I Came Home Early from a Work Trip and Found My Husband Asleep with a Newborn Baby – the Truth Was Breathtaking

I never imagined Christmas would begin with the kind of silence that follows heartbreak.

Not the kind you hear about, but the kind you feel. The plane had just lifted through a wall of snow when I looked down at my phone and saw the last picture my husband, Mark, had sent: our empty living room with the tree we picked out together.

A quiet ache spread through me.

I never imagined Christmas would begin with heartbreak.

We were supposed to spend this Christmas together. Just the two of us. There wasn’t supposed to be any airport goodbyes, no driving between relatives’ houses with fake smiles.

This year was meant to be quiet and healing. And after seven years of infertility, we had finally let go of the pressure to hope.

We were supposed to rest and decide what our future looked like, children or no children. One more round of IVF or adoption?

This year was meant to be quiet and healing.

But when my boss asked me to fly out two days before Christmas for an emergency project, I said yes and regretted it immediately.

“I’ll make us peppermint cocoa when you get back,” Mark had said, trying to soften the blow. “We’ll open our gifts in pajamas. We’ll have the whole cozy cliché.”

“Will you be okay here alone?” I asked.

“I’ll miss you, Talia, but I’ll survive,” Mark said, shrugging.

“We’ll open our gifts in pajamas.

We’ll have the whole cozy cliché.”

There was something in his voice, not sadness exactly. It was more like… distraction. My husband’s hugs had been too quick. And since I’d told him about the trip, his eyes never quite met mine.

“You’ll just have to make it up to him,” I told myself in the bathroom mirror. “Work isn’t a bad thing. It’s what pays for all the infertility treatments anyway.”