Meeting Lauren
A week later, Lauren asked to meet me.
Part of me wanted to refuse. I went anyway.
The second she saw me, she started crying.
“Emily, I swear I didn’t know,” she kept repeating. “Mark never told me about the allergy.”
Strangely, I believed her.
Lauren was many things, but cruel wasn’t one of them. If anything, she looked genuinely horrified.
“He said Ava loved strawberries,” she whispered through tears. “I thought I was doing something nice.”
I sat quietly while she cried.
Because the real betrayal belonged to Mark.
He had brought another woman into our daughter’s life behind my back. And afterward, instead of telling the truth immediately, he had worked to contain the damage before I could find it myself.
