It was a Tuesday afternoon, the kind of day where the sunlight streamed through the window and bathed everything in a golden, unreal glow. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by a tangle of art supplies, humming a tune I didn’t recognize. She looked up at me, her eyes wide and earnest, paintbrush clutched in a sticky fist.“Mommy,” she began, her voice soft, “how do you know who your soulmate is?”
The question hit me like a physical blow. The air caught in my lungs, and for a terrifying second, I couldn’t breathe. A soulmate. My heart started a frantic drumbeat against my ribs. This was it. The moment I’d always dreaded, the one I’d pushed deep down, hoping it would never come. I forced a smile, a shaky, flimsy thing.
“Why do you ask, sweetheart?” My voice sounded unnaturally bright, like a badly dubbed movie.She shrugged, dipping her brush into a pot of glitter glue. “Because everyone talks about it. Like, how did you know Daddy was your soulmate? Was it a sparkle? Or a sign from the stars?” She looked at me, pure, innocent expectation in her gaze, and I felt a fresh wave of nausea.
A man standing in his living room | Source: Midjourney
A sparkle. A sign from the stars. Oh, if only it had been that simple. If only our story was the fairytale I’d woven for her over bedtime stories. I pictured her father, a good, steady man, who loved her fiercely. He worked hard, provided everything, and never once questioned my love for him. And I did love him, in my own way. He was my rock, my stability. But he wasn’t my sparkle. He wasn’t my sign from the stars.
The memory, brittle and sharp, pierced through my carefully constructed calm. Years ago. Before her. Before this life. There was someone else. Someone I truly believed was my soulmate. Our connection was immediate, electric. He saw parts of me no one else ever had. We spoke for hours, lost in each other, convinced we were destined. But life, as it often does, had other plans. His family moved away. My family disapproved of him. We were young, too young to fight the world. We broke up, promising to find each other again, somehow.
Then, her father entered my life. He was kind, dependable. He offered a future, a safe harbor, something my parents pushed for. We built a life, a beautiful home, and then… she came along. Our little girl. My whole world. I’d buried the ghost of that other love, brick by painful brick, under layers of gratitude and manufactured contentment.
But sometimes, on quiet nights, a song on the radio, a scent in the air, a familiar laugh from a stranger, would conjure his image. The intensity of it would surprise me, leave me breathless, guilty. That’s what a soulmate feels like, a whisper in my mind would remind me.
Now, my daughter’s question, so pure and unburdened, shattered that fragile peace. I watched her, her head tilted, waiting for my answer. How do I explain that sometimes, you choose a good life over a soul-deep love? How do I tell her that sometimes, love isn’t enough, or it’s too much, or it’s just not the right timing?
A woman looking at her husband | Source: Midjourney
“Well,” I began, trying to choose my words carefully, trying to conjure the magic I hadn’t felt, “Daddy and I… we grew to love each other very much. He makes me feel safe. He’s my best friend.” It was true, mostly. It was a good love. A quiet, comfortable love.
She frowned slightly. “But is it a soulmate love? Like in the movies? The kind that makes your heart race?”
My heart was racing now, but not from love. From fear. From the suffocating weight of my secret. She’s too observant. She feels things. I remembered a conversation from just last week. Her father had jokingly remarked on her unique eye color, a striking shade of hazel. “Gets it from your side, love,” he’d said to me, winking. I’d just smiled and nodded, my stomach clenching. He never noticed how that particular shade wasn’t quite mine, or his.
Suddenly, her face brightened. “You know what, Mommy? I think I know what a soulmate looks like!”
My blood ran cold. My throat tightened. “Oh? What makes you say that, sweetie?” I tried to keep my voice even, but it came out a little too high, a little too strained. My palms were sweating. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure she could hear it.
She held up her painting, still wet, dripping glitter and bright, vibrant colors. It was a portrait, abstract and childlike, but undeniably a face. And then she pointed to a small, framed photo on my bedside table, one I thought I’d hidden away, pushed behind other mementos, almost forgotten. A photo of him. The man from my past. My true love. I hadn’t looked at it in years, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
“He has eyes just like the man in your picture!” she exclaimed, tapping the drawing with her finger, then pointing at the photo. “And he smiles just like him, too! That’s how you know, right? You look for someone who looks like… that.”
A close-up shot of a couple at their wedding | Source: Pexels
My breath caught. I stared at the photograph, then at my daughter’s face, her own beautiful hazel eyes shining with innocent revelation. I saw it then. The curve of her smile, the distinct, almost imperceptible tilt of her head when she was curious, the exact shade of those hazel eyes. Not like mine. Not like her father’s.
A scream built in my chest, threatening to burst out. I bit down hard on my lip. My vision blurred. It wasn’t a sparkle. It wasn’t a sign from the stars. It was a single, desperate night of comfort after a chance encounter, years ago. A moment of weakness, fueled by longing and regret, just before I truly committed to the life I had chosen.
I stared at her, my beautiful, innocent daughter, a living, breathing testament to a truth I had buried deeper than the earth itself. She wasn’t her father’s daughter. She was his. My soulmate’s. And she, in her absolute innocence, had just pointed it out to me, making the biggest mystery of my life suddenly, blindingly clear. ALL THE YEARS. ALL THE LIES. They converged in that moment, in her sweet, guileless observation. And now, I had to live with knowing that she saw it, even if she didn’t know it. The secret was out, not to the world, but to the one person who could truly feel its heartbreaking weight: me. What do I do? What do I say? How do I keep pretending? The golden light in the room suddenly felt like a heavy, suffocating blanket.
