Chapter 1
Twelve days after giving birth, I was scrolling through David Stone's social media feed.
He'd posted a family photo, cradling someone else's baby, with the caption: [First-time dad, go easy on me.]
The tag showed he was at his female coworker's recovery suite.
Meanwhile, I was at home, alone with our daughter.
I scrolled down to the comments, and they were all congratulations.
Someone asked: [Where's your wife?]
He replied: [She's resting at home, not up for being in the photo.]
So he'd handed my spot to someone else, my role, my identity, all gone.
I didn't call to confront him.
Instead, I called a moving company.
I had them take away every single thing my mom bought for me when I got married, TV, sofa, fridge, washing machine, you name it.
When David got home, the place was so empty, it was just walls.
On the coffee table, there was a note with three words on it: [I took everything.]
He started calling me.
I only sent him one message:
My message read: [Let that girl you posted about buy you new stuff.]
David called me seventeen times.
I didn't pick up a single one.
On the eighteenth call, my mom answered.
David said, "Mrs. Harper, did Emily get the wrong idea? That post was just a joke..."
My mom's voice was calm, but you could hear the edge. "A joke? My daughter's only twelve days postpartum, and you're at another woman's recovery suite, posing for a photo with her baby. You call that a joke?"
There was a long silence on the other end.
David said, "Mrs. Harper, that's my coworker's baby. Her husband's out of town, so I went to check on her..."
My mom asked, "Checking on her means holding the baby and posting it online? Checking on her means calling yourself a first-time dad?"
With that, my mom hung up.
I was leaning against the headboard, feeding my daughter, when I heard my mom let out a curse word in the living room.
When she came in, she didn't say a thing, just looked at me. "What are you going to do?"
"I'll stay here for now," I said.
"What about divorce?" she asked.
"Not yet," I replied.
My mom stared at me for a moment, then let it go.
She knew exactly what I meant by "not yet."
At nine that night, David messaged me.
David's message read: [You took everything. Where am I supposed to sleep? You didn't even leave me a blanket?]
I didn't reply.
He messaged again: [Is this how you deal with things? Can't we talk?]
David's third message read: [I already deleted that post. What more do you want from me?]
David's fourth message read: [Emily Evans, can you stop acting up? You're supposed to be resting after giving birth, why are you making trouble now?]
The fifth message was a voice note, fifty-seven seconds long. I didn't even bother to listen.
David's sixth message read: [I'll come pick you up at your mom's place tomorrow.]
I only replied with one word: [Don't.]
He called, and I declined the call.
He called again, so I turned off my phone.
I looked down at my daughter in my arms. She'd finished eating, milk stains at the corner of her mouth, her little face wrinkled and blank.
She had no clue her dad had already handed over his role as her father to someone else.
I laid her down in her crib and tucked the blanket around her.
Then I opened my phone's photo album, found the screenshot of his post, and stared at it again.
In the photo, David was holding the other baby, grinning from ear to ear.
That smile, I'd seen it before. It was the same one he gave me when I told him I was pregnant.
He was acting like a first-time dad all over again, but this time with someone else.
In the comments, someone named "Mr. Brown" wrote: [Congrats, the kid looks like you.]
David never even tried to clear things up or say the kid wasn't his.
He went along with it.