On Thanksgiving, Lila receives a mysterious package that shatters everything she thought she knew about her marriage. What follows isn’t just betrayal — it’s a reckoning. As lies unravel, Lila must decide whether to fall apart… or rise into something stronger than they ever saw coming.
I still remember the smell.
I remember the cinnamon, the butter, and the warmth of the kitchen with the windows slightly fogged. Blake, our dog, was curled under the table, and my husband, Cole, was humming off-key as he unpacked groceries across from me.
It could have been any Thanksgiving — any soft and lovely Thanksgiving where I could sit back and truly be grateful for my life.
I was chopping carrots and potatoes when the doorbell rang.
It could have been any Thanksgiving…
“You expecting anyone, Lila?” Cole asked, looking up.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. My parents were out of state for the holiday, and Cole’s parents had opted for Thanksgiving dinner with Cole’s sister, Kelsey, instead. “Are you?”
He shrugged and went back to unboxing a pie. I wiped my hands on a dish towel and walked to the door, more distracted than curious. I had stuffing in the oven, potatoes on standby, and the sweet potatoes were still waiting to be mashed.
And I was anxious about telling Cole my news. Our news…
“You expecting anyone, Lila?”
But when I opened the door, there was no one standing there. It was just a box — small, brown, and without a return address.
I glanced around, confused, then carried it into the kitchen and set it down beside the cutting board.
“Someone dropped this off, honey,” I said. “There’s no note and no name.”
Cole turned mid-step, still holding the pumpkin pie. For a moment, he just stared. Then his face changed, only slightly, but I saw it.
When I opened the door, there was no one standing there.
A flicker of panic on my husband’s face.
Cole’s fingers tightened around the aluminium pie tin, surely damaging the edge.
“What is it?” he asked, trying to sound casual, but his voice pitched a little too high. “Honestly, it’s probably some kid just pranking us.”
I ignored him and opened the lid.
Inside was a roasted turkey — it was perfectly golden and still warm.
“Honestly, it’s probably some kid just pranking us.”
“What the heck?” I asked, taking the bird out.
And that’s when I saw it.
Nestled beside it was a pregnancy test — unmistakably positive — and a small black USB flash drive. My fingers hesitated.
On top was a folded note in tidy, looping cursive.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Lila.
I thought you’d like to see this.
XO, Vanessa.”
Nestled beside it was a pregnancy test…
Vanessa. The woman who worked with my husband.
My hand shook around the paper, and I looked up at Cole, who was staring at the pregnancy test.
“Vanessa?” My voice cracked just once. “Vanessa sent this?”
My husband didn’t answer.
“She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”
“Lila… I — this isn’t what it looks like. It seems worse than it is,” Cole said, his mouth opening and closing.
“She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”
“Then what is it, Cole? Explain it to me,” I said, letting out a short, sharp breath.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said, finally. “It was stupid. It just —”
“Just what? You slipped and fell into an affair?”
He stepped toward me. I backed away and laid a hand on my own stomach.
“You know what, Cole?” I began. “I’m pregnant too. I was going to tell you after dinner and show you the positive test and the sonogram. But… you beat me to it, didn’t you? With Vanessa.”
“Just what? You slipped and fell into an affair?”
Cole’s face went white.
The pie shook slightly in his hands, and he set it down without a word.
“Lila, really? You’re pregnant! You mean —”
I picked up the flash drive and walked into the living room, every movement measured. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t ask permission.
I just sat down at the desk, opened my laptop, and pushed the flash drive into the port with fingers that didn’t feel like mine.
Cole’s face went white.
The screen lit up.
Vanessa appeared first, wearing my bathrobe, the one with the blue lacy trim. Her hair was damp. She was sipping my wine, in my glass, on my couch.
The camera was shaky at first, then it steadied. Her voice filtered through the speakers, soft and cruel, as her voiceover took charge of the room.
“You know it is, Lila. People take videos and photos of the things they’re most afraid to lose. Cole took this one. He liked seeing me like this — in your space, on your couch… Does he take these kinds of videos of you?”
Vanessa appeared first,
wearing my bathrobe, the one with the blue lacy trim.
I sat frozen, my hands curled into fists in my lap.
