Descent (Black Heart Romance presents Heaven & Hell)

blissfully unaware of the type of person I knew him to be. He smiled too, that bland smile that said he
was too cool to be here. He used to wear it all the time.
Of course, there’s probably no way to tell on social media if someone is actually a good parent,
or actually a good anything. The image is curated, so they can portray whatever impression of their
life they want the world to believe.
Still, I want to look and see if I notice anything. Any frayed threads that might hint at the truth.
His life has changed a lot since last I looked. His profile picture is one of domestic bliss—him
standing on a wraparound porch with his arm around a woman with dark curly hair and glasses, four
kids of various ages standing in front of them. It’s fall in the picture and it’s summer now, so I click to
see when it was posted. Late October. Huh. He used to change his profile picture every week, but I
suppose it makes sense that he grew out of that.
I’m stunned to see so many kids, though. There are four, but none are the little blonde girl from
before. I click through to look at his other pictures. I dislike seeing his face and its unrelenting smile.
They’re not all the too-cool smile. In some he grins and shows his teeth. In one he holds a baldheaded
infant girl who giggles at his shenanigans.
I swallow. My stomach is sick. I want to stop looking, but I don’t.
It’s hard to reconcile the man I’m seeing holding his youngest daughter with the hedonistic
monster who shattered me one night just for fun. He, too, was bored. I was sad and vulnerable from
breaking up with a friend of his. He just wanted me to come over and hang out to help me get my mind
off things.
What a guy.
Even back then he was fake as hell, and I remind myself of that as I swipe through picture after
picture of him playing the devoted father.
Just because it looks that way doesn’t mean it’s real.
I click the picture of his wife or girlfriend, whomever mothered that baby girl. It doesn’t take
long to realize the three boys in the picture must be hers from a previous relationship, and only the
baby is theirs together. Other than the picture of them on the wraparound porch, there are only pictures
of him with the baby or the woman, none of him and the boys.
I don’t know what happened to the other little girl I saw him with, but she’s not in any of the
pictures. I know he wasn’t with her mother anymore, but it seemed like he still saw her since there
had been pictures before.
I go deep down the rabbit hole searching for them, but the pictures are gone. I go through every
one on his profile, but even the old ones I saw before seem to have been deleted.
I frown.
That’s odd.