Steve begins his day like any other — nothing out of the ordinary, just a man saying goodbye to his wife as he leaves for work. But as the day moves on, he receives urgent calls and texts from his son. When he gets home, nothing is as it seems.
Now, there’s a strange man in his house, a pregnant wife with a baby that may not be his, and a crying son. What does it all mean?
The day started like any other. My wife, three months pregnant, kissed me goodbye as I left for work, her smile as reassuring as the morning sun.
“I’ll cook when I get home,” I told her.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Laura worked from home, so I knew that she was going to get our son, Jackson, ready for school and out the door before heading back to bed. There she would read a book and have her morning cup of tea before logging onto work.
I worked through the day, approving marketing strategies and listening to presentations, all the while thinking of baby names for the little tot we were going to meet in a few months.
But as the office clock ticked past two, my phone vibrated insistently. Glancing at the screen, I saw my son’s name flashing.
I was in a meeting, which was in full swing, so I had no choice but to silence his call.
Knowing Jackson, he probably wanted to ask if he could go out after school. He and his friends had discovered the thrills of bowling, and they often tried to finesse their way into after-school hangouts.
When my phone lit up a second time, a knot tightened in my stomach — urgency pulsed through the text that Jackson sent, seconds after I silenced his second call:
Dad, please come home! It’s about Mom!
I’m scared.
Panic, raw and unfiltered, coursed through me. Excusing myself from the meeting, I rushed to the parking lot, my hands trembling as I dialed my son’s number.
But my call to Jackson went unanswered. I tried my wife next but was met with the same eerie silence.
With my heart pounding against my chest, I floored the accelerator, my mind racing with dreadful possibilities.
Every red light was a torturous wait, every slow driver a test of my fraying patience.
I was thinking the worst. That Laura had been in some kind of accident. That there was a pool of blood in the kitchen or bathroom.
Turning onto our street, my breath caught at the sight of my mother standing on the porch, her face pale.
She stood there, her fists clenching and unclenching every few seconds.
“What on earth is going on?” I asked. “Is Laura okay?”
“I’m so sorry, Steve,” she said, her voice faltering, and the ground giving in beneath my feet.
“What? No!
What happened? Is it the baby? Tell me, Mom!”
My mother looked confused for a moment, and then her next words struck a different, unforeseen chord.
Her eyes met mine, filled with a sorrow that immediately told me whatever news came next, it wouldn’t be good.
“No, darling,” she said. “She is fine!”
“Then why did you apologize?” I asked, wondering why I was still standing on the porch instead of rushing to see my wife.
But there was something about my mother’s overall energy that made me feel uneasy. I put my briefcase down at my feet, waiting for her to say something.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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