The camera panned, and there he was. Cole. Sitting next to her. Whispering into her neck with a smirk that made my skin crawl.
“She’ll never see this coming,” he said.
“Are you recording this, honey?” Vanessa asked.
“I am, it’s important to me.”
The video transitioned to another clip. Vanessa, now sprawled across our bed and talking on her cellphone, the duvet twisted around her like she belonged there.
Whispering into her neck
with a smirk that made my skin crawl.
“She thinks she’s so clever,” Vanessa said, twirling a piece of hair. “Flying around for her little marketing job. Meanwhile, I’ve been sleeping in her bed. Wearing her robe… and drinking her wine.”
I couldn’t understand what Vanessa was doing and why Cole was recording her being so… cruel. But he seemed to enjoy that.
I shut the laptop hard.
“Lila, I…” Cole said, standing in the doorway, his eyes wide.
I shut the laptop hard.
“Get out,” I said, my voice low and certain.
“It’s Thanksgiving, my darling,” he said, like the date would excuse his actions.
“I don’t care what day it is!” I shouted. “But you’re not staying here! Not with me. And certainly not with my baby!”
“Where am I supposed to go?” he asked.
“That’s not my problem, Cole,” I said. “You made your choice. Now live with it. Go to her. Go celebrate your baby with her.”
“Go to her.”
He didn’t speak again. He just grabbed his keys and walked out. I didn’t follow. I didn’t watch him leave.
I just sat in the silence and listened to myself breathe.
Later, I made some tea and sat in the same chair where Vanessa had filmed herself. I stared at nothing for a long time. My stomach twisted, but I didn’t cry.
I planned.
Over the next week, I packed Cole’s things into boxes and left them in the garage. I made appointments with a lawyer, a therapist, and my doctor. I blocked Vanessa on everything.
My stomach twisted, but I didn’t cry.
She tried calling twice, but I didn’t answer.
I watched the video again — not to hurt myself, but to understand the depth of the disrespect. Every clip was another small truth unraveling. Vanessa laughed while talking on the phone, tossing her hair like a villain in a soap opera.
“I own her life now,” she said, smirking. “She keeps everything so clean and so perfect. But perfection is boring and predictable, Dawn… isn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t cheat on your wife if perfection was everything. I make Cole laugh. I make him breathe.”
I heard Cole laugh softly as the camera shook.
“I mean, you wouldn’t cheat on your wife if perfection was everything.”
“Yes, he’s right here, Dawn. He says I feel like peace,” Vanessa said, laughing and leaning into the camera. “Isn’t that right, babe?”
Cole appeared beside her, his arm draped lazily across the back of the couch.
“She doesn’t have to know everything,” he mumbled, his voice softer. “Lila always wants proof of everything… she’s obsessed with timelines. I can convince her that everything is in her head… But I promise you, Vanessa, she doesn’t suspect a thing.”
I hit pause.
“I can convince her that everything is in her head.”
My pulse pounded. I felt lightheaded. They hadn’t just gone behind my back — they’d studied me. And they counted on me being too trusting to notice the cracks.
“Calm down, Lila,” I told myself. “You have to be calm for the baby.”
That night, I pulled out a new notebook and scrawled across the first page:
“You will not forget.”
I documented everything: from my business trips to the odd charges on our joint card. I counted the bottles of wine that vanished. I scribbled down the time that the scent on my pillow didn’t belong to me.
“You have to be calm for the baby.”
It wasn’t for a court case or anything like that — this was for me, a ledger of clarity.
As my pregnancy took over, I stopped flinching at the silence. I grew to find peace in the silence. And even Blake stopped watching the door.
Three months later, Cole was served the divorce papers outside a bar that he frequented.
“You didn’t have to go this far, Lila,” he said when he called me that night.
I grew to find peace in the silence.
“Oh, I haven’t even started,” I said, my tone calm and collected.
After the divorce papers were sent, Cole sent me four texts and left two voicemails. All of them were scattered, angry, and desperate.
I didn’t respond.
My lawyer said he was stunned, that he thought I’d “cool off” eventually.
But I didn’t cool off.
All of them were scattered, angry, and desperate.
I kept journaling — not just what they did, but what I was building. I wrote about repainting the bedroom. I packed away the robe Vanessa wore and donated the couch where they sat.
