My mother invited everyone to her sixty-fifth birthday party.
Everyone except me—and my ten-year-old daughter.
I didn’t find out through a phone call, or a text, or even a private message. I found out because she made it public—loudly, proudly public. There it was, sitting in the middle of my Facebook feed, surrounded by photos of people’s dinners and vacation selfies: a long, shiny announcement with a professionally edited picture of my mother, hair perfectly curled, lipstick pristine, smile practiced.
Underneath, the caption that would teach me, more clearly than anything else in my life, what I was to her.
“I’m turning 65 next month, and I want to celebrate with the people who matter most. All my children have brought this family respect and honor—except Erica. She chose to be a lowly single mom. She abandoned her marriage, her responsibilities, and her family’s reputation. I no longer see her as my daughter. She is not welcome at my celebration.”
Name tagged. Public.
It’s funny what your brain chooses to focus on when your heart is tearing open. I didn’t start with the part where she disowned me. I didn’t start with “lowly single mom.” I started with the numbers.
“367 likes,” I whispered into the quiet of my living room. “Eighty-nine comments.”
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It was a Wednesday evening. The dishes were still in the sink. The TV hummed softly with some kids’ show I’d forgotten to turn off after dinner. The room smelled faintly of the spaghetti we’d eaten.
And there on my cracked phone screen, my mother was tearing me out of the family tree with the same energy she once used to arrange centerpieces for church banquets.
I scrolled.
“You deserve better, Carol. Some children just don’t understand sacrifice.”
“Single moms are so selfish these days.”
“Good for you for setting boundaries.”
“Proud of you for standing up for your values!”
Tiny blue thumbs. Red hearts. Laughing faces. People I hadn’t seen in years chiming in like they knew anything about my life. Church ladies. Distant cousins. My fifth-grade teacher.
The room tilted a little.
“Mom?”
Sophie’s voice snapped me back. I hadn’t heard her come in. My daughter stood in the doorway, hair still damp from her evening shower, wearing the purple T-shirt with the cartoon cat she loved. She was holding her stuffed elephant by one ear. Her eyes, too big in her small face, were fixed on me.
I realized my cheeks were wet.
I wiped them quickly with the back of my hand. “Hey, baby.”
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
I swallowed. There were a lot of answers to that question. Ten years worth. Maybe more. “Just something sad on TV,” I lied.
She padded over in her socks and climbed onto the couch, tucking herself under my arm like she had when she was three. I shut the phone off and slid it face-down on the coffee table, like it had personally insulted me.
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We sat there quietly while the canned laughter from the TV flickered across the room.
“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Later, after she fell asleep, starfished across my bed with one arm draped over my stomach and her curls fanned out on my pillow, I lay there in the dark and replayed every word of that post in my head. It glowed behind my eyes like a neon sign.
Lowly single mom.
No longer see her as my daughter.
Not welcome.
The old version of me—the one who used to crave my mother’s approval like oxygen—would have called her. Or driven over. Or written a twelve-paragraph message defending myself, explaining, pleading.
I did none of those things.
Instead, I stared at the ceiling and quietly, carefully made a different decision.
I wasn’t going to beg.
I wasn’t going to defend myself.
I was going to show up.
But before I could tell you about the night I walked into that restaurant and watched my mother’s face drain of all color, I have to go back. I have to tell you how we got there. Because my mother likes to say I “chose” to be a single mom, like I chose a new haircut or a different brand of cereal.
That’s not how it happened.
My name is Erica. I’m thirty-two years old. And I wasn’t always a single mom.
I was once the golden story. The cautionary tale came later.
I grew up in a house where reputation mattered more than breathing.
That’s not an exaggeration; it’s just how things were. My mother—Carol—was the sort of woman who ironed dish towels and rearranged the fruit in the bowl before guests came over. Our front yard always looked like a magazine spread. The curtains in the living room matched the throw pillows. The throw pillows matched the seasonal candles.
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She used to tell us, “What will people think?” the way other parents said, “Be careful crossing the street.”
