But as I looked around the room, my eyes landed on a corkboard hung above a small white desk. Taped to the very center of the board was another crayon drawing. I walked closer, leaning in to look at the childish scribbles.

It was a drawing of a woman with brown hair—my hair color.

She was standing alone, far away from a house. But what made my blood run entirely cold, chilling me to my very core, was what covered her. Drawn furiously in thick, dark black crayon was a massive ‘X’ right through the woman’s face. Underneath the picture, written in the neat, unmistakable handwriting of an adult woman—the handwriting of the mother—were the words: The Bad Lady.

They knew. The woman knew about me. The children knew about me. I wasn’t just a secret he kept from them. I was the obstacle. I was the villain in the story he had spun for his second family. I wasn’t just betrayed by my husband; I was an active target of hatred in a home I was unknowingly paying for.

I took out my phone, opened my camera, and started taking pictures of everything. My sorrow was completely gone, replaced entirely by a slow, calculating, deeply dangerous rage. He was going to wish he had just stayed at the gym.