“Did you forge divorce papers? Bribe a county clerk?”
Mike stared at the floor, silent. His silence was more telling than any confession. The women exchanged a look; they had their answer. The scale of his deceit was beyond anything they had imagined.
“Did you know about the genetic anomaly?” Megan asked, pointing to the ultrasound report. “Did you know it was hereditary and say nothing?”
Mike nodded without looking up.
“Yes, I knew. My father had it, too.”
Susan got up and walked to the window. Outside, the city bustled on, oblivious to the man who had lived a double life within its limits for seven years.
“How many more secrets are you hiding? How many more lies are there to uncover?”
Mike tried to approach Megan, but she recoiled.
“Don’t you dare touch me. You’re dead to me. The only thing connecting us now is this child, and you will never see him.”
He started rambling about love, about difficult circumstances, about how they could fix things, but the women weren’t listening anymore. They looked at him as if he were a stranger, which, in reality, he was. A hospital security guard appeared at the door, summoned by a nurse. Mike yelled, tried to explain, and clung to the doorframe as he was escorted out. His voice echoed down the hall, but the women paid it no mind.
Megan picked up the jacket Mike had dropped in the chaos. A phone fell out of the pocket. A third phone she never knew existed. The screen lit up from the impact, displaying a recent text message. It was from someone named Allie: “When are you back from your trip? The baby is kicking like crazy. We miss our daddy.”
Megan and Susan looked at each other in disbelief. The story was becoming even more incredible. A third woman. A third pregnancy. A third victim. The phone’s gallery was filled with photos of an unfamiliar pregnant woman. She was standing in front of a suburban house, holding up baby clothes. The caption read: “Getting the nursery ready for our son.” The photo was two weeks old.
Susan found Allie’s address in the contacts: Pine Ridge Estates. A text mentioned 12 Forest Lane. The women knew what they had to do. They had one more visit to make, one that would finally reveal the true extent of the deception. They called a cab and headed to the address. The hour-long drive was silent as they processed what was happening. Each was thinking about her future, her child, and how she would one day explain the truth about their father.
The house in Pine Ridge was large and well-kept, with a manicured lawn and a two-car garage. A plaque on the gate read “The Bells.” Megan and Susan exchanged a grim look. It seemed this was where Mike felt most at home.
A pregnant woman in her early thirties with a kind face and surprised eyes opened the door. Allie was clearly not expecting company.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re here to see Michael Bell,” Megan said. “Or rather, we’re here about him.”
Allie’s expression changed as she took in the two pregnant women on her doorstep. Her intuition told her this meeting was about to change her life.
“Please, come in,” she said quietly, stepping back to let them inside.
The living room walls were covered with photos of Mike and Allie: wedding pictures, family holidays, vacations. On a mantelpiece sat a framed marriage certificate. Date of registration: August 12, 2016. Allie sank into an armchair, her hands instinctively going to her belly.
“Who are you? What do you want with my husband?”
Her voice trembled, but she tried to maintain her composure.
Megan and Susan laid out their marriage certificates, their photos with Mike, their ultrasound reports. Allie looked at the documents with growing horror. Her husband, the father of her unborn child, was not just a bigamist. He was a trigamist.
“This is impossible,” she whispered, flipping through photos of other weddings starring her husband. “We’ve been together for eight years. He would never cheat on me. He just has a very demanding job with a lot of travel.”
Susan gave a bitter laugh. The same words, the same story, the same lie. Mike had perfected his system, using the same script on each of them. Even his excuses were identical.
Allie shared her version of life with Mike. His work schedule was a month at home, a month away. In eight years, he’d never once broken the pattern. She was proud of his dedication to his job and his family.
The women pieced together the three schedules. It formed a perfect rotation. He spent an equal amount of time with each family, neglecting no one. His organizational skills were terrifyingly brilliant. Allie showed them the deed to the house: it was in Mike’s name. And it wasn’t his only property. He owned an apartment in the city, a cabin upstate, and a garage, all under different names.
“My father lived like this, too,” Allie confessed once the initial shock wore off. “He had three families, until it all came out.”
Mike knew that story. He had sworn to her he would never repeat his father’s mistakes, yet he had followed the exact same path. Three pregnant women sat in a living room that each had, in some way, been led to believe was hers. They were united not just by a shared tragedy, but by a shared future—children with the same genetic marker who might never know the whole truth about their father.
“What do we do now?”
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