He Chose to Be Someone Else’s Dad

Summary

While organizing my daughter’s backpack, I found a photograph tucked away in a hidden compartment. In it, Eric held a two or three-year-old girl, smiling gently. That child wasn’t my daughter.

I flipped it over and saw a line of handwriting:

“To Daddy’s Dearest Little One, Happy First Birthday.”

Eric’s handwriting was all too familiar. In five years of marriage, every note, every love letter he’d written, I’d kept in a small metal box.

I stared at that line for a long time. Dearest Little One. So he used that phrase, too. Just never for my daughter.