I stood in the nursery, paternity kit heavy in my hand. Emma and I had painted these walls, chosen every mobile star. Yet doubt gnawed—whispers from nowhere, poisoning trust.
“Marcus?” Emma at the door, eyes soft. “You’ve been distant.”
I handed her the kit. “Take this. I need to know if Noah’s mine.”
Silence. Then: “What if he’s not?”
The question felt like confession. “Then we’re done.”
She took it, left without anger. That calm haunted me.
Five days later, in my car: 0% paternity.
I couldn’t breathe. Told her, “Lawyer’s filed. Divorce.”
“You’ve decided who I am,” she said. “You don’t need truth.”
I left. Changed everything. Told the world she cheated. Believed my own lie.
Three years rebuilt—new city, new life, hollow victories.
Then Thomas in a coffee shop: “The test was wrong. Lab error. Noah’s yours. Emma proved it. She tried to reach you—you’d vanished.”
The floor fell away.
Emma’s calm wasn’t guilt. It was grief.
I wrote her: *Need another test. Not doubt—proof. I’m sorry.*
She replied only with clinic details.
New result: 99.99%.
I sent apologies, pages of regret. No answer.
Silence became my sentence.
Now I watch from afar—Noah’s curls like mine, Emma’s smile unbroken. They’re whole.
I broke us once. I won’t again.
Some truths you can’t unsee.
Some trust, once shattered, can’t be rebuilt by proof alone.
I live with that.
