Chad returns home to find his wife waiting, the second phone trembling between them. Confronted, he hesitates, then unlocks it. The messages sound affectionate, but Helena demands the truth. What Chad reveals isn’t an affair—it’s something far more personal.
The woman behind the texts is his birth mother, recently reunited with him after decades apart. A chance article had led her to him, and unsure of how to process her reappearance, he kept it secret—afraid, not unfaithful. The phone, the messages, the secrecy—it all had another explanation. One Helena never saw coming.