The grief from losing him never truly faded. Eighteen years ago, it was a raw, searing wound. He’d barely held our newborn daughter before he was gone. Gone forever. Susie was my anchor, my reason to keep breathing, a living testament to the love we shared. Every milestone, every smile, every tear she shed, was a bittersweet echo of him. She looked so much like him, especially when she laughed. Or so I always told myself. She’s eighteen now, a stunning young woman. Independent. Secretive, sometimes, as teenagers are. I respected her privacy, cherished her growing self. Our bond was special, forged in that shared loss. I was her protector, her sole parent.
Then came that Tuesday evening. The house was quiet. I was walking past the hallway, drawn by the faint murmur of a voice. The old landline, barely used these days, usually reserved for solicitors or wrong numbers. But it wasn’t. It was Susie. Her voice was hushed, almost a whisper, laced with an emotion I couldn’t quite place – tenderness? longing?
Then I heard it. Clear as a bell.
“OKAY, DAD,” she murmured, soft and low. “I MISS YOU TOO.”
My blood ran cold. The floor tilted. Every nerve ending in my body screamed. No. It was impossible. He was gone. He was dead. I froze, a statue in my own home. Susie must have felt my presence, because she snapped her head up, her eyes wide, like a deer caught in headlights. She slammed the receiver down, the sound echoing through the sudden, suffocating silence.
“Mom,” she breathed, her face draining of color. “I… I was just…”
I couldn’t speak. My mouth was dry, my throat tight. I stared at her, then at the silent phone, then back at her. Who was she talking to? My mind raced, a frantic, desperate scramble for an explanation. A friend’s dad? No, the intimacy in her voice, the “I miss you too”… it wasn’t casual. It was deeply personal. This wasn’t a game. This was something else. Something dark.
For days, I walked on eggshells. Every time her phone lit up, every time she snuck out, my stomach churned. The question was a venomous snake coiling in my gut: Who is she calling Dad? My husband was her father. My only husband. I started checking phone bills, discreetly, desperately. The numbers meant nothing to me. Unfamiliar.
One afternoon, I was cleaning out an old box of his things, a box I hadn’t opened in years. It was dusty, full of old letters, a few photos. Beneath a pile of tax documents, something else caught my eye. A worn photograph, tucked away. It wasn’t of us. It was a picture of him, my husband, much younger, smiling. And next to him, another man, arm around his shoulder, both laughing. On the back, in faint, almost faded ink, a handwritten note: To my dear brother. You’ll make a great father, just like I hope to be someday. And a name. A name I knew. A name I’d tried to bury for almost two decades.
My heart hammered against my ribs. It was him. The man I had loved before my husband. The man I’d had a brief, passionate affair with, a whirlwind romance that ended abruptly, leaving me heartbroken and… pregnant. I’d met my husband soon after, a kind, gentle soul who loved me completely, who never questioned the timing, who adopted Susie as his own. I swore I’d take that secret to my grave.
A name. A number. A faint memory.
I grabbed the landline, my fingers trembling, and dialed the last number Susie had called. It rang twice. Then a man’s voice, deep and warm, answered.
“Hello?”
I dropped the phone. It clattered to the floor, the sound shattering the silence. I stared at the photograph, then at the phone. My brother-in-law. My husband’s older brother. The man I’d had an affair with before I even met my husband. Susie wasn’t talking to my dead husband. She was talking to her biological father. My husband’s brother. And my dead husband, the man I loved, died never knowing his own brother was Susie’s real dad. My secret, my lie, was now Susie’s truth. OH GOD, SHE KNEW.
