What kind of mother lies about having a child? Once upon a time, I had an acquaintance who had a baby girl with a girl who we’ll call Elsa. The girl was young, still in her teens while her boyfriend was in his mid-twenties. She started working at the same place Mike and I worked at, not long after I left.

As soon as I realized who she was, I asked her about the baby, and we chatted with the usual formalities: “How’s the baby?” “She’s good.” “That’s good. How old is she now?” “She’s X months.” “Aww, she’s getting so big! Last time I saw her, she was little, little.” “Yeah, I know!”

Hooray. No problem. I actually thought it was pretty neat that she was working there, as I’d always liked her and now saw opportunities for double dates.

Slowly but surely, though, her name started popping up in more and more of my conversations with Mike. Mike would say something like, “Elsa invited me to her birthday party” or “Elsa wants me to come over and play Xbox.” My eyebrow would go up, because why would she invite him and not me?

Now, I should note that I, like most other human beings, sometimes get jealous. I don’t get psycho-jealous, or anything, but I have had my moments. I tried really hard not to let these random invitations get to me. I told the little voice in my head to shut up, especially when he mentioned her turning twenty-one.

“She’s not twenty-one. She’s like seventeen,” I said.

“No, she’s twenty-one,” he said.

I called Jude. “How old is Elsa?”

“Like seventeen. Maybe nineteen. She’s not older than you, though.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Okay, I told myself. So the girl lied about her age. Okay. Fine.

One day, when Elsa’s name came up once again in conversation — brought up by Mike, who had given her a couple of rides home from work recently — I asked him if he knew how the baby and Elsa’s boyfriend were doing.

“She doesn’t have a baby,” he said.

“Yes, yes she does,” I said. “Ask her about her.”

He did. And you know what? She told him she didn’t have a daughter, and said that she was single.

Throughout the next few months, she continued to ask him for rides home, to come over and play Xbox, and just in general kept trying to get as close to him as possible.

It drove me fucking nuts, especially because Mike? Was completely oblivious.

I consulted Jude.

“She’s done this before,” Jude said, and told me what she had heard from Elsa’s boyfriend and from Jude’s then-boyfriend, who was also friends with Elsa and Elsa’s boyfriend.

Unless Elsa had some kind of twin or doppelganger, I had on my hands a bona fide homewrecker, and the worst part of it all was that Mike thought I was crazy.

Eventually, she quit the job and disappeared, but it still bugs the shit out of me that someone could actually lie about their child just so that they could get with someone else’s boyfriend. Apparently, she had done it several times before and her behavior constantly put her actual relationship on the rocks. My blood still boils a little when I think about it, because even though I knew all along that Mike wouldn’t cheat on me or anything, I couldn’t get over the fact that someone could behave that way.

How about you? Got any homewrecker stories? Share them in the comments! (Please!)