Nothing in my home would carry their scent.
I went to doctors’ appointments alone. I sat through a birthing class next to a couple who kept whispering sweet things to each other. It hurt at first, but then I felt something stronger.
Peace.
One night, the baby kicked for the first time. I sat on the edge of the bed and cried into my hands — not because I was scared, but because I finally understood.
Nothing in my home would carry their scent.
This child was mine. Entirely mine.
“Let me be a part of it, Lila. I made a mistake. I can be in both my children’s lives —” Cole said once on a voicemail.
I deleted it without listening to the end.
By the time my due date arrived, the nursery was finished, and I felt like my own person again.
Vanessa, clinging to relevance like it owed her something, leaked parts of the footage to a tabloid. She must’ve thought it would make her famous. The scorned other woman with a juicy scandal.
This child was mine. Entirely mine.
Instead, it blew up in her face. She lost her job, then her apartment, and eventually, I heard that people stopped returning her calls.
The world moved on without her. I almost pitied her.
Almost.
Cole’s life unraveled in tandem. HR launched an internal review after the footage surfaced. Turns out Vanessa wasn’t the only “friend from work” he’d kept secret.
I almost pitied her.
His promotion vanished, and instead of signing new deals, he was signing his termination papers. I heard through a mutual friend that he was couch-surfing, then moved back in with his parents.
By the time Ethan was born, Cole was jobless, rootless, and out of places to spin his lies. He didn’t show up at the hospital.
I chose Ethan’s name on my own. I painted his room in soft greens and blues and rocked him to sleep in the chair my mother had passed down. For the first time in a long time, the house felt warm again — not haunted, just quiet and safe.
He didn’t show up at the hospital.
Two years passed.
Then came Mark — the man who was kind, patient, and deeply human.
We met at a charity fundraiser. Mark was a single dad with soft eyes and a calming voice. When I told him my story, he didn’t blink.
“That must have taken real strength, Lila,” he’d said.
We started our relationship slowly. My son adored him instantly. And that Thanksgiving, we baked a pie together. Ethan sat on the counter, his clumsy fingers dumping too much cinnamon into the bowl.
My son adored him instantly.
“Hey, buddy,” Mark said, trying to grab the bottle away from him. “That’s way too much!”
My son giggled loudly and ducked beneath Mark’s arm.
The house smelled like butter and sugar. And it felt like home.
That night, Cole called. I didn’t answer, but I played the voicemail aloud.
And it felt like home.
“Please, Lila… I just want to hear his voice. Just once. I don’t know what my son sounds like… You owe me that. It’s Thanksgiving.”
“You don’t owe him a thing,” Mark said, locking my phone’s screen.
And he was right. I didn’t.
“But… what are you going to do?” Mark asked gently, drying his hands on a dish towel.
I stared at my phone for a long second, then unlocked it and deleted the voicemail.
“I don’t know what my son sounds like… You owe me that.”
“He doesn’t get to touch my son,” I said quietly. “He forfeited that right the day he gave him up. And he did… in the divorce settlement, Mark. Cole said that he was happy with Vanessa at the time and that their baby was enough for him.”
“Then, it’s over, Lila,” Mark said.
Later that night, after Ethan had gone to bed, I helped Aubrey, Mark’s six-year-old, comb out her curls. She sat cross-legged in front of me, chattering about her favorite teacher and how she wanted to be a “scientist-artist-ballerina.”
“Then, it’s over, Lila,”
When I gently clipped her hair back with a butterfly barrette, she looked up at me and smiled.
“Daddy says you’re really special,” she said.
I smiled back at the sweet little girl.
Sometimes I still think back to that Thanksgiving: the box, the turkey, the USB… and how it could have all broken me.
“Daddy says you’re special.”
Instead, it uncovered the woman I’d forgotten I was.
Cole and Vanessa thought they were tearing something down. What they really did was make space for something better. Sometimes I wonder what they’re like, as a twisted family with a child who didn’t ask for this… but then I look at my son and the thought goes away.
Ethan is growing up in a home filled with safety, laughter, and love. And Aubrey has my heart in her tiny hands.
I am healing… while being held by Mark.
Something that Cole and Vanessa never saw coming.
I am healing… while being held by Mark.
