I Shredded His Storybook Wife

My husband and daughter claimed they could step through the pages of an antique storybook hidden in our attic.
They told me they had another family waiting on the other side.
Every evening, after I spent hours coaxing my seven-year-old daughter to sleep, she would slip out from under the covers, clutching her duvet, and pad up the narrow wooden steps toward the attic.
"I’m going to let the other Mommy read to me," she would whisper, her eyes bright with a cruelty she was too young to fully disguise. "Her voice is softer than yours. She doesn't sound tired and ugly."
Simon, my husband, had quietly liquidated every liquid asset we owned and channeled it into that make-believe world.
"I’m a self-made billionaire over there, Leah," he had told me, his gaze distant and feverish. "Just wait until my returns multiply by ten. I’ll bring the wealth back to you."
Yet he never brought a single cent home. Whenever the mortgage bounced or the utility bills arrived in bold red ink, all he ever offered was a hollow, irritated command: "Just wait."
The worst of it came on the Tuesday I miscarried. When I came home from the hospital, pale and trembling with an ache that hollowed out my bones, Simon and our daughter, Emmy, looked at me with open disgust.
"You couldn't even keep a baby alive," Simon had muttered under his breath, turning away. "Genevieve is carrying twin boys right now. That’s what a real mother looks like."
The next time they headed for the attic stairs, my voice cracked, stripped raw from days of weeping. "Take me with you. Please. Just let me see the world you keep running to."
Simon froze, his shoulders hitching in a spasm of sheer impatience. "You know you can't. The moment you get close to the book, the frequency shatters. You ruin it for both of us."
Emmy nodded fiercely, crossing her small arms. "You’re not allowed to ruin this! Over there, Genevieve is my only mommy!"
Together, they shoved me back into the hallway, slamming the heavy wooden door in my face. The click of the deadbolt sounded like an executioner’s axe.
My heart plummeted into the dark.
If they had already severed every tie that bound us together, then this fairy tale had no right to exist.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the number of an industrial equipment depot downtown.
"Hi," I said, my voice steady for the first time in months. "Do you have commercial paper shredders in stock?"
1
After ending the call, I took the spare key from the top of the doorframe and unlocked the attic.
A wave of stale dust rolled out, hitting my lungs and making me cough. Yet on the vintage mahogany bookshelf, the leather-bound storybook sat immaculate, free of a single speck of grime, faintly gleaming as if lit from within.
I opened the heavy cover. The illustrated scene rippled, dissolving into living motion before my eyes.
Emmy was tucked into a blush-pink canopy bed beneath silken sheets. Beside her sat Genevieve, radiant and poised, reading a bedtime tale with theatrical cadence and a melodious, crystalline voice. Simon stood leaning casually against the doorframe, his eyes softening into a tender, adoring look he hadn't given me in years.
Emmy had been right about one thing: Genevieve’s voice was exquisite. It didn't sound frayed from cooking dinners, scrubbing baseboards, or tracking unpaid medical bills.
I tugged at the corner of my lips, feeling the stiff, hollow weight of my own face, and set the book down.
Just then, Emmy’s voice drifted through the gilded pages, sharp and clear.
"Daddy, can we just never go back?"
"I don't like the mommy back home. She's so haggard and boring."
"She won't let me play on the iPad, and she won't give me chocolate before bed."
I froze in place, a chill creeping from my soles straight to my chest.
Six months ago, Emmy's pediatric dental checkup had revealed three severe cavities, and her vision screening showed early signs of digital strain. The dentist had been blunt: cut out refined sugar, enforce strict screen-time limits, or watch her teeth rot before she turned eight. Hearing the diagnosis, Emmy had sobbed into my collar, terrified of fillings and thick glasses.
I had spent months policing her diet and hiding the screens, bearing the brunt of every tantrum because I loved her enough to be the bad guy.
And now, my care had become her justification for despising me.
Inside the page, Simon ruffled Emmy’s hair, then wrapped an arm around Genevieve’s waist, pulling her flush against his chest. "How about we stay a few extra days this time, sweetheart?"
Emmy bounced ecstatically on the canopy bed.
Simon immediately shielded Genevieve, his brow furrowing in urgent reproof. "Careful, Emmy. Mommy Genevieve is almost at term. You don't want to hurt your twin brothers."