My father, Richard, was quieter, but in his own way he worshiped at the same altar. He read the local paper every morning, muttering comments about who got promoted, whose kids got scholarships, which families were “doing well.” He measured life in titles and appearances, some invisible leaderboard in his head with us all ranked on it.
I was the middle child. Lauren came first—my sister, two years older, straight-A student, debate champion, future lawyer practically from birth. Marcus, my younger brother, arrived three years after me, the long-awaited boy, the one everyone joked would “carry on the family name.”
And then there was me.
For most of my childhood, I lived in the space between them—never as impressive as Lauren, never as adored as Marcus. I wasn’t bad at anything, but I wasn’t exceptional in the ways my parents valued.
I liked to draw. To write little stories. To imagine different lives I might live. None of that made it onto my parents’ invisible scoreboard.
Still, if you’d looked at us from the outside, you’d have seen a very normal, maybe even enviable family. We were the well-dressed row in the second pew at church every Sunday. We had matching outfits for Christmas photos. We volunteered at bake sales.
Everything looked perfect.
That word again.
Perfect.
I heard it a lot growing up. Almost always attached to Lauren.
“Lauren, your hair looks perfect.”
“Lauren, that essay was perfect.”
“Lauren, that dress is perfect on you.”
With me, it was different.
“Erica, tuck your shirt in. You look sloppy.”
“Erica, stand up straight. People are watching.”
“Erica, you really should wear more makeup. You’d be so pretty if you tried.”
I learned early that love, in our house, felt very similar to criticism. You were a project. Something to improve.
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When I was seventeen, I brought home a report card with two A’s, three B’s, and one C in physics. I’d worked hard for those grades.
My mother glanced at the paper, then handed it back.
“Lauren never got a C,” she said. “You know that, right?”
Marcus wandered in munching on cereal straight from the box.
“What did Marcus get?” I asked.
Marcus shrugged. “Uh… I passed?”
Mom laughed and ruffled his hair like he’d just won a Nobel Prize.
My father folded his paper. “Erica, we expect more from you. You’re not a child anymore. Colleges look at these things.”
I’d already lost count of how many times I’d heard that particular speech. It rolled over me in dull waves.
“You could be so much more if you’d just apply yourself,” my mother said.
That was the soundtrack of my adolescence.
You could be more.
You should be more.
Why aren’t you more?
So maybe it makes sense that when a charming man in his late twenties looked at me like I was the most interesting thing in the room, I dove in headfirst.
I met Derek at a charity gala.
That sentence makes it sound fancier than it felt. I wasn’t a guest; I was serving appetizers.
It was one of those events my mother loved—round tables with linen cloths, a podium at the front, people trying to outdo each other with bids on overpriced items in a silent auction so they could feel generous and important at the same time.
I was twenty-one, working part-time at a little café downtown and taking night classes at the community college while I tried to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up—a question that seemed heavier every year.
My mom had helped organize the gala. She liked to say “co-chair,” emphasizing the co like she’d been dragged into leadership reluctantly, instead of volunteering for everything that put her on a stage.
They needed extra servers, and the café owner was short-staffed, so she volunteered me.
“Networking opportunity,” she said, straightening the neckline of my black shirt. “You never know who you’ll meet.”
She was right, just not in the way she imagined.
Derek was at table seven. He wore a dark gray suit, crisp white shirt, no tie. Something about him stood out from the rest of the men there; maybe it was the way he leaned back in his chair like he owned the space, or the easy way he laughed. He had dark hair, neatly styled, and the kind of smile that made you feel like it was just for you, even in a crowded room.
When I came around with the tray of bacon-wrapped dates, he looked up and caught my eye.
“Those look dangerous,” he said.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Those.” He pointed at the tray. His eyes were a clear, bright hazel. “If I eat too many, I’ll have to add an extra hour to my workout tomorrow.”
One of the women at his table rolled her eyes affectionately. “Oh, please, Derek. You already live at the gym.”
