Chapter Text
The papers lay on her desk like something volatile, thin sheets that somehow carried the weight of an entire lifetime. Miranda hadn’t meant to open them yet, she’d only intended to glance at the envelope, to acknowledge its arrival, to tuck it neatly with the rest of the day’s correspondence. But her hands had acted before her mind could intervene, tearing through the seal with a violence that felt foreign to her.
And now she was sitting perfectly still, spine straight, breath thin, staring at two lines of text that refused to rearrange themselves into anything less impossible, or absurd.
Probability of maternity: 99.9999%.
Her eyes didn’t move. If anything, they sharpened, as though clarity could undo the meaning. The office around her faded: the muted glow of the skyline behind her, the faint hum of the air system, the neat stacks of work awaiting her attention. All of it dissolved under the quiet, suffocating gravity of that single number.
She read it again.
And again.
And again.
The world did not shift, did not tilt, it simply stopped, silently, obediently, as if waiting for her to catch up.
Her fingers tightened on the page. That was the only movement she allowed herself. She could not read the words anymore, nor could she distinguish anything around her as more than a blurry image, fading as did her carefully built façade. On the surface, she looked exactly as she always did: composed, immaculate, unreachable. Of course she did. But just beneath that veneer, something old and long-buried stirred, a memory she had buried so deep it had calcified into something like fact.
And now it resurfaced like a wound hidden but never healed, stabbed open again, only this time with far greater force.
She remembers the hospital room.
The white walls.
Her mother’s stiff, horrified silence.
A nurse with gentle hands and empty words.
I’m sorry, Miss. The baby didn’t make it.
The sentence that ended everything before anything had even begun.
She blinked away the tears threatening to escape their prison. She wiped at her cheeks, refusing herself the simple mercy of falling apart, nothing in her life had ever been simple.
And the name printed at the top of the report pulled her back like a hook.
Andrea Lynn Sachs.
Andrea.
Her assistant.
Her infuriating, brilliant, resilient, impossible assistant—the girl who met demands with stubborn determination, who flinched at raised voices but not at impossible standards, who looked at the world as though it was still salvageable.
Andrea.
The paper trembled, a fleeting shiver that she quelled instantly, jaw locking in place.
She wasn’t supposed to feel this. She wasn’t supposed to hope again. Not after all these years. Not after building an empire over the grave of a seventeen-year-old’s grief. Hope devours its believer long before the world ever could.
But there it was, right before her perfectly healthy eyes, raw and merciless.
My child.
Miranda drew a long, quiet breath, one she never allowed herself to take where anyone could see. Her heartbeat pressed against her ribs like something unsteady, and she could swear that the tangle of emotions inside her was vast enough to constitute an entirely new one—gut-wrenching, consuming, almost feral in its intensity.
She read the result a final time, letting the truth settle in her bones like a returning ghost.
Then, with a motion almost reverent, she set the paper down.
She knew exactly what she had violated to obtain this certainty. She did not pretend otherwise.
Tomorrow, Andrea Sachs would walk into this office completely unaware.
And Miranda…
Miranda would have to learn how to simply exist all over again.
Had I known—my child, the one I waited for with impatience that scarred my own youth, the one my parents told me was dead, the one I mourned in silence for years—had been here all along, beneath my notice, catering to my whims and demands while I, practically, should have been attending to her for twenty-five years—I would have berated myself endlessly for my blindness.
How could I have failed to see what was plain, even in the way the twins, otherwise so closed off, regarded her as an elder sister? How could I have mistaken her courage, her empathy, her decisiveness, for anything other than the reflection of my own lost instincts as a mother?
She moves through the world as I once did—resilient, clever, unyielding when confronted with impossibility, yet capable of care that demands nothing in return. I see myself in her now: the stubborn precision, the insistence on order, the sharp mind tempered by unexpected tenderness. And I see it in how she treats my daughters, in the patience, the quiet guidance, the almost imperceptible authority she exerts. She is a mirror of the girl I used to be—the girl who still believed she could do everything, protect everyone, and still remain whole.
Every small action I had misread—her kindness, her empathy, her quiet insistence on seeing what needed to be done—was not mere competence. It was instinct, impossibly maternal, familiar to me in a way I had thought was buried forever. Every look, every gesture, every moment of subtle care now strikes me with unrelenting force. She has lived a life I should have nurtured, yet she thrived without me, shaped by the same values, the same fire I once carried.
How could I have failed to see what was always there? How could I have mistaken empathy for caution, decisiveness for ambition, resilience for mere diligence? How could I have overlooked the small, unremarkable moments where her instincts mirrored my own lost maternal inclinations—the way she lingered to steady a junior editor, the way she assisted my daughters, the way she never sought attention but quietly shaped the world around her? And all of it, all of it, pointing to the same impossible truth.
Had I been so utterly out of touch with my own feelings that only now, at last, do I recognize the connection between Andrea and myself as identical to that I share with Caroline and Cassidy? The pride, the instinct to protect, the fierce, quiet care—all of it had been hidden in plain sight. Every memory now fits into place like a puzzle completed, like a photograph once blurred, now sharply in focus.
God. What have I done? How do I navigate this? How do I speak the truth without shattering her entirely, without shattering myself? And yet, I must. For twenty-five years, the world has demanded that I build walls and keep everything under control. But walls are insufficient when faced with what should have been mine all along. And Andrea—my child—does not even know. She moves through her life, brilliant and unaware, shaping the world in her own image, completely oblivious to the fact that I have been watching, unknowingly, from behind a carefully constructed facade.
I imagine my daughters watching her from across the room, as they have so often. The tenderness in their glances, the trust, the deference.. How long have I denied myself the understanding that this same heart, hidden beneath her confident exterior, is my own child? My flesh and blood, moving through my office, through my life, and I, blind, assumed her presence was incidental.
The fault is mine, I should have recognized it in the little things. The protective glance when a mistake was made. The quickness to intercede when someone was treated unfairly. The way she speaks without raising her voice, and yet no one dares disregard her. The patience. The decisiveness. The loyalty. All traits I honed through necessity, now reflected in her as though I had cast a shadow twenty-five years ago, and it had finally grown into form.
I feel a tide rising inside me: guilt, astonishment, awe, longing, an ache I had thought was long buried. How does one bridge twenty-five years? How do I approach a life that has been lived apart from me, yet somehow, inexplicably, mirrors my own? Do I speak now, risking disbelief, confusion, perhaps even anger? Or do I wait, watch, guard silently, and allow her to live as she always has, brilliant and unaware, until the moment is perfect—or until the burden of silence becomes unbearable?
And still, through it all, I feel the unmistakable, unwelcome stirrings of hope. Hope that I dared extinguish long ago, hope that I built walls to contain, hope I told myself was folly. And yet, here it is. It pulses, fierce and undeniable, as if life itself is demanding that I acknowledge it, that I reclaim what has always been mine. My child. My Andrea.
For all my years of careful planning, for all my mastery of control, for all the walls I have constructed—none of it matters against this truth. She exists. She breathes. She thrives. And in that realization, I am powerless, unmoored, and entirely, impossibly human.