My daughter, Sophie, was four when she said something that made my stomach drop.
“Mommy, will you cry when I go to the beach with Daddy and my other mom?”
I thought she meant a teacher or babysitter.
Then she said, “Mom Lizzie.”
I forced a smile.
“Who’s Lizzie?”
Sophie looked confused.
“She comes to our house. Daddy says she’s nice.”
I didn’t ask anything else.
Instead, I told Sophie we were spending the night at my mother’s.
An hour later, I opened the nanny-cam app on my phone.
The camera was hidden on a bookshelf because we had originally used it when Sophie was a baby.
At first, the living room was empty.
Then my husband, Daniel, walked in.
A woman followed him.
My cousin, Elizabeth.
Lizzie.
She had stayed with us several times over the previous year and had always been unusually close to Sophie.
What hurt most was hearing them talk.
They weren’t planning a secret romantic vacation.
They were discussing Daniel leaving me.
Worse, Lizzie had already started encouraging Sophie to call her “Mom Lizzie” because, according to her, it would make “the transition easier.”
I saved the footage.
When Daniel called asking why we weren’t home, I told him I knew.
There was a long silence.
Then came excuses.
I didn’t argue.
The next morning, I met with an attorney and told my mother everything.
Daniel and Lizzie had apparently convinced themselves they were slowly preparing Sophie for a new family.
What they had really done was pull a four-year-old into an adult betrayal.
That was the part I could never forgive.