I smiled. “Well, I can take the danger away if you want.”
He grinned. “Don’t you dare.”
He took two, then tilted his head, examining me in a way that made me suddenly aware of the stray hair escaping my bun.
“You’re Carol’s daughter, right?” he asked.
My stomach tightened. “Yeah. Erica.”
“Thought so. You look like her.”
I didn’t think I did, but people said that a lot. It usually sounded like a compliment, so I nodded and moved on, cheeks warm.
Later, during dessert, he caught me near the kitchen door.
“Hey,” he said, like we were old friends. “Erica, right? I’m Derek.”
“I remember,” I answered. I regretted it immediately—it sounded too interested.
He didn’t seem to notice. “Your mom’s been talking about you. Night classes, right? Business?”
“Some business, some random stuff. Still figuring it out.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said. “Most people just pretend they have it all together.”
He had the kind of attention that felt like sunlight—warm and focused entirely on you. I’d grown up being compared, measured, found lacking. Suddenly, someone who looked like he’d walked out of a magazine spread was asking me questions like my answers mattered.
We talked for maybe five minutes. He asked about my classes, my job, my favorite books. I found out he worked in finance—“boring stuff,” he said, though I doubted the paycheck was boring—and he’d recently joined the board of the charity hosting the event.
At the end of the night, as I shrugged on my coat in the staff area, my mother appeared.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Fine. A lot of people wanted more bread than we had,” I said.
She laughed. “You always notice the weirdest things.”
We walked out together into the chilly evening air. I was thinking about the blister forming on my heel from the cheap shoes when a car door opened behind us.
“Carol!”
We turned. Derek jogged over from a sleek, black car. He smiled at my mother first—of course.
“Wonderful event,” he said. “You outdid yourself.”
My mom practically glowed. “You’re too kind. We couldn’t have done it without board members like you.”
He chuckled, then turned to me. “Erica. Hey.”
My mother’s eyes flicked between us. “Oh, have you two met?”
“A bit,” Derek said. “We talked earlier.”
He looked at me in that focused way again. “Listen, I was wondering… would you maybe want to grab coffee sometime? I feel like we barely scratched the surface.”
I stared at him. Coffee? With him?
My mother’s hand tightened on my arm, almost imperceptibly.
“Erica doesn’t exactly have time for dating right now,” she said lightly. “School, work, you know how it is.”
Derek kept his eyes on me. “I also know how to drink coffee,” he said. “And I’m very efficient. One hour. You pick the place.”
My stomach fluttered. No one ever argued with my mother. Not like that. Not with a smile.
I heard myself say, “Sure. Why not?”
His grin widened. “Great. Here.”
He handed me his phone. “Put your number in. I’ll text you, we’ll figure out a time.”
I glanced at my mother. Her jaw was tight, but she said nothing.
I typed in my number. Handed the phone back.
“Looking forward to it,” he said.
As we walked to my mother’s car, she finally spoke.
“Be careful with men like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
She pursed her lips. “Charming.”
But two weeks later, when Derek came over for dinner—flowers in hand, complimenting her cooking, asking my father thoughtful questions about his job—she was the one telling me I was lucky.
“Derek is such a good provider,” she said, when he left. “You don’t find many like that.”
It didn’t matter that I wasn’t even engaged yet.
Once my parents decided who someone was, they stuck with it. That was comfortable. Predictable.
The irony being, of course, that Derek was not remotely who they thought he was.
The first year with Derek felt like being fast-forwarded through someone else’s fairy tale.
Coffee became dinner. Dinner became weekends together. Weekends turned into a proposal on a windy overlook with the city lights below us, Derek on one knee, a ring so bright my breath caught.
My parents were thrilled. Lauren was politely happy, though I caught a flicker of envy when Derek helped clear the table after dinner and charmed everyone with another story about some client or colleague. Marcus just nudged me in the hallway and whispered, “Nice catch.”
“You’re so lucky,” Lauren said one evening when we were alone. She traced the rim of her wineglass, watching the light flicker through the red. “He’s perfect.”
