Four months after our twin boys were born, my husband Daniel began turning off his location every time he left the house.
He blamed technical glitches.
Then exhaustion.
Then me.
When money started disappearing from our emergency account and his phone became permanently locked, I became convinced there was another woman.
So one afternoon, I followed him.
What I found was something I never imagined.
A teenage girl stood beneath an oak tree holding a box of photographs of our twins.
Then she looked at my husband and said:
“I don’t want more pictures, Dad. I want the truth.”
I stopped walking.
Dad?
Daniel turned and saw me.
His face went pale.
“Megan…”
The girl looked about seventeen.
She had Daniel’s gray eyes.
I stared at him.
“Who is she?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Her name is Isla.”
Then the girl answered for him.
“I’m his daughter.”
Everything suddenly made sense and absolutely no sense at all.
Daniel and I had been together eight years and married for six.
Until recently, I would have described our marriage as solid.
We rarely argued.
He brought me coffee in bed.
When our twins, Kai and Theo, finally arrived after years of hoping for children, Daniel was attentive and loving.
He knew which baby preferred being rocked and which one settled faster with white noise.
That was why his first lie seemed so strange.
One afternoon, I checked our shared location because we were almost out of formula.
His location was unavailable.
When he returned, I asked if he had switched it off.