My heart started pounding.
“Yes… and what did you see?”
Greenwood hesitated before clearing her throat.
“I’m going to send the security footage to your phone as soon as I copy it. Please watch it. I feel uncomfortable saying this, but… your husband is lying to you.”
My stomach twisted, and the room suddenly felt cold.
“I don’t even know how to explain this.”
***
A few minutes later, the video arrived.
My hands shook as I opened the message and pressed play.
Initially, everything looked normal.
Mark helped Ava out of the car at the daycare while she held her stuffed rabbit against her chest.
Then a woman stepped into the frame. She was tall, brunette, and wearing a cream-colored coat.
She smiled at my daughter as if she already knew her.
I frowned immediately.
My hands shook as I opened the message.
The woman crouched down and handed Ava a bottled drink with a café label on it. My daughter smiled and took it happily.
Then the woman touched Mark’s arm. Not casually, but intimately.
My stomach dropped.
They guided Ava inside before the footage continued.
My husband smiled before walking back to his car with the woman.
I rewound the clip and tried cropping the frame to zoom in. My phone nearly slipped out of my hands because I recognized her immediately.
Lauren.
Mark’s coworker!
Then the woman touched Mark’s arm.
Lauren was the same woman I’d met once at my husband’s company Christmas party the previous year. The same woman whose name started appearing on his phone late at night, before he suddenly became protective of it.
The air left my lungs painfully.
Crying, I screamed, “Oh my God, what is happening?! What was she doing at Ava’s daycare? No… this can’t be true… I knew this wasn’t an accident!”
My hands shook as I replayed the footage.
The same woman I’d met once.
Suddenly, every strange moment from the past several months came rushing back.
- Late meetings.
- Locked phones.
- Business dinners that somehow lasted until midnight.
And one night, when I walked downstairs for water, I found Mark texting someone in the dark kitchen.
The second he saw me, he locked his screen.
“Who’s that?” I’d asked.
“Lauren from work,” he answered too fast. “Client issue.”
I’d trusted him. Now my whole body went cold.
“Who’s that?”
***
I needed answers, so this time I called Miss Greenwood.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know if I should send the footage, but your husband never mentioned another adult being there that morning.”
I swallowed hard.
“She’s Lauren. His coworker.”
My late daughter’s teacher hesitated.
“Ava seemed very comfortable around her in the clip,” she admitted quietly. “That’s partly why I felt something wasn’t right.”
Comfortable.
Which meant what I suspected: this wasn’t their first meeting.
I needed answers.
After we hung up, I replayed the footage again.
And this time, I noticed details I’d missed before.
The way Mark kept checking who was nearby.
The way Lauren avoided looking directly at the cameras.
How my husband hurried her away before any teachers approached.
He wasn’t hiding her from the daycare.
He was hiding her from me!
I noticed details I’d missed before.
***
Mark came home around 7 p.m., carrying takeout bags neither of us would eat.
The second he saw me sitting in the dark living room holding my phone, he froze.
“Emily?”
I stood slowly.
“What was Lauren doing at Ava’s daycare?”
The color drained from his face instantly.
For several seconds, he didn’t answer.
Then he quietly set the food on the table.
He saw me sitting in the dark living room.
“How do you know about that?” Mark asked, looking skittish.
“That’s your concern right now?”
“Emily, listen—”
“No. You need to listen to my question and answer truthfully.” My voice cracked. “Why was your coworker with my daughter the morning she died?”
My husband rubbed both hands over his face.
And suddenly, I knew.
Not suspected.
Knew.
Because innocent people don’t react like that.
“That’s your concern right now?”
Finally, Mark sat heavily on the couch.
“We were seeing each other,” he admitted quietly.
The room fell silent.
Five days earlier, we’d stood together beside Ava’s tiny white casket while relatives cried around us. All along, he’d been hiding this.
“How long?” I whispered.
“About six months.”
That tore me apart.
“You brought another woman around our daughter?” I asked, choking on the last word.
“We were seeing each other.”
“Look, Emily, it wasn’t serious at first,” my husband said quickly. “Lauren wanted to meet Ava, so I brought her along that morning after picking her up from her house. She brought coffee for me and a smoothie for Ava from the café near her place.”
A horrible feeling crawled up my spine.
“What kind of smoothie?”
“Strawberry banana.”
My stomach twisted instantly.
“What was in it?”
He looked down.
“I don’t know, maybe strawberries, bananas, honey…”
“And dairy?” I finished his sentence.
“It wasn’t serious at first.”
For a second, I honestly couldn’t process what I’d just heard.
Ava had a severe dairy allergy!
Everyone close to us knew that. Mark knew that.
“She drank dairy? You let our daughter drink dairy?” I whispered.
“I think so, but Lauren didn’t know,” Mark said quickly. “I never told her about the allergy. She was trying to be sweet.”
