forty minutes from our house.
She was in her early sixties, neat gray hair, a canvas tote bag on the chair beside her.
She had a folder.
She slid it across the table before I had finished sitting down.
"These are the confirmed cases," she said.
"Names redacted for now.
But the DNA matches are solid.
A genetics professor at the university verified the cluster independently."
I opened the folder.
Rows of case numbers.
Dates.
Clinic visit years ranging from 1988 to 2003.
"He was still practicing in 2003?"
"He retired in 2004.
The clinic closed the following year." She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup.
"My son is thirty-one.
He found out eight months ago when he did one of those consumer DNA tests.
He matched with a half-sibling he had never heard of.
Then another.
Then six more."
"What happened when you confronted the clinic?"
"The clinic is closed.
Voss is eighty-one and living in a retirement community in Florida." She looked at me steadily.
"He is not well.
But he is alive.
And there is a civil case being prepared."
"By who?"
"A law firm in Chicago.
They've been building it quietly.
They needed more families to come forward." She paused.
"They needed someone with a direct connection to Voss.
Someone who could speak to his methods, his relationships, his access." Her eyes didn't move from mine.
"Someone who knew him personally.
Not just as a patient."
I understood what she was not saying.
"You know about Evelyn."
Diane nodded slowly.
"We know there was a woman close to him during his most active years at the clinic.
We don't have her name confirmed.
But if she was willing to speak—"
"She won't."
"Then someone who knows her story might."
I closed the folder.
Grant had given me one day.
May you like
I had given him two.
When I got home that evening, Evelyn's car was in the driveway.
