Page 82 of Enemy Daddy Next Door

I ignore her question, pushing past her to get to Jess. The second Jessica is in my arms, she starts to cry. “You can’t yell at her, Veronica.”

“I most certainly can when she says things that are abject lies.”

“It’s not a lie!” Jessica sobs.

“Not if that’s what your daddy has been telling you,” Veronica replies bitterly.

“Veronica. Enough.”

She freezes at my admonishment.

“What happened?”

Veronica steps toward the bookshelf and pulls one of the books off. “I asked Jessica to show me her favorite book. She said these were her favorite. Can you guess why?” She shoves the book toward my face.

It’s one of Amy’s books. Surely merely seeing her name didn’t send Veronica into a tailspin, did it?

“Why don’t you tell your father why you like them so much, Jessica?” Veronica taunts.

I put my hand out to distance her from me. “Do not speak to her like tha –‘”

“Because…” Jessica says something, but it’s garbled in my neck.

“What, sweetie?” I ask tenderly. “I couldn’t hear you.”

Jessica, my tiny little girl who has been shy her whole life, suddenly lifts her head and looks at Veronica. “Because my mommy wrote them.”

My blood runs cold.

Veronica lifts her head proudly. “Now you can understand why I reacted the way I did, can’t you?”

The expression on her face transports me back in time. That distant assuredness. Unafraid to hurt feelings.

It’s the same face she wore when she abandoned Jessica.

She hadn’t even lost all the postpartum weight yet, her stomach still a slight bubble under her loose dress. It had only been a month. A month of being parents.

Veronica had done her dark hair in loose curls. Her makeup was pristine.

And I could smell Jessica’s diaper needed to be changed as she practically dropped my one-month-old into my arms the second I walked in from the office.

“I’m done, I think,” she said coldly.

I didn’t quite understand.

So, she spelled it out for me.

“I don’t want to be a mother anymore.”

I didn’t react fast enough. That was always my biggest regret. That it took me too long to process, and by the time I was groveling after her, she was halfway down the driveway. How was I going to care for our daughter alone? I was still just a shell of myself, a few months after the tragic passing of my parents. I had the company to deal with. And a child. I needed help somewhere.

She said she didn’t care.

I thought it might be post-partum depression. In fact, I’d been suspecting it. I offered to get her help.

If it was PPD, Veronica didn’t want to try and fix it. She just wanted to leave.

And as she left me in the driveway of the old house, clutching our baby with the spoiled diaper, something always struck me.

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