My daughter, Sophie, was four when she said something that made my stomach drop.
\n\u201cMommy, will you cry when I go to the beach with Daddy and my other mom?\u201d
\nI thought she meant a teacher or babysitter.
\nThen she said, \u201cMom Lizzie.\u201d
\nI forced a smile.
\n\u201cWho\u2019s Lizzie?\u201d
\nSophie looked confused.
\n\u201cShe comes to our house. Daddy says she\u2019s nice.\u201d
\nI didn\u2019t ask anything else.
\nInstead, I told Sophie we were spending the night at my mother\u2019s.
\nAn hour later, I opened the nanny-cam app on my phone.
\nThe camera was hidden on a bookshelf because we had originally used it when Sophie was a baby.
\nAt first, the living room was empty.
\nThen my husband, Daniel, walked in.<\/p>\n
A woman followed him.
\nMy cousin, Elizabeth.
\nLizzie.
\nShe had stayed with us several times over the previous year and had always been unusually close to Sophie.
\nWhat hurt most was hearing them talk.
\nThey weren\u2019t planning a secret romantic vacation.
\nThey were discussing Daniel leaving me.
\nWorse, Lizzie had already started encouraging Sophie to call her \u201cMom Lizzie\u201d because, according to her, it would make \u201cthe transition easier.\u201d
\nI saved the footage.
\nWhen Daniel called asking why we weren\u2019t home, I told him I knew.
\nThere was a long silence.
\nThen came excuses.
\nI didn\u2019t argue.
\nThe next morning, I met with an attorney and told my mother everything.
\nDaniel and Lizzie had apparently convinced themselves they were slowly preparing Sophie for a new family.
\nWhat they had really done was pull a four-year-old into an adult betrayal.
\nThat was the part I could never forgive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My daughter, Sophie, was four when she said something that made my stomach drop. \u201cMommy, will you cry when I go to the beach with Daddy and my other mom?\u201d I thought she meant a teacher or babysitter. Then she said, \u201cMom Lizzie.\u201d I forced a smile. \u201cWho\u2019s Lizzie?\u201d Sophie looked confused. \u201cShe comes to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10165,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10163\/revisions\/10165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}