Five Years of Lies: My Wife, Our Marriage, and Another Man's Child

For the hundredth time, my dad hints at us that he really wants to become a grandfather during New Year Eve's dinner.

Lydia Cooper, my wife who has insisted on living a childless life for the past decade, just smiles before placing more food on his plate.

After dinner, she ducks out to the balcony and murmurs into her phone, "Be good, now. Mommy will visit you a few days later."

I can feel my blood running cold in my veins as I stand in the living room with a glass of water.

As I approach Lydia, I do my best to keep my voice light and teasing.

"I just heard you say the word 'mommy.' Do you have an illegitimate child out there somewhere?"

Lydia rubs her nose, her tone now awkward. "You might be hearing things. It was just my friend's child…"

My heart plunges into my stomach pit at her words.

I've been in love with Lydia for ten years. It's only natural that I know how she acts whenever she's lying.

Noticing that something was amiss, I decided to continue the conversation with my wife, Lydia Cooper.

"Is that so? You were smiling so warmly just now," I said.

Lydia averted her gaze, not daring to make eye contact with me.

"The child speaks so sweetly. She's very fond of calling me. Anyway, it's getting late. Let's sleep."

She didn't wait for me to respond before turning around and entering the bathroom.

Lydia and I had been together for a decade, so I was familiar with her microexpressions. The way she averted her eyes earlier made it clear that she was feeling guilty.

I was already lying in bed and pretending to sleep when the bathroom door creaked open.

Lydia gently crawled into bed and hugged me from behind as usual. However, her embrace felt completely unfamiliar that night.

I waited until her breathing turned even before carefully getting out of bed and picking up her phone that she had left on the bedside cabinet.

We had been together for a decade, but this was the first time I was going to go through her phone. A bitter sensation spread through me as I tapped into her chatting app.

Lydia's lists of chats were neat and orderly. My chat with her was pinned at the top, along with the family group chat and her work chat.

However, I was certain that she was hiding something. I navigated through the app until I found her locked chats. As expected, there was a chat that was named "Lindsey's Growth Diary."

I needed a password to access its history. I tried keying in her birthday, my birthday, and the date of our wedding anniversary, but none of them worked. In the end, I randomly typed in that day's date—0101.

My breath hitched when the password was accepted.

There was a collection of photos in the chat.

I tapped into a photo of a young girl holding a card with