Emmy nodded with instant, reverent obedience. The sight cleaved straight through my chest.
Just three weeks ago, when I had nervously shared the news of my pregnancy, Emmy had recoiled as if I were carrying a disease. "I hate babies. I don't want a sibling stealing my toys."
Simon had been furious, accusing me of sabotaging him. "You knew Genevieve was carrying twins. Did you get pregnant on purpose to compete with her? You’re pathetic, Leah. Disgustingly manipulative."
When I lost the baby in a pool of blood on our bathroom tiles, I had overheard them outside my hospital curtain, whispering in triumphant relief: "Thank God. The nag's baby is gone."
It hit me then with brutal clarity. They didn't hate children. They just hated mine.
Simon kept his promise. For three whole days, the attic remained silent; neither of them returned.
Summer break was drawing to a close, and months earlier, I had promised Emmy a weekend trip to the coast before school started. I refused to be the one who broke a vow. I dialed Simon’s cell repeatedly until the line finally connected, leaving a terse message.
That evening, the attic door finally clicked open. Simon and Emmy stepped out into the hallway.
The looks they leveled at me were dripping with venom.
"You jealous nag," Emmy spat, glaring up at me. "You just hate seeing me live the good life!"
"Why can't you just vanish?" she added, her tiny voice shrill. "I want Mama Genevieve to come live in this house instead!"
Swallowing the bile in my throat, I knelt down and told her about the coastal cottage I had booked.
She crossed her arms and scoffed. "I’d rather die than go anywhere with you."
She had conveniently forgotten that this trip had been our sacred annual tradition—our little ritual since she was four.
I followed her toward her bedroom, trying to reason with her. "Emmy, the ocean—"
"Slam."
The door rattled in its frame, shutting me out. Behind me, Simon let out a long, theatrical sigh, turned on his heel, and walked straight into the guest bedroom, closing that door too.
Once again, I was the ghost haunting my own home.
2
The next morning, I woke at dawn and baked a batch of fresh custard tarts—the delicate, buttery kind Emmy used to beg for on Saturday mornings.
I tapped gently on her bedroom door. No answer.
I turned the knob and peeked inside. The bed was neatly made, empty.
I checked the guest bedroom. Simon wasn't there either.
Walking up to the attic with leaden feet, I found the book lying open. They had slipped back into the fantasy before the sun had even cleared the trees.
I snapped the book shut. I didn't care to watch their gilded domestic bliss anymore.
Sitting alone at the kitchen table, staring at the golden pastries cooling on the wire rack, the truth settled over me like frost. They had been patronizing me all along. Every night, while I slept exhausted from keeping our real lives afloat, they snuck upstairs to play house with Genevieve.
When they first stumbled upon the book six months ago, they had actually been eager to include me.
"Mommy, the world inside the story is so magical! Come play with us!" Emmy had tugged at my sweater, her eyes round with wonder.
I had tried. I held their hands, placed my palm on the illustrated page, but nothing happened. The parchment was just cold paper under my fingers.
When they realized I was locked out, Simon and Emmy had hugged me tightly, swearing they would never go back—that our real family was all that mattered.
Then came the day they ventured in one last time "just to say goodbye," and met Genevieve.
With Genevieve’s miraculous wealth, Simon became a real-estate mogul in that alternate realm. From that afternoon on, the shift in their demeanor was seismic. They looked at me with thinly veiled contempt, treating my presence as an inconvenience.
Their only frustration was that the portal was unstable; every few days, they were forced to snap back to our reality.
"Why is the nag sitting here?"
A sharp voice broke the silence. Emmy was standing at the bottom of the attic stairs, covering her mouth in dramatic disgust.
Simon stepped down behind her, instinctively moving Emmy behind his back, staring at me with cold suspicion.
I forced down the tremor in my chest, keeping my tone mild. "Emmy, I baked custard tarts. Your favorite."
Emmy didn't even look at the plate. She picked up the tray and dumped the whole batch directly into the trash bin.
"Junk food," she declared. "Mama Genevieve took me to a Michelin-star breakfast this morning. You wouldn't even know what that looks like."
She was right. I wouldn't.
