Plus, Clematis was my dream job. And even though it was less money and a less prestigious position in the eyes of the world than a New York magazine, I believed with all my heart that if I took it, it would pay off. At a midsized publication like Clematis, I could have the opportunity to write both investigative stories and profile pieces.

I had been so nervous moving to Palm Beach, renting the smallest apartment on the least noteworthy street with a girl from Craigslist who I had never met. (My parents would have killed me if they’d known.) I didn’t have any friends. In some ways, it was a much bigger risk than going to New York with a handful of college friends. But there were vestiges of my Southern upbringing everywhere. The trappings of city life, but the manners and protocols of a small town.

And then I met Thad. He was handsome and kind and made me feel like I was at home in this new world.

I had gotten my dreams early. So I guess I was getting my comeuppance early, too. I was only thirty-five, and I was going to be joking about my starter husband.

I knew I was in real danger of crying when a very pleasant nurse with Texas-sized hair opened the door to the waiting room and said, “Mrs. Williams, Dr. Wright will see you now.”

Mrs. Williams. I wasn’t going to be Mrs. Williams anymore. I was going to go back, as quickly as possible, to being Miss Saxton.

On autopilot, I followed the nurse as she opened the door to Dr. Wright’s office, which was so sparse it was clear he didn’t do a lot of actual work in here. I put my game face back on like my daddy taught me on long days at the softball field. “Are you the one who has to call the patients?” I asked.

“We all take turns,” she said. I could tell she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to talk to me. I supposed a reporter in a doctor’s office usually didn’t mean much good. But I wasn’t there to get her in trouble. I was there to sniff out a trail; I was writing about what happens to frozen embryos once they are no longer needed.

I wanted to talk to parents of these fertilized eggs. Did they destroy them? Adopt them out? Donate them to science? Did they have more children because they couldn’t stand the idea of doing any of the above?

“So you only call them when it’s time to make a decision?”

She shrugged. And then she made a tiny, simple gesture that would end up thrusting my life so far off its axis that my divorce would seem like a blip on the radar. She pointed to a thin stack of paper on Dr. Wright’s desk. “Yeah, once they’ve been in there for three years with no activity, we start calling the parents. They pay a bundle to keep them frozen, and our freezer space is always at a premium, so we try to keep on top of them.” She paused. “But that list is the ones we can’t get in touch with. After a few years of being unable to reach a contact, of not being paid for storage, we consider them abandoned.”