That word again.
Perfect.
I had already seen little cracks by then, but I ignored them. Everyone deserves a little imperfection, right? That’s what I told myself.
The first time Derek raised his voice at me was four months before the wedding.
We were in his apartment, going over the seating chart. Or rather, I was going over the seating chart. Derek was scrolling on his phone.
“Do you think your cousin Claire will be offended if we don’t put her at the table with your parents?” I asked. “She always seems weird around your mom.”
He didn’t answer.
“Derek?”
“Hm?” He didn’t look up.
“Do you think Claire—”
“Jesus, Erica,” he snapped suddenly, lowering the phone. “Do you ever stop? It’s just a wedding.”
I blinked, stung. “I thought you cared about the wedding.”
“I do. I care about you not obsessing over every tiny thing and driving me insane.”
My cheeks burned. “I’m just trying to do it right. There’s a lot of details.”
He sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I’ve had a long day. I’m trying to relax for five minutes and you’re badgering me about table placements.”
“I’m not badgering—”
“Oh my God, listen to yourself,” he said, his voice rising. “Arguing with me over a stupid table. You wonder why I need to check out sometimes.”
Silence fell between us. I stared at the seating chart, the little circles of names blurring.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I didn’t mean to… bother you.”
His shoulders softened. He stepped closer, tipping my chin up.
“Hey.” His voice gentled. “I’m sorry too, okay? Work’s been insane, and I shouldn’t have snapped. You know I love that you care. It’s one of the things I love about you. You just… overthink sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”
He kissed my forehead.
The argument dissolved like sugar in hot water. Because that’s what Derek was good at: turning things around until you weren’t sure what had happened.
Little moments like that added up. They always started small.
“I don’t like that friend,” he’d say, after we hung out with someone from my college classes. “She’s a bad influence. She drinks too much. You’re better than that.”
“I don’t think you should post that picture,” he’d comment, looking over my shoulder as I picked a photo for Instagram. “It makes you look… needy.”
“I just want to keep you safe,” he’d say, when he asked for my phone password. “What if something happened to you and I needed to get into your phone?”
He framed everything as concern. Protection. Love.
I told myself that’s what it was. No one had ever cared enough to want all of my attention before. Maybe this was what adult relationships looked like. Maybe all those love stories I’d read were wrong.
Besides, he’d given me a ring. He wanted to build a life with me. Didn’t that mean something?
Our wedding day was perfect, according to everyone who attended. My mother cried when she saw me in my dress. My father actually smiled in the photos. Derek’s vows were smooth and heartfelt, full of phrases like “my best friend” and “forever.”
Later, as we danced our first dance, my mother leaned over to Lauren.
“Finally,” she whispered, not as quietly as she thought. “Erica is settling down.”
Lauren nodded. “He’s perfect for her.”
Seven years later, when I held the divorce papers in my shaking hands, those words would echo in my head like a taunt.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Sophie was born three years into our marriage.
Pregnancy was not kind to me. I was sick for most of it, nauseous at random times of day. My feet swelled. My emotions swung wildly between euphoria and despair, often in the space of an hour.
Derek was… supportive, in his way. He went to most of the doctor’s appointments. He bought a secondhand crib and spent a Saturday sanding and repainting it to match the nursery. He put his hand on my belly in the evenings and talked to our daughter through my skin, telling her about all the things they’d do together.
His love, though, came with edges.
“Are you sure you want to eat that?” he’d ask, as I reached for a second slice of pizza. “You don’t want to have too much to lose after the baby, do you?”
“Can you at least put on some makeup before we go?” he’d say, as I waddled around in leggings and a baggy T-shirt at eight months. “You look… tired.”
In labor, when I screamed and clutched his hand, he flinched.
“Jesus, Erica,” he said. “You’re scaring me. Calm down.”
“I’m pushing a human out of my body,” I gasped. “I think I’m allowed to scream.”
