Posting from a throwaway account just to be safe. This story is about my Aunt Barb, who did quite possibly the worst thing anyone I personally know has ever done.

Barb and her boyfriend “Manny” had been together for a very long time. They were high school sweethearts, were prom king and queen - the kind of shit right out of a soap opera. Barb applied for and landed a job as a stewardess and, as you can imagine, worked away from home for long periods of time – usually the majority of any given year. Manny was okay with this and assumed that she'd eventually decide to get a more local job and settle down with him (he proposed to her somewhere along the way and she said yes), so he waited for her to come home a couple times a year while she flew for a living.

Welp, what Manny didn't know was that Barb had started seeing a co-worker behind his back when she returned to her job – call him “Derek.” Barb also had several other side boyfriends in several states/countries that Manny didn't know about, but you'll understand why Derek was particularly important. Whatever method of contraception she'd been relying on all these years must have failed, or she believed she could "safely" have unprotected sex at her age. In any case, she got herself pregnant by Derek, which is something you really don't expect when you're nearly 50 and no fertility drugs were involved.

Being the religious zealot she is, Barb absolutely wouldn't get an abortion, and Derek had no idea she had a boyfriend waiting back home for her and he was quite happy about becoming a father for the first time, so there was no giving it up for adoption either. Barb got married to Derek in a big hurry without a ceremony because she didn't want anyone in her hometown to know she'd gotten married to or impregnated by someone other than her boyfriend. Yes, this is one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone's business and Aunt Barb is probably one of the most social people in the area. Word would definitely get back to Manny that Barb was pregnant. While Derek predictably gave her a ring for their marriage, she'd take it off and wear Manny's ring instead when she was back in town.

Barb hid her pregnancy from everyone, including her family. One of our relatives is a doctor and knew she was knocked up, but didn't approach her about it because she would have said something to us if she wanted us to know. We all wondered why she was wearing weirdly huge clothes; I mean, we knew, but we didn't bring it up. Eventually, Barb ran off to Indiana with Derek to give birth and raise her son with him without telling us where she was actually going.

She had her kid in April of 2001, just a few months before 9/11. Given her profession and the fact we all thought she returned to work, of course we were all freaking the fuck out thinking she might have been onboard one of the hijacked planes and we had absolutely no way to contact her because she didn't really have an address and didn't have a cell phone. About a year after 9/11, she called us to let us know she wasn't dead, and then four years after she left for Indiana, she came back home with her kid in tow to visit with everyone while Derek was at work. We knew she had been pregnant, but we didn't know it was by someone other than Manny. It was a shock, but we took it in stride.

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Since Derek wasn't around when Barb came back home to visit, Barb would do this thing where she'd dump her son on unsuspecting family members for free babysitting so she could go pick up where she left off with Manny and also have a social life and pretend like she wasn't a parent. She gave little to no notice when she dropped her son off with any of us – she'd just show up at people's houses and leave her kid there all day long on work nights and weekends alike and expect us to alter our schedules or cancel our plans for her. She once pretended her son wasn't hers when she was out in public with him and someone she knew spotted her. She ducked away from her son and scooted away to talk to her friend and left the kid alone for about ten minutes while it cried for her. She also lied to people in unavoidable situations and said the kid was her friend's child she was babysitting for the day. I don't know how she talked her way out of it when her son called her “Mommy” in front of anyone.

Barb asked all of us to lie to Manny if he came sniffing around asking questions because she was concerned that Manny might harm her or her kid if he knew the truth. Of course he wanted answers, especially when people started talking about seeing her walking around town with a kid in tow – a kid that looked a LOT like her. Barb had us all worried that Manny might snap, so we lied to his face for years. Many relatives offered to accompany Barb so she could safely tell Manny that she had a husband and a child, but she refused, saying he didn't need to know. She never once actually told Manny what had happened. He started expressing concern about this mysterious kid people said they kept seeing Barb with, so she just avoided Manny more and more until she quit speaking to him and seeing him entirely and moved back to Indiana for good with Derek. Manny had to find out the truth second-hand.

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As you can imagine, Manny didn't take the news well. He'd been with this woman for over two decades and spent many of those years waiting for her to come home for good so they could get married, have kids and start their lives together. Finding out he'd been waiting for nothing for the last 10+ years and that she'd been cheating on him for far longer (and married the other man to boot), he had a total breakdown.

He had to quit his job because of his depression, and he didn't leave his house for like a year and a half. He aged about ten years and his hair went from jet-black to snow-white during that time. I don't know if he ever tried to find another girlfriend afterward, but I wouldn't blame him if he didn't. Meanwhile, Barb kept her son a secret from her friends back home until he was about seven years old and then just suddenly started telling everyone she had a son. Of course people won't be sad over the news of someone having a kid, so they all seemed to overlook the fact that she had a kid with someone other than the guy she'd been with most of her life.

Given Barb's behavior (before and after giving birth), I honestly don't think she ever wanted to have kids. She was too much of a socialite and reproducing would seriously cramp her lifestyle and profession. She liked to go out and do shit and stay out late far too much to ever want to be a stay-at-home mom. But she wound up doing just that and I think she resented her son a lot for “making” her leave her life of free exotic travel behind and having to settle down into a normal, more permanent life.

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From what I hear from other relatives now, Barb is extraordinarily strict with her now teenaged son, to the point where more than one family member thinks he might be genuinely depressed. Barb has always been extremely controlling, needing to have everything go her own way and making the rest of the family bend to her wishes. As some of you may know, control freaks make horrible parents. Given that Barb's husband makes a shitload of money, their child certainly has never gone without, but I don't think the kid has much freedom. As it stands, Barb's son has been raised with religious beliefs he didn't choose, forced into a school he didn't like and will be attending a college he doesn't want to attend. Barb's definitely well on her way to an estranged child. I don't know if her son knows about all the turmoil surrounding his existence either.