I can be in both my children’s lives —” Cole said once on a voicemail.
I deleted it without listening to the end.
Vanessa, clinging to relevance like it owed her something, leaked parts of the footage to a tabloid. She must’ve thought it would make her famous. The scorned other woman with a juicy scandal.
Instead, it blew up in her face.
She lost her job, then her apartment, and eventually, I heard that people stopped returning her calls.
The world moved on without her. I almost pitied her.
Almost.
Cole’s life unraveled in tandem. HR launched an internal review after the footage surfaced.
Turns out Vanessa wasn’t the only “friend from work” he’d kept secret.
His promotion vanished, and instead of signing new deals, he was signing his termination papers. I heard through a mutual friend that he was couch-surfing, then moved back in with his parents.
I chose Ethan’s name on my own.
I painted his room in soft greens and blues and rocked him to sleep in the chair my mother had passed down. For the first time in a long time, the house felt warm again — not haunted, just quiet and safe.
Two years passed.
Then came Mark — the man who was kind, patient, and deeply human.
We met at a charity fundraiser. Mark was a single dad with soft eyes and a calming voice.
When I told him my story, he didn’t blink.
“That must have taken real strength, Lila,” he’d said.
Ethan sat on the counter, his clumsy fingers dumping too much cinnamon into the bowl.
“Hey, buddy,” Mark said, trying to grab the bottle away from him. “That’s way too much!”
My son giggled loudly and ducked beneath Mark’s arm.
The house smelled like butter and sugar. And it felt like home.
That night, Cole called.
I didn’t answer, but I played the voicemail aloud.
“Please, Lila… I just want to hear his voice. Just once. I don’t know what my son sounds like…
You owe me that. It’s Thanksgiving.”
“You don’t owe him a thing,” Mark said, locking my phone’s screen.
And he was right. I didn’t.Continue reading…
