My husband said our five-year-old loved me more, so he ordered me to disappear for a week without warning him. I refused to make Theo wake up believing I’d abandoned him. Instead, before Mark opened our bedroom door on Sunday, I placed a small thing outside it that our son had carried for two weeks.
“You’re moving to your sister’s house for a week. And you’re not telling Theo.”
My husband, Mark, announced this over dinner as casually as if he were asking me to buy milk.
I stood beside the sink holding our son’s plastic cup.
“Excuse me?”
“Our son is five, Mark.”
“Exactly. Five. And he still acts like he can’t survive five minutes without you.”
I set the cup down.
“When he falls, he runs to you. When he’s tired, he wants you. Last night, he wouldn’t let me read his bedtime story because he wanted Mommy.”
“Did you offer to read it?”
Mark hesitated.
“Doing what?”
“Watching the game.”
I looked at him.
He pushed his plate away.
“This is what I’m talking about. He loves you more than me.”
“He’s five.”
“And you’re turning him into a baby.”
Our son, Theo, was upstairs playing with his toy dinosaurs.
Mark leaned back.
“Boys need to toughen up. They need a man around.”
“Then spend time with him.”
“I work all week, Jennifer.”
“Not the hours I do.”
I let that pass.
“He’s been asking you to play soccer since last Saturday, Mark.”
“Saturday was my only day off.”
“You stayed in bed until noon.”
“Because I was tired!”
Mark rubbed his forehead.
“I can’t spend every free minute playing silly children’s games.”
I thought about the little paper ticket Theo carried in his pocket.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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