When I zoomed in on the photo, I realized Caleb wasn’t even looking at the camera.
He was staring behind my husband toward our bedroom doorway with this nervous little expression I hadn’t noticed before. At first I thought maybe he was just distracted by the TV or one of the dogs.
Then I noticed the reflection in the dresser mirror.
There was a woman standing in our bedroom.
Not clearly enough to recognize her face, but enough to tell she definitely wasn’t me. Long dark hair. Tan coat. One hand holding a phone up near her chest like she hadn’t realized my husband was taking a picture.
I called him immediately, but he acted confused and said it was probably his sister stopping by to drop something off for Caleb. The problem was his sister lives in Arizona and hadn’t visited in almost a year because of her back surgery.
After that, little things started bothering me more than they probably should have. Caleb suddenly stopped wanting me to tuck him in at night if his dad was already upstairs with him. Twice he asked if “the lady” was coming over again while I was at work.
My husband kept insisting Caleb was imagining things from cartoons.
But last Saturday I was cleaning crayon marks off the kitchen table when Caleb casually asked if moms are allowed to have “replacement moms.”
I asked him where he heard that.
He shrugged and said, “The lady said she was practicing