Blue eyes.

My chest contracted.

A young man named Charles explained more.

“There’s a pattern,” he said. “A donor. Too many children. Even if families demanded otherwise… In the end, they still had children who looked like him.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The owner,” he said quietly. “She’s connected to him. She pushed his rehearsals. Ignored the rules.”

My hands started to shake.

“And the girl?” I asked.

He nodded.

“She’s from this donor.”

The room felt like it was closing.

A man.

Dozens of children.

All with the same face.

The same features.

The same… Look. Look.

As Emma.

The moment everything clicked
I don’t remember driving anymore.

But somehow I ended up in front of Mark’s office.

I was sitting there staring at the building.

And then it hit me.

Not all at once.

But enough.

Red hair.

Freckles.

Blue eyes.

My hands started to shake.

“No…” I whispered.

But deep inside…

I already knew it. Only to illustrate the truth, for
the
I was not ready. I entered his office.

He looked up in surprise.

“Claire? What are you doing here?”

I closed the door behind me.

And asked the question that had already smashed everything in me:

“Why did you donate your sperm?”

Silence.

Then—

“What are you talking about?”

“I was talking to someone from the clinic,” I said. “They gave me your name.”

It was a lie.

But it worked.

His face changed.

And in that moment—

I had my answer.

“I did it for Emma,” he said.

The words hit me like a slap.

“What?”

“I couldn’t let her go,” he said, his voice vocal. “I thought… if I put something of mine out maybe… someone would have a child who look like here.”

Tears filled my eyes.

“So you tried to replace her?”

“No!” he shouted. “I just… I needed to see here again.”

I shook my head.

“That’s not grief,” I said quietly. “That’s obsession.”

And then I asked the question I already knew the answer to:

“The owner of the clinic… were you grieving with her too?”

He flinched.

And that was enough.

The End of Us
“You should have gone to therapy,” I said. “We could’ve faced this together.”

“I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” he said.

“But it did.”

I wiped my tears.

“You song. You cheated. And you brought children into this world under false pretenses.”

“Claire, please—we can fix this.”

I shook my head slow.

“No,” I said.

“You broke us the moment you chose all of this… over honesty.”

I left his office without turning around.

I was sitting outside in my car.

For a long moment, I just breathed.

Really breathed.

For the first time in ten years.

Then I took my phone and called.

“I want to make an appointment,” I said. “I want to start the divorce process.”

A new one early years
I was chasing something I could never get back.

One moment.

A memory.

A life that ended far too soon.

But that day, I realized something:

Emma didn’t need to be replaced.

It did not need to be recreated.

She had been real.

She had been loved.

And that was enough.

For the first time in a decade…

I didn’t live in the past anymore.

I decided myself.

And maybe—just maybe—

I could still be a mother again.

But this time… With honesty.

With healing.

And with a future that finally belonged to me.