He rolled his eyes. “The nurse said you’re only at six centimeters. You’re going to blow out your voice before you even get there.”
To this day, I don’t remember the exact moment Sophie came into the world. I remember the bright lights. The smell of antiseptic. The sound of my own breathing. Derek’s voice asking the nurse if they were sure everything was okay because “that’s a lot of blood.”
But then there she was—tiny, squirming, red-faced, with a shock of dark hair and a furious cry. They put her on my chest and the world narrowed to the weight of her, the warmth, the strange, overwhelming feeling that she’d always been there, waiting.
“You did it,” Derek said, kissing my forehead.
In that moment, I believed we could do anything.
I didn’t know yet that motherhood, in Derek’s mind, came with a strict set of rules. Most of which I would break simply by existing.
“You’re holding her wrong,” he’d say, as I soothed her at three in the morning. “Her head needs more support.”
He’d snatch her gently but insistently from my arms. “See? She stopped crying.”
You’re feeding her too much.
You’re feeding her too little.
Why is she crying?
She wasn’t crying when I had her.
What did you do?
He turned into an expert overnight, apparently. Every cry, every cough, every sleepless night became a test I failed.
The rest of the world, of course, saw only a dedicated father. The man who changed diapers. The man who posted photos with captions like “My girls” and “Luckiest dad alive.”
My mother was besotted with him.
“Derek worked so hard for you,” she’d say, when I mentioned being tired. “You should be more grateful.”
She’d say it with a smile, but the edges were sharp.
At family gatherings, he held court with stories about late nights at the office, difficult clients, deals closed.
“Derek is such a good provider,” my father would say, like a prayer.
Meanwhile, I’d be in the kitchen, bouncing Sophie on my hip, trying to get her to take a bottle, wondering why the sound of my own mother’s voice grated so much.
I was drowning, quietly, in a house that looked picture-perfect.
Postpartum depression is sneaky. It doesn’t arrive with a flashing sign that says, Hey, you’re sick. It creeps in. A little more tired each day. A little more disconnected. You find yourself staring at the wall at three in the afternoon, unable to remember how to move.
I tried to tell Derek, once.
“I don’t feel like myself,” I said, as we lay in bed. Sophie was finally asleep in her crib, a rare moment of peace.
He checked his phone. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Some days I feel… empty. Or numb. Or really anxious. Like I’m failing at everything. Like Sophie would be better off with—”
“Don’t say that,” he cut in.
“I’m serious. I keep thinking I’m a bad mom—”
“Well, maybe stop thinking so much,” he said. “You’re making it worse.”
https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?gdpr=0&client=ca-pub-3619133031508264&output=html&h=280&slotname=4515924456&adk=806773539&adf=1670173441&pi=t.ma~as.4515924456&w=850&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1770801103&rafmt=1&format=850×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmx.ngheanxanh.com%2Fuyenkok%2Fyoure-not-invited-to-my-65th-my-mom-wrote-on-facebook-all-my-children-honor-me-except-erica-the-lowly-single-mom-i-didnt-comment-i%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwY2xjawP5JslleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF5Mm85SlVJVFUzZ3JJN0Juc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHkRMjMD9WsEfst7sOYD_wv20fwF–fPpBV_AnMIDrwP4BTC7PdLkV0wFNweH_aem_VuISuprv0S4hTyU6E5YtkA&fwr=0&fwrattr=true&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&aieuf=1&aicrs=1&abgtt=6&dt=1770801021707&bpp=2&bdt=2879&idt=2&shv=r20260209&mjsv=m202602050101&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3D273