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The boys were excited.
Christmas at an estate sounded like something from a movie.
Ethan wanted to see the horses.
Daniel wanted to know if the house had a swimming pool.
Noah wanted to know whether rich people really had servants.
Samuel only wanted to know whether there would be chocolate cake.
I smiled at all of them.
“Probably.”
“What about presents?” Daniel asked.
“Daniel.”
“What? It’s Christmas.”
I laughed.
They didn’t know the real reason we were going.
They didn’t know who Adrian was.
Well, they knew his name.
I had never lied to them about their father.
I simply hadn’t told them everything.
I told them he had left when I was pregnant.
I told them he had made a choice.
I told them that whatever happened between their father and me was never their fault.
And I never taught them to hate him.
That was important to me.
Because children shouldn’t have to carry the weight of adult mistakes.
But there was something I had never told them.
I had never told them why Adrian believed my pregnancy was a lie.
Eight years earlier, I had stood in our apartment holding a positive pregnancy test.
I was shaking.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I was happy.
Adrian had just returned from a long assignment.
I thought the news would bring us closer.
Instead, he stared at the test as though I had handed him a weapon.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I remember laughing nervously.
“How do you think?”
He didn’t laugh.
He asked when I had supposedly become pregnant.
I told him.
He counted the weeks.
Then looked at me.
“This isn’t possible.”
My heart sank.
“What do you mean?”
“You were away visiting your sister.”
“For four days.”
He shook his head.
“You’re lying.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“I am your wife.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Then came the words that stayed with me for eight years.
“I don’t believe this pregnancy is mine.”
I begged him to wait.
To see the doctor.
To take a test.
He refused.
Within weeks, he had moved out.
His family believed him.
His friends believed him.
And eventually, the divorce papers arrived.
I signed them while seven months pregnant.
I gave birth to four boys.
Yes.
Four.
The doctors had discovered the truth during an ultrasound.
Four babies.
Four heartbeats.
A rare pregnancy.
Adrian never came to see them.
Not once.
And now, eight years later, he wanted me to bring them to Christmas.
I wondered if he remembered what he had said.
I wondered if he would recognize his own face staring back at him.
