Ben looked at the pictures.
“My daughter. Her name is Lily. She’s twenty-three.”
I felt the room spin.
We had been married for twelve years. We had struggled with infertility and suffered two miscarriages before losing our daughter, Sophie, at seventeen weeks.
Ben had comforted me through every heartbreak, telling me that our life together was enough.
And all those years, he had a daughter I knew nothing about.
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He explained that Lily was born when he was nineteen. Her mother, Rebecca, had chosen adoption, and Ben had eventually agreed to a closed adoption. He had spent years wondering about the daughter he had never known.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
He said he had tried before our wedding, but when I once joked that we could survive anything except a secret wife or child, he
became too frightened to speak.
“So you lied to me for twelve years.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Three years earlier, Lily had contacted him through the adoption agency. She wanted medical history and eventually wanted to meet her biological father.
Ben met her for coffee, then continued seeing her every month or two. He lied about work dinners, golf, and visits to his brother to hide their meetings.
Lily knew about me. She had initially asked for privacy, but later encouraged Ben to tell me.
He never did.
