After the Divorce, My Husband Rejected His Daughters and Said He Was Expecting a Son — But He Turned Pale After My Calm Answer

Five minutes after signing the divorce document, without looking into his daughters’ eyes, my husband told me that now only his future son existed in his life.

It was Tuesday morning. In the court mediation room, the wall clock showed 9:42, and fine rain was running down the windows. The pen lying on the table had its black cap broken off, and I had been staring at exactly that scratch for a whole year while signing the last page of our twelve-year marriage.

At 9:47, I became Elene Bondarenko again.

Andrei picked up his phone, quickly wrote something, and only after that seemed to remember that I was sitting in the room.

“You will take the girls, Lena,” he told me. “I am going to have a son now.”

There was not joy in his voice, but relief.

I put the pen on the table.

“Will you tell Alina and Yulia this yourself?”

Andrei knitted his brows.

“I will call them.”

“Today?”

“Marina is taking them to the doctor. We need peace now.”

“We.”

That word hurt me more than everything else. Eleven years earlier, when I first met Andrei, his mother Tamara was already saying that a full family would exist only when a boy continued the full surname. After Alina and Yulia were born, she cuddled them, fed them cake, and that same evening necessarily added:

“The girls are wonderful, of course. But someone still has to carry on the surname.”

I never forgot Yulia’s words.

Yesterday evening she spent almost an hour drawing a card for her father. On it she drew a crooked golden moon and seven small red stars. She rewrote her father’s name three times because she was afraid the letters might come out badly.

Now that card lay in her bag.

Andrei put on his coat.

“Are you taking them today?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Marina needs rest.”

I looked at the man to whom I had once entrusted my whole life.

“Shouldn’t you say goodbye to your daughters?”

Andrei thought for only a few seconds.

“I will talk to them by phone.”

“Okay.”

He did not realize that our suitcases were already at the military facility. In the evening, the girls and I were temporarily leaving abroad, to the place of my new assignment. The rank of colonel, which Andrei had called “my strange job” for years, would that day become our path to survival for the first time.

I had not hidden the trip either. The custody agreement stated precisely that the girls would leave together with me and that Andrei would have the right to video calls. He signed the document the way he did everything—as if it were the last page, without reading it.

Having gone out into the corridor, I picked up my phone. On the screen I found a message from Yulia: “Mom, should I give Dad the card?”

I did not have time to write a reply.

In a few hours, one call would shake Andrei’s world. Then an old medical record would surface, one whose existence both Tamara and Andrei had forgotten.

But then I knew nothing except one thing: my children must never again feel that they were someone’s unwanted choice.

When I reached the girls, three hours remained until the airport. Alina was standing by the door, and Yulia was clutching the bag with both hands.

“Will Dad come?” she asked me.

“Not today. He said he would call us.”

Yulia lowered her head and hid the card in the inner pocket of her bag. The corner of a red star remained outside.

We had not spent even five minutes in the car when my phone lit up.

Andrei was calling.

“Lena, don’t leave yet,” he said as soon as I answered. “The doctor asked something about Marina’s pregnancy. My mother remembered an old record. That doctor knew you too.”

“What record?”

Silence fell.

Then Andrei pronounced a surname I had not heard for eleven years. At that moment Alina leaned forward from the back seat and held out to me a small pocket of an old dark-green folder.

“I found this among Dad’s things,” she said quietly.

The corner of a folded sheet could be seen from the folder. I reached toward it…

I pulled out the sheet, but did not open it yet. The folder smelled of dampness and old paper. A doctor’s surname was written on it—Dr. Nikoloz Kavtaradze.

“Mom, what is this?” Alina asked me.

“I don’t know. Fasten your seat belt in the car.”

Andrei was still on the line.

“Lena, tell me what you have in your hand.”

“The sheet found in your folder.”

His breathing became heavier.

“Do not open it until I come.”

“Why?”

This time I heard Tamara’s voice.

“Do not let her leave!” she was shouting. “First we must find out whose children they are!”

Yulia raised her head from the back seat.

“Mom, are they talking about us?”

I gripped the steering wheel so tightly that my fingers turned white.

“No one will say anything about you that I will not stop.”

Andrei said quietly:

“Lena, if this is the record I think it is, then everything is different.”

“You always think too late.”

I ended the call.

A military vehicle was waiting at the airport entrance. I had the documents ready, but I did not let go of the green folder. I would hand the girls over to the staff member only when I knew that danger no longer existed.

There was one page in the folder. The doctor’s signature could be seen below, while in the middle one sentence had been almost completely covered with black ink.

I had read that sentence myself years ago.

And I knew that saying it aloud would destroy Andrei’s family more than the divorce…

I opened the sheet completely just when the military vehicle’s door closed. The girls were sitting in front of me, and Andrei appeared at the airport’s glass doors. Tamara stood beside him, her face tense, while Marina followed several steps behind.

Dr. Nikoloz Kavtaradze was with them.

Even after eleven years, I recognized his heavy glasses and the ink stain on his left hand.

“You should not have this,” Andrei told me.

“It is my children’s medical record. On the contrary, I should have had it long ago.”

Tamara came to the vehicle door.

“Open the record,” she said. “We need an answer.”

“Do you need the answer, or does Marina?”

Marina wrapped both hands around her stomach.

“The doctor told me that because of the pregnancy, the father’s medical history is also necessary. And we found this surname in Andrei’s old documents.”

Kavtaradze looked at the sheet and immediately turned pale.

“Where did you find this copy?”

“In my husband’s folder.”

“This folder was mine,” Andrei joined in. “My mother took it from the clinic for me years ago.”

I raised the sheet.

“It says here that Andrei Shveskovich underwent surgery at the age of twenty-four, after which he no longer had the ability to conceive naturally. And at the end of the record it says: ‘The patient considers it impossible for him to have his own children; repeat examination is recommended.’”

Tamara immediately denied it.

“This is a mistake. Andrei was healthy.”

“Is that why you never checked even once?” I asked.

Kavtaradze lowered his eyes.

“The operation definitely took place. But the medical record does not contain a final conclusion. The patient did not undergo follow-up.”

Andrei turned toward me.

“This means that Alina and Yulia…”

“It means that you were their father for eleven years,” I interrupted him. “And now you used one old sheet to justify their existence.”

Marina read the record. There was no color left in her face.

“Andrei, you told me that after two daughters you simply wanted a boy.”

“I didn’t know,” he whispered.

“You didn’t know at their birth either?” I asked. “Then why did you say that they carried your blood?”

Andrei could not find an answer. For the first time I saw the confidence with which he had told me in the morning, “I am going to have a son now,” collapse on his face.

Kavtaradze looked at Marina.

“The pregnancy must first be confirmed. Today’s rapid test is not enough. A blood test and an ultrasound examination are needed.”

Marina asked fearfully:

“Are you saying that the child may not exist?”

“I am not saying that. I am saying that the results must be checked.”

At that very moment Andrei’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and his face changed.

“Who is it?” Tamara asked.

Andrei could not utter a sound.

But on the screen I saw only one sentence: “We are calling from the clinic. We urgently need to speak with you about your case.”

Andrei answered the call and within a few seconds leaned against the wall.

“What happened?” I asked.

He slowly raised his gaze to me.

“They said that the record of that operation was not only about me. They had a second patient that same day… and her name is yours.”

Marina covered her mouth with her hand. Tamara stepped back once.

And I realized that the old record did not keep only Andrei’s secret. It also entered my past, into the period I had never told the girls about…