324e23a4ff43d%3AT%3D1770799529%3ART%3D1770800810%3AS%3DALNI_MbWJ1r2v_iOdhfzdS3BeiM6WhzR1w&gpic=UID%3D00001337c2b96343%3AT%3D1770799529%3ART%3D1770800810%3AS%3DALNI_Ma3Iw743flwlf8NSTMWh4tp_NQcLw&eo_id_str=ID%3Deef675347a6a4ec7%3AT%3D1770799529%3ART%3D1770800810%3AS%3DAA-AfjZpG0iLLfDCxabh-nTzbgn7&prev_fmts=0x0%2C1200x280%2C1200x280%2C728x90%2C1352x556%2C850x280%2C850x280%2C850x280%2C850x280%2C850x280&nras=8&correlator=4571883381151&frm=20&pv=1&u_tz=420&u_his=2&u_h=1440&u_w=3440&u_ah=1400&u_aw=3440&u_cd=24&u_sd=1&adx=76&ady=15607&biw=1352&bih=556&scr_x=0&scr_y=13434&eid=31096044%2C31096621%2C42531705%2C95378425%2C95382067%2C95382332%2C95382340%2C95382730%2C31096663%2C95382196&oid=2&psts=AOrYGsnPv5vj0hmoo7iTxKuL0OSgy9PpduJJcMzlAKDx5fro1uOViytjoFF994GLFjaNf37rLquiAW1-l1xrqXX3KrK1VpKp2bbEgsEc7g&pvsid=8291040997165051&tmod=1540458628&uas=3&nvt=1&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fl.facebook.com%2F&fc=1920&brdim=1840%2C43%2C1840%2C43%2C3440%2C0%2C1436%2C649%2C1369%2C556&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7CeEbr%7C&abl=CS&pfx=0&fu=128&bc=31&bz=1.05&pgls=CAEaBTYuOS4x&ifi=5&uci=a!5&btvi=7&fsb=1&dtd=81992
I stared at him. “That’s not how it works, Derek.”
“It’s in your head, Erica. Everyone gets tired. My mom had three kids and she didn’t have some fancy diagnosis for being sad.”
“It’s not just being sad.”
He sighed. “Look, if you want to talk to someone, talk to someone. But I don’t have the energy to walk you through every mood swing. I work all day, I come home, I help with the baby. I can’t be your therapist too.”
I didn’t mention it again.
When I tried to talk to my mother, she waved a hand.
“You’re fine,” she said. “You’re just overwhelmed. You wanted a baby, now you have one. This is what motherhood looks like. We didn’t coddle ourselves with all these labels back in my day. You know what the best cure for feeling sorry for yourself is?”
“What?” I asked.
“Gratitude,” she said firmly. “You have a husband, a child, a house. Be thankful.”
So I tried to be thankful. I made lists in my head at night to ward off the darkness.
Roof over our heads.
Healthy baby.
Husband with a job.
Family nearby.
It didn’t help that much.
What did help were the little glimpses of Sophie’s personality as she grew. The first time she laughed—a surprised little bark at Derek making a silly face. The way she curled her fist around my finger as she nursed. The way her eyes followed me around the room like I was the center of her universe.
Love, it turns out, can coexist with despair. They can sit side by side in your chest and pull you in opposite directions.
For a while, love won. Or at least, it kept me moving. Until the day I borrowed Derek’s phone.
I didn’t go looking for proof.
That’s important to say, even if no one believed it later. I wasn’t snooping. I wasn’t suspicious in the conscious way that makes you check a partner’s messages.
The day I saw the texts, I was looking up a recipe.
My phone was on the charger in the bedroom. Sophie, three years old and covered in finger paint, was at the kitchen table, humming to herself as she massacred a sheet of paper with blue and green swirls. Derek’s phone lay on the counter, abandoned when he went upstairs to answer a call from work.
I wanted to make chicken alfredo. I could never remember the ratios for the sauce. I wiped my hands on a dish towel, grabbed the nearest device, and pulled up the browser.
A notification popped up before I could type.
New message from Bella :
Can’t stop thinking about last night. When can I see you again?
The room tilted. My ears rang.
I stared at the screen, at the little lipstick emoji next to the name. My heart began pounding so hard I could hear it.
“Mommy, look!” Sophie cried happily, holding up her paper. “It’s you and me!”
The drawing was three chaotic blobs in crayon. I tried to smile.
