It’s amazing how one phone call can turn your whole world upside down. I always thought I knew everything about my husband, Nick. We’d been together for years, and I trusted him completely. He was my best friend, the guy I fell for at a friend’s barbecue all those years ago. He had a great sense of humor, especially when it came to terrible dad jokes, and we bonded over our shared love for 90s pop culture. Our life together was simple, but full of love.
But then, when Nick hit 34, he announced he wanted to run a marathon before he turned 35. He found a Saturday morning training group with two other guys, “Jake and Chris,” who he met at the city park. I never thought much about it—Nick would slip out before dawn, come home sweaty but happy, and we’d chat about his runs over coffee. He always spoke about Jake’s messy divorce and Chris’s military-style training, but I never thought to meet them myself.
Then one Thursday, everything changed. Nick’s phone, left on the nightstand, rang. It was a call from “Parkview Elementary.” I picked it up, expecting a routine call, but the voice on the other end told me something that froze me in my tracks: his daughter was sick and needed picking up. I whispered, “Who?” The caller was confused, then quickly promised to contact “her mom” instead.
My heart raced. Nick had a daughter? I scrolled through his call history—there were several calls to the school, one lasting over two minutes. Was this some secret child? I couldn’t shake the thought. Had he been visiting her while telling me he was training?
I stayed calm when Nick came home, pretending to be unaware of what I had discovered. The next Saturday, I decided to follow him. I watched as he drove to the park, met up with Jake and Chris, and started running. Relief washed over me, but I remembered the phone calls, and stayed hidden, watching closely. That’s when I saw the little girl in pigtails running toward Jake. He scooped her up, but Nick never even looked back.
I returned home, a mix of relief and embarrassment filling me. Later, I confronted Nick, showing him the calls and my stakeout. He blinked, laughed, and pulled up his marathon training stats. He explained that Jake’s phone had died weeks earlier, so he’d borrowed Nick’s phone to make a call to the school about a field trip form. The system had saved Nick’s number under “Dad’s Cell,” which led to the confusion when the little girl got sick.
We both laughed until tears ran down our faces. It was all just a misunderstanding, but one that certainly made for a memorable story. Now, every time Nick puts on his running shoes, he jokes, “Off to see my secret family!”
Two months later, Nick crossed the marathon finish line, and I was there, holding a sign that read, “Congratulations! Now your only secret is how you found the energy!”