Chapter 1
My four-year-old daughter had been trying to tell me the truth for months.
“Daddy… the baby goes away.”
I thought she was jealous.
I thought she was confused.
I thought she was struggling to accept my fiancée’s pregnancy.
I was wrong.
At our family engagement party, Vanessa leaned toward my little girl and whispered:
“Don’t you dare tell your daddy.”
Maisie was crying so hard her little hands were shaking.
Then she did something no one expected.
A sharp POP cut through the room.
HISSSSS…
Vanessa’s eight-month belly began shrinking.
Right in front of all of us.
A deflated white balloon slipped from beneath her dress and landed on the floor.
My mother dropped her wineglass.
I stared at the woman I was supposed to marry.
“You’re not pregnant?”
Vanessa started crying.
But my daughter grabbed my sleeve.
“Daddy… she made me keep a secret.”
Then Maisie handed me her mother’s old phone.
There was a video on it.
Vanessa had a flat stomach.
A strange man was standing beside her with legal papers.
Then I heard him ask:
“What about his daughter?”
And Vanessa answered:
“She’s four. She can’t explain herself.”
That was the moment I realized something far worse than the fake pregnancy.
My daughter had been telling me the truth all along.
I just hadn’t listened.
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And then Maisie whispered:
“Daddy… there’s another video.”
