Seven Years, One Lie: My Fiancé's Secret Family

Nathan didn't hesitate for a second.

He walked out without looking back.

I sat there and watched him go, farther and farther away.

So this was his choice.

The pain worked its way into my veins, and I sat alone on the living room couch through the whole night.

Just before dawn, a text finally pinged through with a location:

The city children's hospital.

Not one word more.

The living room was piled with shopping bags of children's clothes.

The housekeeper came to me.

"Mr. Sanchez had these sent over."

My eyes landed on the designer logo across the bags, and something in me went sour.

I dug out the suitcase I'd taken seven years ago, the day I ran from home.

Then I opened the safe and took out my documents.

At the very bottom, pressed flat, was a set of baby clothes.

Back when I was pregnant, I'd fallen for it the moment I saw it.

Nathan hadn't said a word, just pulled out his credit card.

"It's for our baby. Of course it should be the best."

That designer baby outfit ended up staying in the display window.

I secretly bought this knockoff instead, a few dollars' worth.

That child.

In the end, that child never came into the world.

While I was pregnant, I couldn't bring myself to buy even one thing.

Now he'd cleared out an entire counter for another child.

Before long, the housekeeper spoke again.

"There's an older gentleman downstairs waiting for you."

"Who?" I closed the suitcase.

"He said his name is Cannon."

I walked to the top of the stairs in a daze and looked down.

Just then he tipped his face up.

"Dad…"

That word, "Dad," I hadn't said in seven years.

He was thinner than before.

When he cut ties with me, he'd been a solid, healthy middle-aged man.

In the space of a blink, he'd become an old man with gray at his temples.

His hands shaking, he opened his phone and held up a photo.

Nathan holding a little girl who looked eighty percent like him.

"If Otis hadn't told me, I wouldn't even have known you'd had a child."

"Dad, you've got it wrong." My throat was dry. Where was I even supposed to begin?

He took off his glasses awkwardly and wiped the corner of his eye.

"I acted rashly back then. Olympia, I'm sorry."

As the words left him, the front door of the villa suddenly opened.

The little girl from the photo came bursting in, like she'd stepped straight out of the screen.

"Daddy says all these new clothes are for Beatrice!"

Her pale-yellow dress swirled at the hem as she darted into the pile of bags like a little butterfly.

The floor was covered in the designer children's clothes I'd never let myself buy.

Nathan had made it now, and his other child had cleared out an entire counter.

It was as though some invisible knife was coming down on my heart, stroke after stroke.

My father crouched down and stroked her little head with an affection I remembered.

"Little one, what's your name?"

"Beatrice Sanchez."

Beatrice answered, then stared straight at me.

"Auntie, why are you at my daddy's house?"

That one line woke me out of the dream.

My father froze for a moment.

"Beatrice, what did you just call her?"

"Auntie. She's not my mommy."

My father looked like he'd been struck by lightning, staring at me in disbelief.

At that moment, the keypad lock on the villa door beeped a few times.

A young woman burst in, her face taut and flushed.

"Beatrice! What are you doing running off, your mommy and daddy have been looking everywhere for you!"

The villa door stood wide open.

My father put his glasses back on with trembling hands.

At last he saw clearly the man and woman standing side by side in the doorway.

Nathan stood tall and composed, not a ripple in his eyes.

"Mildred, we have a guest. Why aren't you seeing to him?"

He called his father-in-law "a guest."

My father looked around him.

On the wall hung our travel wedding photos, the two of us riding a hot-air balloon in Turkey.

In the living room stood Nathan, Imogen Perez, and their child.

The housekeeper poured tea with practiced ease.

Nathan pressed a hand to Imogen's shoulder and soothed her. "Don't panic. I'll handle it."

The little girl busy trying on clothes carried the Sanchez name, but she wasn't mine.

"Dad, I…" My mouth opened.

So even trying to explain was laughable now.

My father roared.

"Olympia Cannon, is this the 'good life' you left home for, that you were so determined to run away and have?"