Daniel looked at me with that sharp, impatient expression he’d been wearing a lot lately. “Fine. If you really want to know, it’s Lily.”
“Lily?” It took me a minute before the full weight of what he’d just said hit me. “Not Mark’s daughter, Lily?”
His silence was all the confirmation I needed.
I stumbled backward, away from him. “That’s… We watched Lily grow up, Daniel.”
“And she’s an adult now.”
“She’s 26…”
“If you really want to know, it’s Lily.”
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“It’s not like we planned it,” Daniel snapped, reaching for his bag. “But we’re in love, Claire.”
He didn’t sound guilty. That was the part that floored me. He sounded relieved, like a man who’d just escaped something.
The kids were in the living room. The older ones were arguing over a video game. Our youngest was lying on the floor coloring, feet kicked up behind her.
Daniel walked past all of them, opened the front door, and left.
He didn’t say goodbye to a single one of them.
He didn’t sound guilty.
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***
The days blurred together after that.
Eight kids don’t pause their lives because yours has just caved in on itself. Lunches still needed packing, and homework still needed supervising.
Our youngest crawled into my bed every night and asked the same question: “Where’s Dad?”
In the evenings, it felt like the youngest four kids were taking turns to ask, “When’s Dad coming home?”
I never had a good answer. I gave a lot of “I’m not sure, buddy,” and “Let me finish this, and we’ll talk,” and hoped it would hold them for another day.
“When’s Dad coming home?”
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The worst was the night my 18-year-old daughter came to me. “You need to tell them the truth, Mom. Dad isn’t coming home. He left us for Lily.” She said the name like it burned.
“How do you know that?”
She gave me a dark look. “Everyone knows, Mom. Haven’t you heard?”
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