“You knew?” I demanded. “All this time? You knew the truth about my daughter?”

He dragged a hand over his face. “Sue…”

“Answer me.”

“I knew.”

Lindsay’s head whipped toward him. “You knew what?”

Mike kept his eyes on me. Not her.

“Greg was falling apart,” he said. “He felt worthless. He said you wanted a baby more than anything, and he couldn’t give you one. He asked me to help.”

“Help?” My voice shook. “You call this help?”

“We had an understanding,” Mike rushed on. “No one would ever find out. I wouldn’t be involved. It would just be biological. Greg would be her father in every way that counted.”

Lindsay stared at him like he’d started speaking another language.

“An understanding?” she repeated, stunned. “About another woman’s body?”

His voice broke. “I thought I was saving your marriage. I thought I was giving you something you desperately wanted.”

The silence that followed felt suffocating.

“You both decided,” Lindsay said quietly, “that we didn’t deserve the truth.”

Her phone buzzed. Greg’s name lit up the screen. She turned it toward us, answered, and put him on speaker.

“Don’t call my house again,” she said flatly — and hung up.

I called the police.

Not just because I was furious — though I was.

But because what Greg had done wasn’t only betrayal. It was fraud. It was forging consent. It was a violation in a medical setting.

And Tiffany deserved honesty more than he deserved my silence.

Later, I watched Greg pace around the bedroom, stuffing clothes into a suitcase.

“Sue.”

I didn’t step closer. I didn’t reach for something I now understood was already gone.

“No. We’re finished.”

He swallowed. “I can fix this.”

“No,” I said evenly. “You can answer questions at the station. You can stay at your mother’s house. But you won’t stay here. Not in my home.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“I’m not leaving. I’m asking you to leave. I’m staying here with my daughter. She needs stability — not lies.”

A car door slammed outside. The sound felt final. The exact moment I stopped pretending everything was salvageable.

Greg didn’t argue. He called his mother on speaker while zipping his suitcase.

“Mom,” he said, voice breaking, “I messed up.”