A marriage should be built on love, trust, and mutual understanding, and it was this Christmas that I learned the true meaning of this.

Shawn has been my soulmate, the man that meant everything to me. I have never doubted his love, until Christmas Eve approached and I learned he wasn’t telling me the truth about his alleged trip to another city for the sake of business.

“Honey,” Shawn said to me a couple of days before Christmas, “my boss needs me in Boston. I need to take care of an important client. I know the holiday is approaching, but I couldn’t say no.”

His avoidance of eye contact planted a seed of doubt in me, but I dismissed it. After all, it was Shawn, the only person I trusted unconditionally.

As he packed, I sense of disappointment settled in. This would be our first Christmas apart since we got married and I knew the holiday wouldn’t be the same with Shawn not being there.

However, I knew how important his job was to him so I offered nothing but support.

I promised myself to have a good time with my friends and my family, trying not to overthink.

But then, Christmas Eve arrived, and I got a call from Shawn late in the night. Sadly, that call raised more questions than answers.

“Merry Christmas, beautiful,” Shawn said, but his voice sounded strangely strained.

“Merry Christmas! How’s Boston? Did you get the client situation sorted out?”

“It’s… uh… good. Listen, I can’t really talk right now. I have to go—”

In the background, I could hear loud noises, dishes clinking, and laughter.

“Are you at dinner?” I asked. But Shawn said he had an emergency meeting and hung up the phone.

An emergency meeting at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve? That didn’t make sense.

Shawn was hiding something from me and I was determined to discover what it was.

As I paced back and forth across the room, my mind raced with a storm of emotions and a million questions. And then I remembered! The previous week, I left my fitness tracker in Shawn’s car. I was quick to open the app, and that’s when my heart sank.

It showed that Shawn never went to Boston, he was at a hotel located some 15 minutes away from our home.

Every second of the drive to the hotel felt like torture. Shawn lied to me, and that was something I couldn’t make peace with.

Shawn’s car was parked in front of the hotel. I rushed towards the lobby, and the receptionist stopped me there. “Madam, can I help you?”

I showed her a photo of Shawn and said, “This is my husband, he claimed to be in Boston, but his car is parked in front.”

With tears rolling down my face, I begged her to tell me the room he was in. She hesitated at first, but she then slid a keycard across the counter and said, “Miss, sometimes things aren’t what they seem.”

I didn’t understand what she meant until I opened the hotel door number 412.

“Shawn, how could you?” I yelled. But then I stopped, shocked at the sight of him standing in front of a man in a wheelchair.

The man, with a silver hair and eyes I haven’t seen in 26 years, looked at me in confusion.

“Dad!?” the word came out as a whisper.

“Andrea, my girl,” he said with a trembling voice.

My father disappeared from my life when I was just a five year old girl after a bitter divorce from my mother. I have missed him my whole life. He was the missing piece of the puzzle in my pursuit of happiness.

But what he was doing there? Nothing made sense to me.

Shawn then turned to me and explained that before my mom’s passing, she told him more about my dad, and he was able to track him down through the social media. My dad was in Arizona this whole time.

Shawn wanted to surprise me for Christmas, but I ruined the surprise. Still, that Christmas was the best ever.

My husband’s secrecy hadn’t been deceit but the purest form of love.

That Christmas, it was just the three of us. My dad shared stories of his life, and I realized that reuniting with him was a blessing I was happy to embrace with arms wide open.