My daughter and I decided to surprise my husband for his birthday, but when we opened the door to the apartment, she screamed, “No, Mom, go away, you can’t see this!” I would have preferred to see his mistress there at that moment, but not what happened.

My husband lives separately for work—in a company apartment three hours away from our home. It’s a temporary project—just six months. Long enough for us to get used to living apart, but short enough for us to convince ourselves, “I just need to get through this.”

His birthday fell on a Friday. He called and told us not to come, that we’d celebrate together when he was home the following week. But our nine-year-old daughter, Lily, disagreed.

Birthdays were sacred to her, and she insisted we surprise him anyway.

We bought a cake, balloons, and a gift and drove to his apartment, laughing as if we were going on a secret mission.

I already had a spare key—he’d sent me a photo of it the other day when he’d forgotten it inside. We went up to the second floor, Lily holding my hand and whispering when to shout “Surprise!” while I held the cake and the present.

The lock clicked.

At first, everything seemed normal: dim light, silence, the faint smell of coffee, and a laptop on the table. But the air was strange—pungent, almost chemical. Lily took a step forward, froze, and screamed, “Mom, don’t come in!”

She grabbed my hand and yanked me back. I asked what was wrong. She remained silent, only pointing with a trembling finger into the apartment.

I looked inside and froze: I’d rather have seen his mistress there, but not this…

I forced myself to take another step and immediately noticed something that made my insides tremble: men’s shoes were standing by the door, clearly not my husband’s—a different size, a different taste, a strange presence.

At that moment, voices came from the depths of the apartment, quiet, too close together, and then I saw him next to another man.

Lily squeezed my hand convulsively, as if afraid I’d do something rash, but I didn’t say a word.

We turned around silently and walked out, leaving the cake and balloons behind, because the celebration that evening had died before it had even begun.

The next day, I filed for divorce without hesitation. Lily, however, couldn’t recover from what she’d seen for a long time and couldn’t find the strength to forgive her father for destroying the world in which she so sincerely believed.