“It’s beautiful, baby,” I said. My voice sounded far away.
The notification faded. My hand moved on its own, tapping the Messages app.
Derek had named the thread “Bella 
” with the kiss emoji. There were dozens—no, hundreds—of messages.
Last night was amazing.
You’re so much more fun than the wife.
I wish I could wake up next to you every day instead of listening to her nag.
Screenshots of hotel reservations. Photos. Words I never wanted to associate with the man I’d married.
My breath came in short, sharp bursts. I backed out of the conversation, my thumb shaking.
Another thread. “Kayla 
.” The same. Different name, same script.
And more. “Jess.” “Ally.” “M.” Each one filled with late-night messages, explicit photos, little jokes at my expense.
She doesn’t suspect a thing.
She’s too busy being a mom, lol.
If she was more interesting, maybe I wouldn’t need a hobby.
I don’t know how long I stood there, scrolling and scrolling, my chest hollow. At some point I realized Sophie was tugging on my sleeve.
“Mommy, I’m hungry.”
I looked at the clock. Forty minutes had passed.
“Right. Yeah. Snacks.” I snapped Derek’s phone shut and pushed it away like it was something contaminated.
I fed Sophie apple slices and peanut butter with hands that didn’t feel like mine. The kitchen buzzed with the fluorescent light and the hum of the fridge.
My thoughts ran in circles.
Maybe there’s an explanation.
Maybe these are old messages.
Maybe I misunderstood.
I knew I hadn’t.
Derek came back down an hour later, whistling softly. He kissed the top of Sophie’s head.
“How are my girls?” he asked, moving to kiss me too.
I stepped back.
“We need to talk,” I said.
He froze, then smiled. “That phrase is never followed by good news.”
“Derek.” My voice cracked. “Bella? Kayla? Jess? How many?”
His face went blank. It was like watching a mask slip.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Your phone.” My throat burned. “I saw the messages.”
He stared at me, and for one ridiculous moment I thought he might apologize. Or cry. Or at least look ashamed.
He did none of those things.
Instead, he shrugged. “You shouldn’t have been looking at my phone.”
“That’s it?” I said. I could feel my hands shaking. “You’ve been cheating on me, and that’s what you’re focusing on?”
He rolled his eyes. “Cheating. God, such a dramatic word.”
“What would you call it?”
“Having my needs met,” he said calmly. “You checked out years ago, Erica. All you talk about is the kid, or money, or how tired you are. Do you have any idea how boring that is?”
My throat closed. “I had a baby, Derek. Our baby.”
“Yeah, and then you turned into a mom and nothing else.”
I stared at him, stunned.
“Maybe if you were more interesting,” he continued, “I wouldn’t have to look elsewhere.”
Something in me snapped.
“That’s not how this works,” I said, my voice low. “You don’t get to blame me because you decided to screw half the city.”
He scoffed. “Half the city. You always exaggerate everything.”
“I saw the messages,” I said. “I saw the hotel reservations. I saw the photos. How long?”
He shrugged again, as if we were discussing the weather. “I don’t know. A couple of years. Off and on.”
“Two years,” I repeated. “Our daughter is three.”
“So?”
“So you were cheating on me while I was dealing with postpartum depression,” I said. My voice rose. “While I was up at night feeding our daughter. While I was begging you to go to therapy with me.”
He sighed, annoyed. “I told you, I’m not your therapist.”
“Apparently you were busy sleeping with everyone else’s,” I snapped.
His eyes narrowed. “You know what? If you’re going to be like this, maybe we should take a break. You clearly aren’t happy.”
“A break?” I laughed, a harsh, bitter sound I didn’t recognize. “You think I’m going to stay here and pretend this is fixable?”
“What, you’re going to leave?” he asked. “Over some messages?”
“Over your cheating. Over your lying. Over the way you’ve treated me for years.”
He spread his hands. “And how do you think that’s going to look? Hmm? You, a single mom, living in some crappy apartment, begging me for child support? You think your parents are going to be proud of that?”
