Chapter 4

While Callum attended the official family breakfast with Noah the next morning, I packed my bags.

I did not touch the decorations in the living room or smash our wedding photographs.

I took only my identification, my work files, the jewelry my mother had left me, and the clothes that truly belonged to me.

The dresses and handbags Callum had bought me stayed in the closet.

For seven years, I had treated his gifts as proof that I was loved. Now they hung in perfect rows and looked like nothing more than expensive compensation.

My attorney emailed me the divorce papers. I signed them and removed Callum's access to my medical account and location data.

My sister asked over the phone, "Are you really going to leave without confronting him?"

"Confront him about what?"

"Ask why he lied. Ask when it started. Ask what he plans to do now."

I looked at the row of dresses he had given me.

For seven years, I had asked why he was not coming home, why he forgot our plans, and why work always mattered more than I did. Every time, he gave me an answer that sounded reasonable.

If I confronted him now, he would explain this too.

He would say Tessa's pregnancy had been an accident. He would say Noah was innocent and that he had lied only because he did not want to hurt me. He might even cry and promise that he could find a way to take care of both families.

But no explanation, no matter how beautiful, could change the fact that he had chosen to walk toward another home for 180 mornings.

"It is not that I have no questions," I said. "His answers just do not matter anymore."

After we hung up, Callum sent me a photograph.

Noah held up the "World's Best Dad" mug and smiled through the gap where one of his front teeth was missing. Callum had framed the picture so Tessa was not visible.

His message read, "The school event is running late. Do not wait for me for dinner. Also, do not forget to take care of Noah's tuition."

Even in the final hours before I left, he was reminding me to pay for his secret family.

I did not reply. I forwarded the photograph to my attorney.

The car my sister arranged arrived at two that afternoon.

As the driver carried my final suitcase downstairs, I returned to the study and took out the box labeled "Hello, Daddy."

I had originally placed a pair of white baby socks and my twelve-week ultrasound inside.

Now I laid the blue card addressed to Daddy over the photograph.

Beneath it, I placed the printed record of 180 school trips and our divorce papers.

I turned over the ultrasound image and wrote on the back:

"I thought this baby would make you a father for the first time."

I paused for a long while.

Then I added one final sentence.

"It turns out I was only the last person to learn that you already were one."

I placed the gift box in the center of the dining table with my wedding ring beside it.

Before leaving, I stepped into the spare bedroom that had always stood empty.

After our first embryo transfer two years earlier, Callum had put up a small square of pale green wallpaper in that room. He said we would choose the rest together once our baby truly came.

That baby never stayed, and the small square was never covered.

I ran my fingers over it.

This time, I would not let my child live in a room that was always waiting for a father to make up his mind.

As the car left the underground garage, I shut down our family sharing account.

Callum did not come home until ten that night.

The smart lock app sent me an alert. I opened the camera feed from the foyer.

He walked through the door still holding the mug Noah had given him.

Bright blue letters across the side read:

"World's Best Dad."

"Maren?"

No one answered.

He saw the gift box on the dining table and stopped.

The words "Hello, Daddy" on the lid made him smile.

He set the mug beside it and eagerly lifted the lid.

I closed the camera feed.

This time, it was his turn to see everything I had left behind.