I Opened My 14-Year-Old Son’s Backpack to Wash His Lunchbox – and Found an Ultrasound Image of a Baby

“But you already did, Mark,” I said. “The first time you decided to speak to another woman, let alone touch her… that’s when you hurt me for the first time.

You just didn’t want to acknowledge it.”

Silence stretched between us.

“I love you, Jess,” he said. “I do.”

I didn’t say a word — and what was the point?

“But I love her more.”

Mark didn’t say her name, but I already knew it. I’d seen it once, half-glimpsed on his phone when he’d set it on the counter during dinner.

“Celeste.”

There was a short text preview, but without my glasses, I couldn’t read the tiny text.

I told myself it was probably work-related. A supplier, maybe. Or an architect changing a design at the last minute.

Or even someone on his project team…

I didn’t ask questions then. Maybe I should have. But maybe I’d just known all along and didn’t want the truth to come out.

Three days later, Mark filed for divorce.

There wasn’t a conversation. It was just a series of cold, clipped statements over emails — the logistics of separation, custody schedules, and property division.

He didn’t even have the decency to sit across from me and say it with his mouth.

He’d already packed the important things before I got home from work. After his betrayal had surfaced, I’d switched to going back to the office rather than working from home.

Ben and I stayed in the house. Mark moved into an apartment across town with Celeste.

And months later, their baby girl, Gigi, was born.

I didn’t ask to meet her. I didn’t ask anything at all.

But I also refused to stop Ben from seeing his father, though. I couldn’t. He was still a child, and he deserved what was left of his family, however fractured it was. I made it as easy as I could.

I packed his overnight bag. I baked cookies for him to take to Mark’s.

I didn’t speak poorly about his cheater of a father.

As for me, I coped the only way I knew how. I worked.

I took more calls. I said yes to more clients. I learned how to fix the toilet, how to clean the gutters, and how to replace cracked tiles.

I painted the guest room.

I trimmed the hedges. I taught myself to sleep on my side of the bed without reaching out into the cold, empty space on the other side.

One day, maybe six months later, when Mark came over to fetch Ben, I asked him.

“When did it start?”

“We were having problems, Jess,” he said, not looking me in the eye.

“That’s not an answer, Mark,” I said.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said, shrugging. “It just did.

And she made me feel like I was worth something. Goodness, Jess. She made me feel like I’d hung the stars in the sky.”

“But I did everything for you,” I said.Continue reading…