My heart froze when my five-year-old talked about going to the “secret house” to see “Daddy’s other kids.” I believed I knew my husband inside and out, but what I found out rendered me speechless. I never imagined my husband was capable of doing something like this.
It was a regular Tuesday—until it wasn’t.
After picking up my five-year-old son, Tim, from kindergarten, we followed our usual routine. I buckled him into his car seat, handed him his juice pouch, and watched as he stabbed the straw like a tiny warrior. Then, without warning, he said something that made my heart stop.
“Mommy, can we go to the playground near Daddy’s other house again? I miss his other kids.”
Other house? Other kids?
I laughed nervously. “Whose kids, sweetheart?”
“Daddy’s! The ones who call him ‘Dad’ too. They had balloons and a bouncy couch.”
I kept pressing. “When did you meet them?”
“When you were in the airplane for work. Daddy said it was a secret house.”
I’d been away for a tech conference in Austin a few weeks earlier. Jake had handled everything while I was gone.
“What do you mean, secret?” I asked, my voice trembling.
Tim leaned in close, lowering his voice. “Daddy said not to tell you. It’s just for fun times. The kids there had a big TV and balloons everywhere.”
The rest of the drive passed in silence. My heart pounded as possibilities raced through my head—most of them awful. Secret house. Other kids. A hidden life?
That night, once Tim was asleep, I sat with his little tablet. We had installed GPS tracking for safety, and I opened the location history from the weekend I was away.
There it was: a pin dropped at an address I didn’t recognize, 20 minutes from our home. The tablet had been there for three hours.
The next morning, I dropped Tim off at school like nothing had changed. Then I drove straight to that address.
It was a pale-yellow house with a wide porch and wind chimes that sang softly in the breeze.
A sign on the lawn read, “Be Kind—Everyone’s Fighting a Battle You Can’t See.”
I sat in the car, heart racing, until I saw him.
Jake stepped out, holding a toddler’s hand. A curly-haired little girl with pink bows. More children followed—one in a Superman cape, another carrying crayons. They all tugged at Jake, laughing and calling for his attention.
Then a woman stepped out, smiling warmly, and waved at me.
Jake spotted me, and to my surprise, he smiled. It wasn’t guilt. It was calm, like he’d expected me.
A few minutes later, the woman introduced herself as Carol. She explained everything.
The house was Sunshine House, a foster care center and nonprofit support space for kids in transition. Some were between court hearings or waiting for placement. Others just needed a safe place during the day.
“Your husband’s been volunteering with us for about two months,” Carol said.
“He’s here every Saturday. The kids love him.”
I was stunned. I’d had no idea.
Later, as we stood by my car, I asked Jake, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It wasn’t a secret… it just felt like something I wanted to do quietly. Not everything needs to be broadcast.”
I asked about Tim.
Jake said he’d brought him along just once while I was away—they were short-staffed during a birthday party prep. Tim had loved it.
Carol also explained that the children were encouraged to call volunteers “Mom” or “Dad” if it helped them feel safe and supported.
Tim hadn’t lied. He just didn’t understand what he was seeing. He thought the kids were siblings because they called Jake “Dad.” He thought it was a secret because Jake had mentioned not making a fuss about it.
For a moment, I had doubted everything about the man I married. I thought he was betraying us.
But what he was really doing was giving something to children who had so little—a sense of home, of safety, even if only for a while.
And the only real secret?
I’d married a better man than I ever realized.