Anna opened the box and gasped when she saw the delicate rose gold bracelet nestled in satin. “This is beautiful! Help me put it on.”
“Thirty years of marriage deserves a special gift.” Mark grinned at Anna. He removed the bracelet and secured it on her wrist.
“I was thinking we should take a vacation in Hawaii,” Anna said. “Just you and me.”
Mark frowned. “I’d love to, honey, but you know the company needs me to look in at the Ohio office regularly. I can’t take more than a long weekend off.”
“Then we’ll just make the best of that long weekend. Please, Mark.”
Mark sighed. “I guess I can speak to my boss, but don’t get your hopes up.”
Over the next few weeks, Anna tried to discuss travel plans with Mark again, but he seemed tense and distracted whenever he wasn’t slipping outside to take business calls. Anna began to worry about him.
One day, as she watched Mark pace on the porch while having an animated call with his boss, their youngest child, Darren, came downstairs. He was working as an intern in his father’s company until he started college.
Darren paused in the sitting room and noted his mother watching his dad through the windows. “Seems like things aren’t going well with Dad’s work lately.”
“I think it’s my fault. I pushed him to ask for some vacation time so that we could travel. Ever since then…” Anna released a deep sigh and put her head in her hands.
“What if he loses his job because of this? I’m sure he’d leave me. As it is, he’s avoided discussing anything with me.”
Darren leaned over to put a hand on his mom’s shoulder. Her words worried him. He resolved to talk to his father and find out what was happening.
Darren called Dad later that day, but he reassured Darren that work problems caused all his distant behavior and stress.
“We have a manufacturing issue in the Columbus plant,” Dad said. “It could mean we must do a product recall across the state. It’s all hush-hush at the moment, so don’t tell anyone.”
Although Darren was relieved to hear Dad’s problems had nothing to do with Mom and, therefore, wouldn’t cause a rift in the family, he realized now what incredible pressure Dad was facing.
“You’ve played us all for fools but now you’re going to get what you deserve.”
He decided to take Dad lunch to help cheer him up. He picked up a burger from Dad’s favorite takeaway and went to his office. Dad wasn’t there, so Darren decided to write a note. As he searched for paper, he accidentally knocked a document case. Pages of children’s drawings spilled across the desk.
“That’s weird.” Darren lifted one and laughed when he recognized a drawing of a car he had done when he was a kid. Was Dad keeping all his old drawings in his office? Darren lifted another picture, and a chill ran down his spine.
‘To Grandpa Mark,’ read the inscription on a crayon drawing of a colorful fish.
Darren didn’t have kids, nor did his older sister, Maria, so where did this come from? Did Dad have another family somewhere?
“Son, what are you doing here?”
Darren turned and held up the drawing. Dad’s eyes went wide. He hurried over, took the drawing, and returned it to the case.
“You shouldn’t be handling these,” Dad said. “They’re from the Children’s Drawing competition the company held over Christmas.”
“And who drew that fish for you, grandpa?” Darren asked. He felt his face growing hot with anger.
For me?” Dad frowned and shook his head.
“You don’t think I’m the only person in this company called ‘Mark’, do you?”
Darren stared at his father. He made a good point, but something still felt wrong. He knew the company frequently held family-oriented events, so a drawing competition wasn’t too strange, but Christmas was over a month ago.
Darren didn’t think about the incident again until the day Dad rushed off to work and forgot his laptop at home. Darren had the morning off and was in the kitchen when he heard the laptop chime. Dad was getting a video call.
It must be one of Dad’s colleagues trying to reach him. Darren opened the laptop to take the call. A woman with a young child on her lap appeared on the screen.
“Wave to grandpa,” the woman prompted her child. “Dad, turn your video on so Shelly can see you.”
Darren stared at the woman and her child. Grandpa…the word echoed through his head. He remembered the drawing in Dad’s office and the strange feeling that something wasn’t right.
“Are you there, Dad?” The woman smiled uncertainly as she leaned closer to the screen. “Why are you so quiet?”
This was his chance to get to the bottom of this mystery. Darren sat in front of the laptop and turned on the video feed.
“So all those business trips to Indianapolis…” the woman trailed off, shaking her head.
“I know.” Darren ran his fingers through his hair. He’d just spent an hour or more explaining to this woman, who turned out to be his half-sister, Emma, that their father was living a double life.
“We can’t tell our mothers.”
Emma looked pointedly into the webcam. “At least not yet. This would devastate them.”
“I agree, but we have to do something. I just don’t know what,” Darren said.
“Give me your number.” Emma lifted her phone. “We’ll chat and figure something out.”
After Emma and Darren exchanged numbers, Emma ended the call. Darren sat for a moment in shock. He couldn’t believe how much his life had changed in one morning. He then had another realization which sent him running from the house to get to his father’s office.
Darren knew the only way to spare Mom the heartache of Dad’s betrayal was to confront him before Emma spoke with him. If he could convince Dad to choose Mom over his other family, then she’d never need to know about any of this.
But Dad’s office was empty when Darren barged in to see him. Darren asked his assistant where he was, but he wasn’t sure.
