Her words hit me like a punch to the chest. I did my best to stay calm.
“Your… what?” I asked gently.
“My other mommy. Mommy Lizzie says you’re the mean mommy and she’s the nice one. We’re going to the beach soon.”
The air around me thickened. My pulse quickened.
“Sweetheart,” I said, “who’s Mommy Lizzie?”
She blinked at me, confused. “She lives with us, Mommy. You know her. Don’t pretend.”
Heat rushed to my face. Panic clawed at my throat, but I forced a smile.
“Hey, want to visit Grandma for a sleepover? I’ll call Daddy and let him know.”
My hands trembled as I buckled her into her car seat. On the drive over, I kept glancing at her in the rearview mirror—her tiny face glowing with innocent joy, completely unaware that my heart was unraveling.
An hour later, once she was safely settled in at my mom’s—sipping milk, snacking on cookies, lost in a cartoon—I slipped away to the bathroom and pulled out my phone.
I opened the nanny cam app.
The hidden camera on our bookshelf showed a scene that made my stomach turn.
There they were: my husband, Soren… and Lizbeth. My best friend. Laughing. Kissing. On the couch I picked out. In the home I had filled with love and effort.
I dropped my phone.
Lizbeth—my closest friend, the one who always “pitched in,” who offered to run errands, who said she’d never settle down because “no man was worth it”—apparently found my husband worth breaking all her rules for.
I picked up the phone again with shaking hands. The scene hadn’t changed. They were still there, acting like this was routine. Lizbeth’s legs curled under her, hand on Soren’s thigh, cozy and content. He looked lighter, even joyful.
I wanted to scream. But Willow needed peace.
For the next two days at my mom’s, I wore a mask. We baked, painted, and watched her favorite movie on repeat. I smiled when she smiled. I held her close when she got sleepy.
But every spare second I had, I was watching that feed.
Lizbeth brushing Willow’s hair. Lizbeth in one of my sweaters. Lizbeth helping Soren pack a picnic.
It was all so… domestic. Intimate. Like they’d erased me already.
That night, after Willow fell asleep curled beside me, I finally texted Soren:
“I know. We need to talk.”
He called immediately. His voice was tense, measured.
“Where are you?”
“At my mom’s.”
“You had no right to just take Willow without telling me,” he snapped.
I kept my voice even. “She’s my daughter too. I needed space. And clarity.”
There was a long silence. I could hear him breathing on the other end. Then—quietly—he said, “So… you know.”
“Yes, Soren. I know. About Lizbeth. About what’s been going on right under my nose. In our house. Around our child.”
He didn’t deny it.
“She loves Willow,” he finally said. “She’s… good with her.”
My stomach turned. “She’s not her mother, Soren. She’s my best friend. And you? You’re her father, not someone who gets to rewrite our daughter’s reality.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he muttered.
“But it did happen,” I said sharply. “And now our four-year-old is asking me if I’ll cry when she goes to the beach with her other mom. Do you understand how deeply wrong that is?”
“I didn’t ask her to call Lizbeth that,” he said defensively. “She just started saying it.”
“Children repeat what they hear. What they’re taught,” I said, feeling anger rise beneath my grief. “So don’t pretend this just ‘happened.’”
More silence.
“I’ll come by tomorrow,” I said at last. “We need to figure out what happens next. For Willow’s sake. But you need to understand something, Soren—this isn’t just about betrayal. It’s about what kind of world we’re raising our daughter in. And I will not let her be raised in lies.”
I hung up before he could say anything else.
The next morning, I woke to Willow’s warm little hand in mine. Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled, still half-asleep. “Mommy,” she whispered, “do you think Grandma has more cookies?”
I kissed her forehead, holding back tears. “I’m sure she does, baby.”
But I also knew something else with painful certainty: things would never go back to the way they were. And somehow, I’d have to find the strength to build a new kind of truth—for both of us.
