My husband left me years ago when his mistress got pregnant.
I raised our two kids alone. It wasn’t easy—there were nights I cried quietly after putting them to bed, wondering how I’d manage to keep the lights on or pay for their school trips. But I did it. We made it through. I learned to live without him and eventually stopped checking my phone, hoping he’d call.
Last week, out of nowhere, he appeared at my door. Standing beside him was a little girl—his daughter with her. She looked about six, clutching a worn-out teddy bear and staring at the ground.
He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “I need your help,” he said. “Can you watch her for a few weeks? We’re… dealing with something.”
I froze. “You’re asking me to babysit the child you left me for?”
He looked uncomfortable but pressed on. “It’s just temporary. Please, she’s innocent.”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t.”
That’s when his face hardened. “If you don’t help me, you’ll regret it till the end of your days.”
Then he stormed off, calling me a “heartless, cruel witch.”
For days afterward, I couldn’t shake his words. Part of me felt guilty. Not for him—but for the child. She didn’t ask to be born into this mess. But I reminded myself that I owed him nothing.
Two months passed. Life returned to its routine—school runs, work, and the quiet evenings with my kids. Then, one morning, my phone rang.
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It was an unfamiliar number.
When I answered, a woman’s trembling voice spoke. “This is… Claire. I’m—well, I’m your ex-husband’s wife.”
I froze.
“I—I don’t know who else to call,” she said. “He’s missing. He left two weeks ago, said he was going to sort things out, and never came back. The police found his car abandoned outside town… and a letter inside with your address on it.”
My stomach dropped.
That night, after the kids were asleep, I sat in the kitchen staring at the wall, trying to process it. Why would he have my address written down? He knew where I lived—he’d already been there.
Unless… he never intended to come back.
A few days later, a detective came by. He asked routine questions, but something about his tone made me uneasy. “Did your ex-husband seem distressed recently?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t say distressed. Angry, maybe. He was… desperate.”
He nodded slowly. “We’re trying to trace his last movements. He withdrew a large sum of cash from his joint account before disappearing. Did he mention anything about money?”
“No,” I said. “He just asked me to babysit.”
The detective raised an eyebrow. “Babysit?”
I explained what happened, and his expression darkened. “That’s interesting. His wife told us he left the girl with a friend—said he had to ‘take care of something important.’ But she hasn’t seen him or the friend since.”
My heart started pounding.
That night, unable to sleep, I searched online. There it was—a local headline buried in the newsfeed:
“Unidentified Male Found Dead in Riverside Woods.”
The body had been discovered near an abandoned campsite. Cause of death: undetermined.
A week later, I was called in to identify him. It was him. My ex-husband.
As much as I’d told myself I hated him, standing there in that sterile room, looking at what was left of the man I once loved, I felt something break inside me.
After the funeral, I received a small box in the mail. No return address. Inside was a folded letter in his handwriting.
“If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t make it back. I’ve made mistakes I can’t undo. The money I took wasn’t for me—it was for our kids. For what I never gave them. I didn’t want Claire to know. The girl isn’t mine. She’s someone else’s. I just couldn’t bear to abandon another child like I did before. I’m sorry for everything.”
I sat there, shaking, as the truth sank in.
All those years of resentment, all the sleepless nights wondering how he could replace us—it turned out even he couldn’t live with what he’d done. The little girl wasn’t his, but he took responsibility because no one else would.
Later, Claire called again. She said she found adoption papers in his office—he was planning to make the girl legally his. “He was trying to make things right,” she said, voice breaking.
I didn’t know what to say.
In the end, I agreed to meet the girl again. She came shyly into my home, clutching that same teddy bear. I made her hot chocolate and told her she could always visit.
Because despite everything, none of this was her fault.
As she smiled at me, something in my heart softened. Maybe forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting the pain—it means deciding that the story doesn’t have to end in bitterness.
And that day, for the first time in years, I felt peace.
