I should feel relieved. But I feel heavy and betrayed.

Emily is in my arms again, sobbing into my chest, clinging to me like she’s afraid I’ll disappear. Her voice is muffled against my shirt, but I can hear her words.

“I’m sorry, Henry. I didn’t want to believe it, but I just… I didn’t know what to think.”

And I can’t blame her.

Because when you see something like that, something bold, cruel, and impossible to ignore, it plants a seed of doubt. And doubt is like rot.

It spreads, warping everything until you can’t tell what’s real anymore.

I hold my wife tighter.

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault, Emily.”

But someone is to blame.

And she’s standing right in front of us.

Claire shifts uncomfortably under Emily’s teary, piercing gaze. Her arms are crossed, her expression is unreadable, but I can see it in her eyes.

She regrets this.

Maybe not entirely, maybe not in the way she should, but she knows she has crossed a line.

“Tell her,” I say, my voice firm.

Claire sighs like this is an inconvenience to her, like she’s doing me a favor. Then, finally, she confesses.

She tells Emily everything.

About how she wrote the message on my car. How she wanted to drive Emily away. How she thought she was doing me a favor. Because I once said, months ago, that I was scared about becoming a father.

“I’m just scared… we didn’t have the best example growing up,” I said. “I wonder if I’m going to be like him, you know?”

I didn’t think that Claire was going to take my words and twist them into her own reality.

Emily listens, silent.

Her face shifts from confusion to shock to something that makes my stomach twist.

Hurt.

Then, finally, she turns to me, tears pooling in her eyes.

“You really didn’t cheat, Henry?” Her voice is barely above a whisper.

“Never,” I say immediately. “Not once, not ever. I love you, Emily. I love our baby. I love our life together. Claire blindsided me with this just like she did you.”

The weight of it all crashes over her, and she hugs her belly tightly. Emily almost walked away from me. She almost believed it.

That Claire, my own sister, tried to break us apart.

Earlier

The last thing I expected when leaving the doctor’s office was to see my life falling apart in real time.

We were floating as we walked hand in hand to the parking lot, my mind already racing ahead to baby names, nursery colors, and what life would be like when our little one finally arrived.

Then I saw my car, and my entire world crashed.

Four words were scrawled across the driver’s side door in bold letters.

Hope She Was Worth It.

I stopped in my tracks, looking at the spray paint ruining my car.

“What the hell is that?” The words barely made it past my lips.

My wife stopped beside me. Her fingers instinctively hovered over her belly, like she was shielding our baby from whatever this was. I heard her sharp inhale, and I felt the way her grip loosened from mine.

Then, she spoke.

“Did you…?”

She didn’t even finish the question. She didn’t have to.

I whipped around to face her, my pulse hammering.

“No! Absolutely not! I have never cheated, Emily! I have never, ever cheated on you…”

She didn’t answer. She just stared at the words on the car, then back at me.

And I understood why.

Because there it was.

The accusation. Painted right there, loud and undeniable. Someone, somewhere, thought I had done something terrible. And Emily, my wife, the woman who had always trusted me, always believed in me, was now caught between me and the evidence in front of her.

“It wasn’t me,” I pleaded, stepping toward her. “I swear to you, my love, I have no idea who did this or why.”

Emily exhaled shakily.

“I… I didn’t write it,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word.

And my God, that broke me.

Because I know what she was really saying. That if she didn’t do it, then who did? And why?

She wasn’t accusing me, not yet, but doubt had crept in. The same doubt that I knew would be impossible to shake until she had an answer. I knew that my wife’s imagination was running wild. She was probably thinking that that I had a beautiful woman on the side. Someone that I went to when I wasn’t with her.

“I need time to think, Henry,” she said.

“Emily, please…”

“I need to clear my head,” she cut in, her voice trembling.

She pulled out her phone and called her mom, quickly telling her that she needed to be picked up.

About ten minutes later, I watched as Emily climbed into the passenger seat of her mother’s car, wiping at her cheeks.

And just like that, she was gone.

I stood there, alone in the parking lot, with nothing but the letters branding me a liar and a thousand unanswered questions.

That night, I stood in my driveway with a bucket of water, scrubbing furiously at the hateful message.

I should have been inside with Emily, celebrating our baby’s first milestone, or our first milestone as parents-to-be.

Instead, I was alone, trying to erase the damage someone had done, not just to my car, but to my marriage.

My arms ached from scrubbing, but the paint had absorbed the ink. The words wouldn’t budge.

Just like they wouldn’t leave Emily’s mind.