“He was quite annoyed earlier when I couldn’t get him a flight to Columbus on short notice. He might’ve decided to drive there instead.” The assistant shrugged.
Rage filled Darren at the thought that Dad might be en route to his second family. The sheer magnitude of his father’s actions finally sunk in. He screamed when he got into his car, but the anger still pumped through his veins when he reached home.
Right across from the front door hung a family photo taken when Darren was ten. He ripped it off the wall and frisbeed it down the hall. It smashed against the wall.
“What’s going on?” Mom appeared at the kitchen doorway. “Darren, is something wrong?”
“Dad has betrayed our family,” he shouted.
That can’t be right.” Mom smiled and waved her hand dismissively. Thirty minutes of explaining later, she still didn’t believe Darren. “I don’t know why this woman you spoke to would joke about something like this, but that’s clearly all this is.”
“I wish that was the case, Mom, but it isn’t.” Darren removed his phone and pressed the button to video call Emma.
“Speak to her for yourself; you’ll see that what I’ve told you is true.”
It broke Darren’s heart to see Mom crumple under the weight of evidence Emma produced. There were family photos, videos, and, most heartbreaking of all, the moment when Darren lifted a family photo and Emma’s daughter pointed to it and said, ‘Granpy!’
“How could he do this to me?” Mom sobbed.
Darren looked at Emma on his phone screen while he hugged Mom. At that moment, he knew they understood each other.
“What do we do about this?” Darren asked.
“I have an idea.” Emma smirked.
When Dad came home that evening, he told Darren and Anna that he’d be flying to Columbus the next day for business and would be gone for a week. Anna and Darren drove him to the airport. Once they saw him off, they went to wait in a different area.
A few hours later, Emma received a phone call.
“Where are you, peanut?” Mark asked. “I’m at your house but nobody’s here.”
“We’re at your favorite house, daddy.” Emma raised her phone so that Mark would see her, Darren, and their mothers gathered in the sitting room of Darren’s home. “As you can see, the whole family is here.”
Mark’s heart leaped with joy: she’d finally forgiven him!
Mark blanched, and his jaw dropped open. “What…how?”
“Your lies finally caught up to you.” Anna leaned in front of the camera. “Don’t you dare to ever step foot in this house again!”
“And don’t think we’ll take you in either,” Emma’s mom said. “You’ve played us all for fools but now you’re going to get what you deserve.”
Mark tried to contact his wives and families for weeks, but nobody took his calls. They all refused to see him. Anna filed for divorce. In the courtroom, the full story finally came out.
“I met Emma’s mother, Lydia, on a business trip,” Mark told the judge. “We had an affair, but I never intended for it to go further than that. When I found out she was pregnant, everything changed.”
“I couldn’t confess to Anna because I knew she’d leave me, so I ended up living a double life.” Mark hung his head.
“I know what I did was wrong but I love both my families. I don’t want to lose either of them.”
The court awarded Anna compensation. Encouraged by her success, Lydia also sued for divorce and settlement. She won her case too. Mark was left with nothing.
Meanwhile, Lydia and Anna’s children were getting to know each other better. Although it was a rocky start for building a relationship, the siblings soon realized they got on well together. Lydia and Anna also forged an unlikely friendship as they consoled each other.
Six months later, Darren and Anna helped Emma and Lydia move into a house down the street. The two families had come together to form an unusual bond and decided to live closer to each other. They gathered for family barbeques on weekends, and Darren was always happy to babysit his young niece.
Later, when Darren married and had his own daughter, Emma repaid the favor. By then, Anna had remarried, and she and her husband enjoyed their retirement by traveling the world. They called home daily to share their adventures with their odd extended family.
Darren and Emma’s daughters became good friends despite their age gap. They loved playing together and spent many afternoons on the sitting room floor drawing pictures or building puzzles.
Mark became a distant memory for the family. There were no photos of him on display, and he hardly ever came up in conversation. When new friends visited the family and asked about their unusual situation, they were told it was a long story.
Only Anna kept track of Mark. She didn’t tell anyone she knew where he lived or that he sometimes texted her messages she never answered.
Mark never grew accustomed to the lonely silence of his small apartment. He never stopped missing the love of his wives and children, even though he eventually blamed them for all his woes.
“If they hadn’t stuck their noses into my business, everything would’ve been okay,” he’d mutter while glaring at children on the playground near his apartment.
“If they hadn’t caused such a fuss about a simple mistake, I’d never have lost my job,” he’d growl whenever he saw a newspaper article about the company he used to work for.
One day, he received a letter from Anna. Mark’s heart leaped with joy: she’d finally forgiven him! He tore the envelope open. Children’s drawings slid out across the table, along with a note.
Drawings by Darren’s daughter,’ Anna had written in the note.
‘Look at what you lost.’
A pain shot through Mark’s arm as he lifted a drawing of several people gathered together. His heart beat rapidly in his chest. Mark tried to stand but fell over the table instead. The pain worsened for a while, but everything faded as Mark left this world.
