I staggered back a step as if she had struck me. “Why?” I demanded. “Why would he feel any right to her at all?”
Because, in the deepest part of my chest, the answer had already formed.
“She’s what?” I asked, my voice barely present. “She’s not yours,” my wife said. “She’s his.
I found out I was pregnant after you left for that long work project. We were arguing. We were barely speaking.
I ran into him during that bad, lonely night. I was stupid. Weak.
It was only once.” She shook her head violently, as if trying to erase the memory. “I thought I would lose you if you found out. So I let you believe she was yours.
And you loved her so fiercely that I convinced myself it didn’t matter anymore.”
I couldn’t breathe. Five years of bedtime stories. Five years of scraped knees and birthday candles.
Five years of being called “Daddy.”
All of it had belonged to another man’s truth. “And now he suddenly wants a role?” I whispered. “He saw her by chance at the park once,” she said.
I swear, I never planned for it to become this. I thought I could manage it quietly. I thought he’d eventually disappear again.”
“And instead he stepped into my place,” I said, my voice rising at last into something broken and fierce.
“I never meant to hurt you,” she cried. “But you did,” I said. A strange calm followed that storm.
A numbness that allowed me to move while my heart stayed frozen. We spoke very little that night. I laid our daughter in bed.
She kissed my cheek and whispered, “Night, Daddy,” as she always did. I sat by her bed after she fell asleep, studying her small face, her gentle breathing. Nothing about her had changed.
Her warmth, her laughter, her love—they were still mine in every way that counted. And yet, the foundation of my world lay in ruins. The next day, the school confirmed everything.
Yes, they had allowed another man to pick her up—on my wife’s verbal permission. He had signed the log, smiling, friendly, articulate. No one had questioned it further.
