Since our new neighbor moved in, my husband had started disappearing. At first, he just helped her with boxes, but soon he was spending every day with her! Don’t get me wrong… I REALLY THOUGHT HE WAS CHEATING!
I tried to convince myself otherwise until I caught them on her porch, way too close… LIKE NEWLYWEDS! I couldn’t sleep all night and knew I had to act. Determined, I grabbed a box of cookies and MARCHED OVER TO HER HOUSE! As I greeted that snake, a little boy suddenly ran up. And OH MY GOD… the ground nearly dropped.
The boy didn’t just look like my husband; he was a carbon copy of him at five years old, right down to the cowlick and the dimple in his left cheek. My husband stepped out from behind the door, his face draining of all color as he saw me standing there with the cookies trembling in my hand.
“Sarah, I can explain,” he stammered, but the neighbor—the “snake”—just looked confused.
“Explain what, David?” she asked, her voice soft but steady. “Explain that your wife didn’t know you had a son from before you met? Or explain that you told me she passed away years ago?”
The cookies hit the pavement, shattering into a hundred pieces. The “affair” wasn’t a romance; it was a decade of lies coming home to roost. My husband hadn’t been looking for a new life; he had been trying to manage a secret one that lived only three houses away.
