One morning, I stepped outside and noticed a “Just Had a Baby” sticker on the back of my boyfriend Eric’s car but we didn’t have a baby. We’d been together for two years. That sticker shattered my world. My best friend Leslie called, congratulating me she assumed I’d had a baby and hadn’t told her. But I hadn’t. I confronted Eric. He looked confused, claimed a friend stuck it on during a party celebrating someone else’s baby.
I wanted to believe him, but something inside me shifted. Later that day, I couldn’t shake the feeling. Eric never introduced me to his friends or family, said he had none, no social media. But I knew where he worked. I searched the company’s page and found a photo of him. In the comments, a woman named Susan called him “my son.”
I followed the digital trail and found pictures of Eric with a pregnant woman, a young boy, and a newborn. The caption read: “My son and his beautiful family.” My heart sank. I’d been a secret. I contacted the woman, Angela, through a nanny ad she posted. At the interview, I revealed the truth just as Eric walked in.
He tried to stop me, begged, lied again. But I exposed everything. Angela was devastated. Eric was caught. And I walked away not just from a man who betrayed me, but from the life I thought we were building. The truth hurt, but it set me free.