I looked down at the phone again. But if he wasn’t cheating, why was a woman with a baby phoning him at 2 a.m demanding he take responsibility?
My thumb hovered over the call log. I don’t know why I did it, but I deleted the call.
Then I put the phone back where I’d found it and lay there until morning with my eyes open. The next day, when Mark came into the kitchen fresh from the shower, I studied his face for any sign of deception. “Morning,” he said, leaning down to kiss my cheek.
Nothing about him looked guilty. Nothing about him looked like a man with some hidden second life waiting to explode in mine. Mark poured coffee, checked his watch, and talked about a meeting he didn’t want to sit through.
I nodded in the right places and watched him move around our kitchen. When Mark left, he smiled at me from the door. “See you tonight.”
The second the door shut, I grabbed my purse and car keys.
I did not go to work that day. But right before midday, I turned onto M Street to search for that woman. I drove slowly, scanning the sidewalks, and soon saw a woman with a baby standing near the park entrance.
She spotted my car right away and straightened up. I parked and got out. The woman walked toward me slowly, like she was afraid I might bolt.
She was crying. She held out a sealed envelope. I hesitated a moment, then took it and opened right there on the sidewalk.
At first, the papers inside meant nothing, but then I noticed something that made my knees buckle. Inside were copies of receipts, bank transfers, and a hospital bill. It amounted to thousands of dollars’ worth of payments.
And I knew the account number that had been used to pay every one of them. I’d written it on checks for 25 years. Mark’s account number.
The baby stirred and started crying again, face going red above the blanket. I looked up at her. “How old is the baby?”
“He’s seven months.”
“And Mark has been paying you?”
“He was.” The woman’s face crumpled.
“I didn’t want to do this, but… Mark told me he’d take care of things. Instead, he stopped answering my calls, like my son and I were something embarrassing he could just delete.”
I looked at the baby, and it felt like all the air had been sucked from my lungs. He had Mark’s eyes… in fact, he looked just like our Daniel had looked as a baby.
I hated what Mark had done to me, but at that moment, I knew I couldn’t walk away. “I won’t let this baby suffer,” I said. I walked away with a broken heart.
Not only had my husband cheated on me, but he’d also abandoned the baby he fathered. At least, that’s what I thought had happened. I didn’t know yet that the truth was far more complicated than I could ever have imagined.
When I got home, I put the envelope in the middle of the kitchen table and waited. When Mark arrived, I called him into the kitchen. He stopped dead when he saw my face.
“What’s wrong?”
I removed the documents from the envelope and held them up one by one. “From your mistress. She’s struggling so much to support your baby that she asked me for help.”
“What!” Mark gripped the back of a chair.
“Listen, I don’t know what she said to you, but that woman is not my mistress.”
That made me laugh. “Do you know how stupid that sounds? There are hospital bills, bank transfers, and receipts.
A woman called you at two in the morning, screaming at you to take responsibility while a baby cried in the background. What exactly am I supposed to think?”
Mark ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been helping her financially, that’s true.
I’ve been trying to fix this.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He stared at the table. “I’m not the father, I swear it.”
I leaned back in my chair. “You want me to believe you’re secretly sending thousands of dollars to some young woman and paying her hospital bills out of pure kindness?”
He shut his eyes.
“No. The baby is my grandson.”
I honestly thought I had heard him wrong. “Your what?”
“My grandson.”
“What, no!
He’s your grandson, too. Daniel is the baby’s father.”
Time seemed to freeze. I stared at Mark, searching his face for… something.
All I found was earnestness. “No,” I whispered. “Daniel’s son?”
Mark nodded.
I pointed to a chair. Mark sat and told me everything. Daniel had been seeing the woman — Ava — for nearly a year.
But when she fell pregnant, he panicked. He told Mark and begged him to keep it a secret. Daniel had said he just needed time, but then he stopped answering Ava’s messages and started pretending the problem would disappear if he ignored it hard enough.
So Mark stepped in. “But I can’t keep up anymore,” Mark said. “Daniel keeps dodging my messages.
Every time I ask when he’s going to start supporting the boy, he tells me he’s working on it. Meanwhile, Ava is breathing down my neck, and I don’t know what to tell her.”
I’d never been that angry in my life. “I thought I could keep this from blowing up,” Mark continued.
“That if I could just buy Daniel enough time—”
I slapped my hand down on the table. “No. You thought you could spare him consequences.”
He looked down, and that was answer enough.
“This nonsense stops here.” I picked up my phone and started typing. “Organizing a family dinner. Call Ava and tell her to be here this Sunday.
Leave Daniel to me.”
***
That Sunday, Ava arrived with the baby and took a seat in our living room. Mark stood by the window with his hands jammed into his pockets. Daniel walked in laughing about something on his phone.
When he saw Ava, his face dropped. “What…” he looked at me with fear in his eyes. “What’s going on here, Mom?”
I folded my arms.
“I did say it was a family dinner, Daniel.”
He looked at her, then at the baby, then at his father. “Dad?”
Mark didn’t answer. “Daniel, sit down.” I pointed to the couch.
Daniel sat. “For 25 years, I believed honesty was the foundation of this family.” I pointed at the baby. “That is your child, Daniel.
Look at him.”
He looked, but only for a second. Ava shook her head. “Amazing.
He still can’t.”
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Did we not teach you how to be responsible? How to be honest?”
His jaw tightened.
“You did, but this… this is too heavy for me.”
“So your solution was to let her carry it alone?”
“No! I just…” Daniel finally looked at her. “Ava, I was going to figure it out.”
She stared at him.
“When? After his first birthday? Kindergarten?
College?”
“You don’t get to sound overwhelmed, Daniel! I was pregnant. I gave birth.
I sat alone in a hospital room. Your father paid the bill while you disappeared.”
Daniel looked like he wanted the floor to open up. Mark cleared his throat.
“This has gone far enough.”
“Actually, it hasn’t gone far enough. That’s the problem.” I turned to Ava. “You are not doing this alone anymore.”
Her chin wobbled.
She nodded once.
