Chapter 7 - Preston Requested the Paternity Test
The test was his idea.
Not mine.
Not Brielle’s.
That was one of the strangest pieces.
After learning the baby was male, Preston immediately began planning:
estate changes.
Not disinheriting our daughters.
His attorney would not have supported something so impulsive.
But he wanted to create a separate irrevocable education and business-startup trust funded with:
$2.5 million of his personal assets.
For:
“future Mercer descendants.”
Then he started talking specifically about:
his son.
His estate attorney, Margaret Lowell, warned him:
“Do not create child-specific irrevocable provisions before the child is born unless there is a compelling reason.”
Preston wanted certainty.
Brielle hated the implication.
“You think I cheated?”
He answered:
“No.”
“Then why test?”
“Because lawyers.”
That was not entirely true.
Preston had been cheated on by a college girlfriend.
He had carried paternity anxiety into:
every relationship.
I learned during divorce discovery that he had once asked his primary-care doctor whether blood types could prove Sophie was his.
Sophie was:
two.
He never told me.
That hurt.
So with Brielle, he insisted on a non-invasive prenatal paternity test.
Blood sample from:
Brielle.
Buccal swab from:
Preston.
Cell-free fetal DNA analyzed by an accredited private laboratory.
Brielle agreed.
Why?
She later said:
“I wanted the question dead forever.”
The sample collection occurred privately.
The results went first to the lab.
Then, because Brielle had asked her maternal-fetal medicine physician to review any medical implications and confirm the report came from a legitimate laboratory, Dr. Walsh received a copy.
That was the call on the tarmac.
Not fate.
Not magic.
May you like
Paperwork Preston himself had demanded.
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