It all started with a casual conversation over dinner. Jacob had brought home his fiancée, Lila, a lovely young woman with a kind face and soft voice. We were talking about wedding plans when Lila mentioned, jokingly, “Wouldn’t it be wild if Jacob turned out not to be biologically yours?”
Everyone laughed. Except me.
Because that sentence—meant to be a joke—dug into a wound I had buried long ago. Years back, during a rocky time in my marriage, I had my suspicions. My wife and I had briefly separated. There had been someone else. We never talked about it again. But that doubt… it never fully went away.