Because as much as my wife loved me, as much as she wanted to believe me, someone had planted doubt inside her. And doubt, once it takes root, doesn’t just go away.

Was it possible that my car had been mistaken for someone else’s? Maybe it had been a part of someone else’s revenge plan?

I was so lost in thought that I almost didn’t hear the footsteps approaching.

But then…

“Don’t bother thanking me,” a voice said from behind me. “You’re welcome.”

I froze.

I knew that voice.

I turned around, my breath caught in my throat, and there she was.

Claire. My sister.

She stood there, eating an ice cream like everything was right in the world. She was smug as hell.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, my voice dangerously low.

She shrugged.

“I wrote it. Duh.”

I blinked.

The words didn’t register at first.

“You… what?” I dropped the sponge I was using into the bucket.

Claire tilted her head, like I was the dumb one here.

“I wrote it. You’re too chicken to deal with this baby, so I figured I’d help you out. If Emily thinks that you cheated, she’ll leave. Problem solved.”

The world tilted.

“You really think you helped me?” I hissed, stepping toward her.

She rolled her eyes.

“Oh, come on. You’ve been freaking out about this kid for ages now. At Thanksgiving, you went on and on about how you weren’t ready. Don’t you remember? We were at the bakery getting the last-minute pies. You were going on about how money was tight. About how stressed you were. I just… made things easier for you.”

I was shaking.

“That was venting, Claire! It was normal stress! That didn’t mean I wanted out! And… am I not supposed to talk to my sister about these things? I should have known better.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” she shot back. “You should’ve been clearer.”

I almost laughed out loud. Except that nothing about this was funny.

“This isn’t like when you ‘helped me out’ in college,” I snapped, kicking the bucket. “This isn’t like when you told my ex-girlfriend that I was flirting with other girls just so I’d break up with her. She cried for days. This is my wife. This is my child. And you…”

I pointed to the car.

“You just ruined my marriage. You just burned my marriage to the ground, Claire! And for what? What did you get out of this?”

Claire actually had the audacity to look bored.

“You’re being dramatic. Emily’s overreacting. It’s just a little lie.”

A little lie?

My breath was uneven. My hands trembled.

“You’re going to fix this.”

Claire scoffed.

“Oh, yeah? And how do you suppose I do that?”

I gritted my teeth.

“Get in the car! You’re going to tell Emily the truth. Right now.”

When we got to Emily’s parents’ house, I was armed with a bouquet of flowers and a chocolate cake. It had been her constant craving for the past week, and I hoped that it would make her smile.

She was hesitant to let me inside.

I could see it in her eyes. The uncertainty. The hurt. It was all there.

“I just need you to listen, my love,” I begged. “Please.”

After a long pause, she opened the door.

Claire shuffled in behind me, suddenly not so smug anymore.

“What’s going on?” Emily asked, arms crossed.

“Tell her,” I turned to my sister. “Now.”

Claire hesitated, glancing at me like she wasn’t sure anymore if this was a good idea. But I wasn’t letting her back out.

“Tell her.”

With a sigh, Claire admitted everything. And when she was finished, Emily turned to me and grabbed my waist.

My wife turned to Claire, her expression unreadable.

“You owe me an apology, Claire,” she said. “This was despicable behavior. I can’t believe that you’d do something as horrible as this. If it was such a big deal, and you were genuinely worried about Henry, why didn’t you just come to me? You could have told me what he said and that you thought he wanted out.”

Claire shifted, clearly uncomfortable.
Now she was a horrible woman who had tried to end my marriage based on a conversation we had a long time ago. A conversation that had been in passing. A conversation that had never gone any further than that moment.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Emily. And Henry, I was wrong. I didn’t think it would go this far. I just thought that you two would be forced to have a conversation and that he would tell you the truth.”

“But that isn’t the truth,” Emily said. “It was just your assumption.”

Claire looked to Emily as though she would say something else. Anything to make it seem as though forgiveness was in sight. But Emily didn’t say much else to her. And I could tell that she was done with Claire.

For a long time, maybe. Or maybe even forever.

And honestly? So was I.

I couldn’t imagine Claire being around my child. I couldn’t imagine what she would be whispering to my child or how she’d treat that baby.

No, we were better off without her.

Over the next few weeks, Emily and I worked through everything. It wasn’t easy breaking through the doubt that had crept in, but we came out stronger.

As for Claire?

Well, she’s on thin ice as far as family is concerned.

I made it clear that she’s not welcome around us unless she gets her act together.

In the end, I learned two things:

Never let anyone’s drama mess with your marriage.

Be careful who you vent to.

Because some people don’t want to help you. Some people just want to watch you burn.