My Husband Had a Child With Someone Else While I Was Carrying His Chapter 01

My Husband Had a Child With Someone Else While I Was Carrying His Chapter 01

I was at my prenatal appointment when my husband, Lucas Halls, suddenly posted a photo of a hospital delivery wristband on Instagram.

The caption read: [7 pounds, 15 ounces. Mom and baby are both doing great.]

I opened the photo and saw that we were at the same hospital.

I was about to ask my husband, but a comment from my best friend popped up right below it: [Congrats on becoming a dad!]

My hands shook as I dialed her number, and after a long stretch of stammering, she finally told me the truth.

“He’s been with that girl for five years. We all knew. Nobody told you because we were scared the shock would hurt the baby.”

I leaned back against the cold wall and slowly slid down until I was sitting on the floor.

So my seven years of love and marriage had been nothing but a play, and every person in my life had agreed to act in it alongside him. And the baby inside me was nothing more than an accident his plan had never accounted for.

*****

“Rachel, don’t be mad at me for keeping it from you. I did it for your own good.” Summer’s voice came through the phone.

“She’s been with Lucas for five years and she’s never asked for anything, no title, no ring, nothing.”

“All she wants is for her kid to have a father. You’re the one who’s his wife, and you’re carrying his child too.”

“Lucas promised me he’d never divorce you, so all you have to do is pretend you don’t know, and life can go on the way it always has.”

I gripped the crumpled prenatal chart until my nails dug into my palm. “Pretend I don’t know?”

“Right. Come on, men are men, and every one of them fools around a little.”

Her voice turned casual, as if this were how the world worked.

“You’re pretty far along now, and making a scene won’t be good for you. Nicole and the others have all met the girl, and everyone figures that as long as it doesn’t threaten your position, there’s no real harm done.”

I hung up.

My stomach lurched, and a wave of acid rose into my throat.

I pulled up Lucas’s Instagram and zoomed in on that delivery room photo again, the same one I had blown up a hundred times over.

What I realized then was that the room it showed sat on the seventeenth floor of this very building.

The comment section was buzzing.

Lucas’s oldest friend, Samuel Reed, wrote: [Kept it under wraps for five years and it’s finally out in the open. Baby gift’s already ready.]

Lucas’s sister, Nicole Halls, added: [All that hard work paid off, and she gave our family a big, healthy boy.]

Summer replied below: [Don’t tag anyone who shouldn’t see this, because she’s pregnant and can’t handle the shock.]

I scrolled down one comment at a time, and every single username was one I knew.

Right then, my phone screen lit up. It was Lucas calling.

I pressed answer.

“Hey, babe, are you done with your appointment?” His voice was low and gentle, carrying exactly the right note of exhaustion. “What did the doctor say? Is the baby holding steady?”

I looked out at the hospital billing lobby, at all the people coming and going. “Where are you?”

“I just landed. There’s an urgent project out of town I have to keep an eye on.”

His voice was full of apology. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there with you today. Have you been eating okay? Is the morning sickness still bad these last few days?”

“I had my assistant grab a few jars of those sour pickles you love. I’ll be back in a couple of days, and I’ll come with you for the ultrasound, okay?”

I listened to the sound of his steady breathing come through the phone.

That Instagram post had gone up at 9:43 that morning. At that hour, I couldn’t reach him at all, and I had ended up crouched in a corner of the hallway, crying by myself.

“Lucas.”

“Mm? What’s wrong, baby? You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Are you really out of town?”

The line went quiet for two full seconds. “Of course I am. The client out here’s a real handful, so I might have to stay a couple more days. Why’re you asking all of a sudden?”

“It’s nothing. I’m just worn out.”

“Head home and get some rest. I had the housekeeper make you something good. Be good and wait for me, all right?”

The call ended.

I pushed myself up, and both my legs felt so weak that my knees buckled once before I caught my balance.

On my way to the pharmacy to pick up my folic acid, I passed the billing window, and a nurse’s voice suddenly rose above the noise. “Family of Sally Johnson! Is anyone here with Sally?”

I stopped dead, my feet rooted to the floor.

Sally Johnson was the name saved in Lucas’s phone under the clients section. He had told me once that she was a difficult woman in her fifties who ran her own company.

“There’s a mistake on this birth certificate application,” the nurse went on.

“How is there a letter missing from the father’s name? Fill out a new one and bring it back, and don’t hold up everyone else in line.”

She crushed the form into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket on the far side of the counter.

I walked over, bent down, and lifted the crumpled ball out of the trash, then smoothed it open. The mother was listed as Sally Johnson, and the father’s name, written beneath hers, was Lucas Halls.

The form was dated ten o’clock that same morning, which was the exact hour I had been up on the fourth floor with a fetal monitor strapped to me, shaking all over because the baby’s movements had gone wrong.

The pen had pressed hard enough to score the back of the page, and I would have known that looping, connected hand anywhere, because it was Lucas’s own.

I folded the discarded form and slipped it into my bag.