Chapter 4 - GRANT’S FATHER HAD HATED ADRIAN VALEGrant’s father, Richard Mercer, died seven years earlier.
He had been wealthy.
Not billionaire wealthy.
But old Connecticut money.
Private equity.
Commercial real estate.
Family trusts.
He was distant.
Formal.
And according to Grant, he hated Adrian Vale.
Grant remembered one argument from childhood.
He was maybe eight.
Vale came to the house.
Richard shouted:
“Stay away from my wife.”
Grant always assumed affair.
Now?
Maybe that was only part of it.
Elaine eventually admitted she and Vale had dated before she married Richard.
Briefly, she claimed.
Then after marriage, Vale became her fertility doctor.
That sentence changed everything.
“Why did you need a fertility doctor?”
Grant asked.
Elaine said nothing.
He stared.
“Mom.”
She looked down.
“We had trouble conceiving.”
Grant’s face emptied.
The room went silent.
I wasn’t there for that conversation.
Grant told me later.
Elaine continued.
Richard had low sperm count.
Not zero.
But poor.
Vale treated them.
Then Elaine became pregnant.
With Grant.
The obvious question appeared.
Grant asked it.
“Was Dad my biological father?”
Elaine cried.
“I don’t know.”
There it was.
A family secret had just doubled.
Grant had spent his entire life terrified people would discover he was sterile.
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Now he didn’t know who his own biological father was.
And the doctor who may have fathered our daughter was also the doctor involved in his conception.
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