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Madeleine "Mady" Magdalynn thought she knew her husband.
She knew the way Richard smiled when he was lying about eating the last cookie. She knew the sound of his footsteps coming home, the way he played with their six-year-old son Adam, and every little habit that came with thirteen years of loving someone.
At least, she thought she did.
Then Richard dies in a horrific car accident-and the woman who dies beside him is not a stranger.
Her name is Ashley, and she has three children: thirteen-year-old Willow, six-year-old Douglas, and five-year-old Forest.
Richard's children.
Suddenly, Mady isn't simply a grieving widow. She is a woman discovering that her entire marriage was built around secrets, hidden apartments, missing money, carefully constructed excuses, and a second family Richard somehow kept hidden for years.
And just when Mady thinks she has uncovered the worst of it, another woman arrives.
Crystal believed Richard loved her too.
And she is pregnant with his twins.
Now Mady is left standing in the wreckage of one man's lies while a growing collection of confused, grieving children are forced to deal with consequences they never created. Instead of walking away, Mady makes a choice no one expects: the children will not pay for their father's mistakes.
Between custody battles, funerals, family arguments, teenage rebellion, sleepless nights, ridiculous household disasters, and secrets that refuse to stay buried, Mady somehow finds herself becoming the center of a family Richard never intended to exist in the same room.
Richard Aaron Magdalynn may have been the father of all lies.
But Mady is determined to become the mother who finally tells the truth.
A story about betrayal, grief, motherhood, found family, and the strange, messy ways people learn to love each other after everything falls apart.