When Amber, a hardworking mom and corporate attorney, discovers a drawing by her 7-year-old daughter, Mia, her world is shaken.
The picture shows Mia’s teacher in Amber’s place with a heartbreaking caption.
Suspecting betrayal, Amber confronts her husband, Jack, only to uncover something deeper… Mia’s feelings of abandonment amidst Amber’s busy life.
I didn’t think I’d be here… but this has been life lately.
I’m Amber, I’m thirty-four, married to my husband Jack for ten years, and I’m a mom to my bundle of joy, Mia, a seven-year-old little girl.
Recently, I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been in my entire life, which is truly saying something because I’m a corporate attorney.
My mom’s health has been declining over the past year, and we’ve been throwing ourselves into her hospital stays, therapy sessions, and medication that costs way more than I care to admit.
To cover everything, I’ve been working insane hours because I’d do anything for my mother.
Anything.
Jack has been the best partner and rock I could have ever asked for. He has stepped up at home in ways I never imagined or expected. Jack has taken on the cooking, cleaning, helping Mia with her schoolwork, and managing all the little things I used to handle.
He made it possible for me to keep everything afloat, even when it felt like I was drowning.
But last night, everything changed before I could even catch my breath.
I came home late, exhausted, starving, and ready to collapse.
After hurriedly eating a bowl of salmon and rice while Mia took her bath, I put my little girl to bed. As she dozed off, Mia mumbled something about puppets.
“I didn’t know that you could put your hand in a socket and it would be a puppet,” she said.
“A sock, my darling,” I said. “Not a socket!
Don’t you ever put your hand in a socket, Mia.”
She giggled.
“Okay, Momma,” she said, yawning.
I started tidying up her dolls, which were scattered all over the carpet in her room, and then made my way to the coffee table in the living room. Crayons, white paper, and coloring books were scattered all over.
That’s when I found it. A drawing.
At first glance, it seemed innocent enough.
A kid’s sketch of a happy family. A man, a woman, and a little girl holding hands. But when I looked closer, my stomach twisted.
The man was unmistakably Jack.
The little girl was clearly Mia. But the woman? Definitely not me.
She had long brown hair and wore a flowing bridal gown.
Beneath the drawing, in Mia’s little handwriting, were the words that broke my heart:
I can’t wait for you to be my mom!
It felt like the ground beneath me had given way.
I took the picture to Mia’s bed and sat on the edge, trying to wake her up enough to get answers.
“Darling girl, can you tell me about this drawing?” I asked her calmly.
“What drawing, Momma?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
When Mia took a look at the drawing, her face turned red, and she snatched the paper out of my hand, clutching it to her chest.
“You weren’t supposed to find that! Daddy said to hide it better!” she blurted out.
Hide it better? Jack?
Hide what better?
My heart started pounding. What was going on? Was Jack cheating?
And what was worse… was Mia already imagining this other woman as her mom?
I barely slept that night. My mind was running miles per hour. I thought about my mother, I thought about the work I still needed to do before heading to the office the next day, and I thought about my marriage…
By the morning, I had gone through a storm of worst-case scenarios.
I sat in the kitchen, waiting for Jack to get ready for work
What happened next changed everything…
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