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For most of my second pregnancy, I just wanted to hide away and eat all the junk food I was craving.
But my best friend Ava wanted to drag me out of the house and do things together.
“I heard about this cool pottery place,” she said, making me a strawberry milkshake while I put my swollen feet up.
“You sign up for a pottery party of sorts,” she continued.
“And we make pottery?” I asked, thinking of a hundred things I would prefer to do instead.
“Not necessarily. We could paint pottery instead. Come on, Liv, let’s do it together! We can make things for the nursery,” she smiled over the top of the blender.
“Fine,” I said. “But you’ll owe me whatever the baby craves that night.”
“Fine by me,” she said. “I’ve already told Malcolm to watch Tess for the evening while we’re out.”
Ava wasn’t the biggest fan of my husband, Malcolm, so the fact that she had already spoken to him about our evening out spoke volumes about how much she wanted me out of the house.
So, we got to the pottery place and found that fifteen women were booked for the same slot — a full-on party. Everyone just wanted to sip beverages, unwind, and have fun. Which was what Ava promised me as well. Little did we know it would turn into a nightmare.
We were all chatting about birth stories — if it weren’t the women’s own stories, then they would talk about someone close to them.
Then, one woman started to share a story about how she was on a date with her boyfriend and suddenly had to leave because his sister-in-law went into labor.
“It was the 4th of July, and we were at my flat watching a movie when he said that Olivia was in labor. I asked him why he had to go; it was almost midnight, and we were exhausted. It made no sense for him to go along, too. But he said it was a family thing — they all wanted to be there when the baby was born.”
Ava and I exchanged a look because Tess was born on the 4th of July, and I was Olivia. What a coincidence.
After that, she went on to talk about her birth story, which was about six months later. I kept looking at all the different colors of paint in front of me.
“But Malcolm missed it! Can you imagine?” she said to the group. “He was there for his niece’s birth but not our son’s! He said he was babysitting his niece, Tess, and couldn’t leave.”
“What are the odds?” Ava whispered to me.
“Wait, your boyfriend’s name is Malcolm?” I asked.
The woman nodded.
“And this is him?”
I showed her my phone’s screensaver — a photo of Malcolm, Tess, and myself, just waiting for the baby girl to be added.
She nodded again, looking at me with a blank expression.
“Your husband?” she muttered. “But he’s the father of my child, too.”
My heart sank, and the room spun as I tried to process what she said. The pottery party, a room full of women sharing stories, became a surreal nightmare.
The room seemed to close in around me as her confirmation echoed in my ears. My husband had not only cheated on me but had also fathered a child with this woman.
“Water, please,” I told Ava, who jumped up to get it.
The truth hit me like a ton of bricks. The other women exchanged sympathetic glances, realizing the depth of the emotional turmoil I was experiencing.
Feeling overwhelmed, I excused myself from the gathering and left, tears streaming down my face. I stood in the bathroom and tried to get my bearings.
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