The rain lashed against the windows of the small, cramped apartment, mirroring the storm raging inside me. Tonight was the night. I’d walked across the city, the flimsy umbrella doing little against the downpour, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. I knew where he lived. I’d seen the pictures, felt the chill of the address when I’d first looked it up, a morbid curiosity I couldn’t resist. Now, I was here. Standing on his porch, my finger hovering over the doorbell.
This is it. The end of everything, or the beginning of something new. I had told myself I deserved to know. Deserved to face her. Deserved to see the woman he went home to, the woman he chose, even as he promised me forever. He swore he’d leave her. He swore I was the one. And, like a fool, I believed him. Every whispered word, every stolen moment felt real, raw, intoxicating. He made me feel alive, seen, loved in a way I hadn’t experienced before. He was my world.
The door opened.
She stood there, silhouetted against the warm glow of the hallway light. Her eyes, wide and puffy, instantly recognized me. I didn’t need to say a word. The shame, the fury, the disbelief – it was all etched onto her face, reflecting my own complicated cocktail of emotions. Guilt, yes, a searing burn, but also a strange defiance. I loved him too. I wanted to scream it, but the words choked in my throat. We just stared, two women bound by the invisible threads of a man’s lies. The silence was deafening, broken only by the incessant drumming of the rain.
For illustration purposes only | Source: YouTube/DramatizeMe
“I know who you are,” she whispered, her voice trembling but firm. Not a question, a statement of fact. My breath hitched. This was worse than I imagined, and yet, exactly what I expected. I braced myself for the explosion, the accusations, the righteous anger. I deserved it. Every bit of it. I had rehearsed my apologies, my justifications, my own pain. But no words came.
Then, a small, curious face peeked out from behind her legs. A little girl, no older than seven, with bright, innocent eyes. Her hair was a messy halo, and she clutched a worn teddy bear. His daughter. My stomach twisted. This was real. He had a family. Not just a wife, but a child. A child I had inadvertently helped him betray. My carefully constructed walls of justification crumbled. The shame was overwhelming, a tidal wave drowning me.
“Mommy, who is this?” The child’s voice was soft, sleepy.
“Go back inside, sweetie,” she said, her voice strained, but the little girl just tilted her head, her gaze fixed on me. And then she smiled. A small, tentative smile that froze me to my core.
“You’re the lady from the picture!” she said, her voice suddenly full of innocent excitement, tugging on her mother’s skirt. “The one Daddy keeps in his old wallet. The one he calls ‘my little star’.”
For illustration purposes only | Source: YouTube/DramatizeMe
My heart hammered. My little star. That was his pet name for me. The one he whispered in the dark, the one he swore was only for me. My blood ran cold. He had pictures of me? He called me that even in his home? A cold, hard knot of dread began to form in my chest.
Her mother’s face went chalk-white. “She is NOT,” she hissed, her eyes blazing at the child.
But the girl, oblivious to the storm she was brewing, continued. “Yes, she is! Daddy said you were his first girl. Before he met Mommy. He said you were the most beautiful star in his sky, but that you got lost.” She paused, her small brow furrowed in concentration. “And he told me… he told me you look just like his mother. My grandma. The one who died before he met Mommy. He said she had the same eyes as you.”
The world tilted. My breath caught in my throat. His mother. My grandmother? My mind raced, fragments of memories swirling – an old, faded photograph my own mother kept hidden away, a man she rarely spoke of, my absent father who left before I was old enough to remember. She’d always just said he was a wanderer, no good, best forgotten.
“He… he said what?” I choked out, my voice barely a whisper. My eyes flickered between the innocent child and the horrified woman who now looked like she’d seen a ghost.
The girl, still beaming, pointed a finger directly at me. “He said you were his first daughter! He said he loved you so, so much. And that he missed you every single day.”
For illustration purposes only | Source: YouTube/DramatizeMe
A guttural cry escaped the woman next to her. She stumbled back, clutching her daughter, staring at me with a mixture of terror and a new, horrifying understanding.
And in that moment, as the rain continued to fall and the little girl’s words echoed in the sudden, terrible silence, the pieces clicked into place. The missing details of my past. My mother’s evasiveness. The vague resemblance to a man I’d seen only in dreams. The way he looked at me sometimes, with a strange, deep sorrow I’d always attributed to our forbidden love.
He wasn’t just a cheater. He was my father.
I hadn’t just been “the other woman.” I had been sleeping with MY OWN FATHER. The man I loved, the man I’d betrayed a family for, was the same man who had abandoned my mother decades ago. And now, he had woven a new web of deceit, trapping me in the most horrific, incestuous betrayal imaginable.
I felt a scream building in my chest, a primal howl of agony and disgust. IT WAS ALL A LIE. HE LIED TO ME. HE LIED TO EVERYONE. The rain outside seemed to intensify, drowning out the sound of my shattered world.
