Two Lovers, One App, And A Secret Buried In A Clinic’s Forgotten Files
Their future was perfect — until the past came looking for them.
Story: S A Spencer
Author of Popular Fictions: The Pink Mutiny, The Black Waters, Dream In Shackles
The notification popped up just as she was choosing the final
design for the wedding invitations.
A soft ping, nothing dramatic — but enough to make Sophie
glance at her laptop. She’d uploaded her DNA to a genealogy app the night
before, hoping to generate a cute “family tree graphic” for the wedding
website. Something fun. Something sentimental. Something that would make her
future in‑laws smile.
Instead, the screen now displayed a bright red alert.
“Close Relative Match Detected: 49.8% Shared DNA.”
She frowned. That couldn’t be right. She only had one sibling
— her younger brother, Tom — and he’d never done a DNA test in his life. She
clicked the notification.
A profile loaded.
A name.
A photo.
A face she knew better than her own.
Ethan Clarke.
Her fiancé.
Her breath caught. She stared at the screen, waiting for it
to correct itself, glitch, refresh — anything. But the app sat there, cheerful
and oblivious, offering a button that said:
“Message your new relative!”
Her hands trembled.
She slammed the laptop shut.
Across town, Ethan was stuck in traffic on Punt Road,
drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking about the ring he’d picked
up that morning — a simple gold band engraved with their initials. He couldn’t
wait to show Sophie. He couldn’t wait to marry her. He couldn’t wait for the
life they’d planned.
His phone buzzed.
A message from Sophie:
“Come home. Now.”
No kiss emoji. No heart. No warmth.
Just urgency.
He felt a cold ripple down his spine.
When he walked into the apartment, Sophie was standing in the
kitchen, arms folded, laptop open on the bench. She didn’t smile. She didn’t
move.
“We need to talk,” she said.
He froze. “Sophie… what’s wrong?”
She turned the laptop toward him.
He leaned in.
His stomach dropped.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“You tell me.”
He stared at the screen — at his own face staring back at him
under the words “Close Relative.” His pulse hammered.
“This has to be wrong,” he said.
“Does it?” Sophie’s voice cracked. “Because I called Mum. And
she told me something I never expected to hear.”
He swallowed. “What?”
“She and Dad used a sperm donor. They never told me.”
The room tilted. Ethan felt the air thicken.
“Sophie… I didn’t know.”
“Did your parents use a donor too?”
He hesitated.
And that hesitation was enough.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh my god.”
He reached for her. She stepped back.
“Ethan. Tell me.”
He closed his eyes. “Yes.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
She sank into a chair, shaking. “So we’re… related?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We need to check. We need to call
the clinic.”
She laughed — a broken, disbelieving sound. “The clinic?
Ethan, this app says we share half our DNA.”
“It could be wrong.”
“Could it?”
He didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t know.
They called the clinic. They were put on hold. They were
transferred. They were told someone would call them back.
Hours passed.
Sophie sat on the couch, knees pulled to her chest, staring
at the wall. Ethan paced the living room like a trapped animal.
When the phone finally rang, they both jumped.
Ethan answered.
A calm voice introduced herself as the clinic’s records
manager. She asked for their names. Their birth years. Their mothers’ names.
Their donor codes.
Then she went quiet.
Too quiet.
“Is something wrong?” Ethan asked.
The woman exhaled. “I’m afraid there may have been a record‑keeping
issue in the early 1990s.”
Sophie’s heart pounded. “What kind of issue?”
“Some donor profiles were duplicated. Others were
mislabelled. In a few cases, the wrong donor information was given to
families.”
Ethan felt his throat tighten. “So what does that mean for
us?”
“It means,” the woman said carefully, “that you may share a
biological parent.”
Sophie covered her mouth.
Ethan felt the world collapse.
“But,” the woman added quickly, “we need to verify. We’re
pulling the original files from storage. It may take a few hours.”
“A few hours?” Sophie whispered. “We’re supposed to get
married in six weeks.”
“I understand,” the woman said. “We’ll call you as soon as we
know more.”
The line went dead.
Sophie stared at Ethan, eyes red. “What do we do now?”
He sat beside her, but she didn’t lean into him. Not like she
used to. Not like she always had.
“We wait,” he said.
But waiting felt like torture.
That night, Sophie couldn’t sleep. She lay awake, staring at
the ceiling, replaying every moment of their relationship — their first date,
their first kiss, the night he proposed under the fairy lights at the
Arboretum. All of it now felt tainted, fragile, wrong.
At 3am, she got up and opened her laptop.
She clicked on Ethan’s profile in the genealogy app.
She scrolled.
And then she saw something she hadn’t noticed before.
“Shared Matches: 27.”
Twenty‑seven people.
All flagged as “half‑siblings.”
Her breath caught.
She clicked the first one.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Different suburbs. Different families. Different stories.
But all connected.
All through the same donor.
Her donor.
Ethan’s donor.
Or… someone else entirely.
She felt sick.
When Ethan woke up, she was sitting at the dining table,
surrounded by notes, printouts, and a list of names.
“Sophie… what are you doing?”
She looked up, eyes hollow. “We’re not the only ones.”
He scanned the papers. “Half‑siblings?”
“Twenty‑seven so far. Maybe more.”
He sat down slowly. “This is insane.”
“It’s worse than insane,” she said. “It’s dangerous. What if
other couples are out there? What if they don’t know?”
He rubbed his face. “We need answers.”
As if on cue, the phone rang.
They both froze.
Ethan answered.
The same calm voice spoke. “We’ve reviewed the original
files.”
Sophie held her breath.
“There was a mix‑up,” the woman said. “Your donor profiles
were incorrectly linked in the digital system. But the physical records show
that Sophie’s biological father was Donor 11.”
“And mine?” Ethan asked.
“Donor 11 was not used for your mother. You were conceived
with Donor 4.”
Sophie gasped.
“So we’re not related?” Ethan whispered.
“No,” the woman said. “Not genetically.”
Relief crashed over them — but it was tangled with something
darker.
Because the woman wasn’t finished.
“There is one more issue,” she said.
Sophie’s stomach dropped. “What now?”
“Both Donor 11 and Donor 4 were used far more times than
legally allowed. We estimate each donor may have fathered between forty and
sixty children.”
Ethan felt the blood drain from his face.
“So we could have dozens of half‑siblings?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And we could have married one of them?” Sophie whispered.
“Yes.”
The call ended.
They sat in silence.
Not siblings.
Not related.
But part of something much bigger — and much more terrifying.
Sophie reached for Ethan’s hand.
For the first time in hours, he didn’t pull away.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
He squeezed her hand gently.
“We get married,” he said. “But first… we expose this.”
She nodded.
Because love wasn’t the problem.
The system was.
And they weren’t going to let anyone else walk blindly into
the same nightmare.
✍️ Author’s Note
Thank you for reading this story. If it gripped you, shocked you, or made you think, please like, comment, share, and subscribe. Your support helps this blog grow and encourages me to keep creating stories that spark conversation and emotion. I’d love to hear your thoughts — drop a comment below.
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