Chapter 10 - Building Trust
The first few weeks with Luna were chaotic, beautiful, and exhausting.
We didn't hire a night nurse.
After losing so much time, and nearly losing her completely, neither Eric nor I wanted to miss a single moment.
We learned to decipher her cries—the hungry cry, the tired cry, the cranky cry.
But more importantly, Eric and I learned how to talk to each other again.
One night, at three in the morning, we were sitting on the nursery floor, watching Luna sleep in her crib.
"I'm sorry I pulled away after the miscarriage," Eric whispered in the dark.
I looked at him. The moonlight caught the exhaustion in his eyes, but also a deep vulnerability I hadn't seen in years.
"I didn't know how to fix it," he admitted. "I'm a guy who fixes problems with logic and money. But I couldn't fix your grief, and I couldn't fix mine."
"So you buried yourself in work," I said gently.
"And I left you alone. I'm so sorry, Julia."
I reached out and held his hand.
"I shut you out too, Eric. I was so angry at my own body, I projected it onto you. I thought you didn't care."
"I cared every single day," he said, tears threatening to spill. "I just didn't know how to survive the quiet."
"The quiet is gone now," I smiled, gesturing to the baby monitor on the dresser.
Eric chuckled softly, wiping his eyes. "Yeah. It definitely is."
The corporate transition was messy, but necessary.
With David gone, Eric appointed a new, fiercely loyal COO and implemented a massive overhaul of the company's internal security and ethics boards.
He also made good on his promise.
He publicly announced his plan to step down as CEO within five years to transition to a full-time role at the Whitaker Foundation.
The public loved it. The stock soared.
But none of that mattered to us as much as the little girl sleeping in the next room.
The clinic in Los Angeles was hit with a massive federal lawsuit, not just from us, but from dozens of other families demanding audits of their genetic materials.
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Dr. Thorne resigned in disgrace, and strict new federal laws were drafted regarding the transport and security of IVF embryos.
We had turned our private nightmare into a shield for other families.
