But if I did nothing, I'd never sleep again.\
"You planned this."
I stood up. Caleb looked up when I passed through the living room.
"Mom? Why were you yelling?"
"I dropped something," I said quickly. "Stay with your siblings."
The attic ladder creaked when I pulled it down. Daniel had insisted on reorganizing the attic himself during his last good month. At that moment, I wondered what he'd been hiding.
I searched for an hour until I reached the back wall.
There sat a cedar chest I hadn't opened in years.
I wondered what he'd been hiding.
The small key slid into the lock. I turned it.
Inside were envelopes bundled with twine, a small stack of bank receipts, and something wrapped in tissue paper.
My hands trembled as I unwrapped it.
It was a newborn hospital bracelet. It was pink. The date printed on it made my knees weaken. It was from eight years earlier. The exact month Daniel and I had separated for three months after one of our worst fights.
"No," I breathed. "No, no, no."
It was a newborn hospital bracelet. It was pink.
I checked the name. Ava.
I swallowed hard and reached for the stack of envelopes.
The first one I opened wasn't in Daniel's handwriting.
"Daniel,
I can't keep doing this halfway. Ava is getting older. She asks why you don't stay. I don't know what to tell her anymore. I need you to choose. Please don't make me raise her alone while you go back to your real life.
C."
I checked the name.
I opened another.
"Daniel,
I know you think you're protecting everyone, but you're hurting us. If you loved me, you wouldn't keep going back. Leave her. Be with us. Ava deserves that. Please."
The words blurred as tears filled my eyes.
I dug deeper and found a letter in Daniel's handwriting.
I opened another.
He called the woman "Caroline" and revealed he wasn't going to leave the kids and me, that he loved us and Ava, whom he wouldn't abandon financially, but he couldn't give her what she was asking for.
I pressed the paper against my chest.
He didn't leave us. But he'd lied daily.
Then I discovered printed bank transfers. They were monthly payments for years.
I grabbed one of the envelopes that looked like the one in the box on Caleb's bed.
He'd lied daily.