The mention of my parents sent a spike of cold through my chest.
He saw it; his mouth quirked.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Think about that. Think about what people will say. Maybe you should calm down. We can work this out. You can forgive me. That’s what marriage is. Forgiveness.”
Marriage, in my parents’ world, was a cage you decorated with nice throw pillows.
“I’m done,” I said.
The words surprised both of us.
Derek’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“I’m done,” I repeated. “I’m not going to raise my daughter in a house where this is normal. Where her father cheats on her mother and then blames her for it. I won’t do it.”
“You’re not taking her,” he said instantly.
I felt suddenly, eerily calm. “We’ll see what a judge says.”
That night, after I put Sophie to bed with a story and a smile that hurt my face, I packed two suitcases.
One for me. One for my daughter.
Derek watched from the doorway, arms crossed.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he said.
“I’m leaving,” I answered, folding another pair of tiny leggings. “You made your choices. I’m making mine.”
“You’ll be back,” he said. “You won’t be able to handle it on your own.”
Maybe he believed that. Maybe he needed to.
I filed for divorce the next day.
Naively, I thought the hardest part would be telling my family. I imagined my mother’s horrified face, my father’s sigh, maybe Lauren’s thin-lipped disappointment. I thought they’d be upset, yes, but I also thought, at some core level, they loved me. That love would win out over their obsession with appearances.
I was wrong.
I should’ve known from the first phone call.
“You’re leaving him?” my mother shrieked.
I sat on the edge of the twin bed in the tiny guest room at my friend Jenna’s place, the suitcases still half-unpacked on the floor. The walls were bare, the mattress old, but the lock on the door was solid and the air smelled like laundry detergent and safety.
“He cheated on me,” I said. “Multiple times. For years.”
“So you leave?” she demanded. “Over some… mistakes?”
“Mistakes?” I repeated.
I wished, in that moment, that I could show her the messages. The pictures. The casual cruelty in Derek’s words when he talked about me to other women. But I knew it wouldn’t matter. She’d find a way to explain it away because the alternative—that she’d misjudged him so profoundly—would shatter her.
“He cheated on me, Mom,” I said again. “He lied to me, made me feel crazy, blamed me for everything. This isn’t… this isn’t a rough patch. This is abuse.”
“Don’t throw that word around,” she snapped. “Do you know how serious that sounds?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Marriage is about forgiveness, Erica,” she continued, her voice taking on that scolding, sermonic tone I’d heard a thousand times growing up. “You don’t just quit when things get hard. Your father and I have had our ups and downs, but we stuck it out. That’s what adults do.”
“He cheated on me with at least four women,” I said. “That’s not a down, Mom. That’s a moral collapse.”
“You’re being dramatic,” she said.
I thought of the first time Derek called me dramatic, the little smirk on his face. Apparently, I was collecting that label.
“I’m filing for divorce,” I said. “I already talked to a lawyer. I just wanted you to hear it from me.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“Where are you?” she finally asked.
“At Jenna’s.”
“You’ll come home,” she said. “We can sort this out. You can’t stay with a friend forever. It’s unseemly.”
“Home?” I repeated. “You mean your house? Or the house where my husband lives? Because I’m not going back to that home.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Stop using that tone with me. You’re my daughter. I’m trying to help you.”
“If you wanted to help me,” I said quietly, “you’d be angry at him, not me.”
“You took vows,” she said. “In front of God and your family. You made a commitment. You have a child. You don’t just walk away.”
“He walked away the first time he undressed another woman,” I said.
“We’re done talking about this,” she said abruptly. “Think about what you’re doing. Think about what people will say. We’ll talk when you’re being reasonable.”
She hung up.
I stared at the phone for a long time, listening to the emptiness.
When my dad called later that night, I braced myself.
“A divorce?” he said flatly, after I told him. “With a child?”
“I have a name,” I said. “Sophie. Your granddaughter.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” he said, like they all shared the same script. “You want to drag a child through a court battle?