I was 19 when I found out my dad had a second family. My mom had no idea.

One evening my dad’s other wife reached out to me. She said: “I had no idea about you or your mom.

I thought I was the only one.” She then told me she would never talk to my dad and then apologized not just for her part in the mess but for my dad’s choices.

She said she’d been blindsided and had left him as soon as the truth came out.Over time, we started talking more, not as enemies but as two people who had been hurt in different ways by the same person.

She even showed up at my college graduation to cheer me on when my dad didn’t.