The night nurse was supposed to be a blessing. After weeks of sleepless nights with our newborn, I finally caved when my husband suggested hiring help. “She’ll give you rest,” he said, rubbing my shoulders. “You deserve it.” Her name was Marissa. She arrived in soft scrubs, carrying a gentle smile, her voice calm and soothing. The moment she held the baby, she hummed a lullaby so sweet it made my son’s eyes flutter shut. Relief washed over me.
But the second night, something felt… strange. I came downstairs to grab water and froze at the sound of her voice. She wasn’t just humming anymore—she was singing words. Not just any words. Our song.
I knew that melody. That exact verse. It was the song my husband had sung to me the night he proposed, years ago in a candlelit restaurant. It wasn’t a common tune, not one you’d hear on the radio. It was personal. Private. Ours.
My heart raced as I lingered in the hallway, listening. Her voice was low, tender, almost wistful. When she finished, I stepped into the room. “Where did you learn that?”
She looked up, startled, then quickly masked it with a smile. “Oh, it’s just an old lullaby.”
“No,” I whispered, stepping closer. “That’s not just any lullaby. That’s my husband’s song. He wrote it. For me.”
Her smile faltered. The air thickened with silence. My son stirred slightly in her arms, and she rocked him gently, buying time. Finally, she said, “I knew him… years ago.”
My knees went weak. “Knew him? How?”
Her eyes flicked away, then back. “We were close. Before you. He never told you?”
The ground tilted. My stomach churned. “Close how?”
She pressed her lips together, tears brimming in her eyes. “We were in love once. He wrote that song for me first.”
The room spun. The baby’s soft breaths filled the silence between us. “You’re lying,” I whispered, but the tremor in my voice betrayed me.
“I wish I was,” she said softly. “When he proposed to you with that song, he reused what was ours. I didn’t come here to hurt you. I needed the work. But when I saw his name on the application, I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see if he still remembered.”
Every breath I took felt like glass. My husband had given me what I thought was the most sacred, intimate gift—and it was recycled. Not ours. Not mine. Just a hand-me-down from another woman’s heart.
When he came home, I confronted him. His face went pale, his mouth stammering excuses. “It was so long ago,” he muttered. “It doesn’t matter now.”
But it mattered to me. It always will.
Final Thought
Betrayal doesn’t always come with lipstick on a collar or numbers on a phone bill. Sometimes it’s hidden in a song—a melody whispered in the dark, carried from one woman to the next. The night nurse thought she was revealing the truth about the past, but what she really gave me was clarity. My husband hadn’t just betrayed me in the present—he had stolen my forever from the very beginning.