I barely had enough cash to buy groceries. Every checking account, every mutual fund, every scrap of our home equity had been transferred by Simon into that fictional world to "leverage his investments." Even my hospital bill from the miscarriage had been covered by a personal loan from a friend.
Perhaps catching the deadness in my eyes, Simon finally offered a pathetic crumb of pity.
"Leah, come on. She’s seven. Don't take it out on a child." He pulled a crumpled fifty-dollar bill from his pocket and tossed it onto the kitchen counter. "Here. Take this and buy some groceries she actually likes."
I stared down at the lone fifty. "Simon... the mortgage is thirty-two hundred dollars past due. I need at least three thousand."
His face instantly darkened into fury. "Leah, when did you become so damn mercenary?"
"Three thousand dollars? Do you have any idea how hard money is to earn?"
I looked up, meeting his enraged glare without flinching. "You claim you’re a billionaire in that book, Simon. And you're screaming over three thousand dollars for your real house?"
Simon flinched, his eyes darting away in momentary shame before hardening into defensiveness. "I can give it to you if I choose to. You don't get to demand it."
Emmy piped up from behind him, sticking her tongue out. "Yeah, nag! You don't deserve Mama Genevieve’s money!"
A dry, bitter laugh caught in my throat. The sweet little girl who once cried if I so much as stubbed my toe had vanished entirely.
I used to have a career in graphic design. When Emmy was born, her severe separation anxiety meant she screamed until she threw up whenever I left for the office. Simon had begged me to stay home, promising he would provide, promising we were a team.
And now, to both of them, I was just a useless parasite who bled them dry.
Watching their backs disappear once more up the attic stairs, the final thread of hesitation snapped inside me.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the equipment dealer again.
"Deliver the industrial shredder," I said quietly. "Tomorrow morning is fine."
3
When Simon and Emmy materialized in the living room late the following afternoon, Simon had two wailing newborns bundled in his arms.
Without a word of explanation, he dumped the crying infants directly into my lap.
"You wanted a baby so badly you tried to trap me?" he said casually, rolling his shoulders. "Here. Now you have two. You take care of them."
Emmy folded her arms and chimed in, her tone shrill. "Nag, if anything happens to my twin brothers, I'm never forgiving you!"
I stood up immediately, transferring the squirming infants right back into Simon's arms.
"Simon, I am not your wet nurse. And I am certainly not your unpaid nanny."
A flush of humiliated fury swept across his face. He had expected me to dissolve in gratitude, to eagerly play surrogate mother.
Seeing my expression, he lowered his voice, adopting a greasy, cajoling tone. "Leah, be reasonable. You raised Emmy from day one. You have the experience. Genevieve is a first-time mother—she’s overwhelmed and recovering. She can't handle twins."
So he "did" remember that I raised Emmy.
Yet ever since he found his gilded wonderland, he had spoken as if Emmy had magically sprouted from the earth, healthy and articulate, while I did nothing but sit on the couch and spend his money.
I took a steadying breath. "I had a surgical evacuation after my miscarriage less than two weeks ago, Simon. My body is nowhere near healed."
Emmy cut in, rolling her eyes with sickening insolence. "Stop being so dramatic, nag. I asked Mama Genevieve. She said you laid in a hospital bed for three whole days, which means you're totally fine."
She had no idea that when I delivered her seven years ago, I suffered a third-degree hemorrhage that nearly killed me, leaving my iron levels perpetually depleted. She had no idea that losing the second baby had sent me into septic shock.
The twins continued to shriek, their tiny faces turning purple. Incompetent and overwhelmed, Simon looked at me in desperation.
"Fine! You don't have to nurse them! But at least go to the specialty pharmacy and buy organic newborn formula. Please."
I looked at the screaming infants, my chest tightening with involuntary maternal instinct. Against my better judgment, I nodded. Emmy immediately insisted on tagging along.
When we arrived at the high-end boutique grocer downtown, Emmy marched straight past the infant aisle and headed for the luxury wellness section.
With ruthless efficiency, she began piling items into the cart: imported bird's nest collagen drinks, wild ginseng extracts, cold-pressed royal jelly tonics, and expensive postpartum herbal recovery packs.
Watching her stand on her tiptoes to reach a box of liquid iron supplements, a faint, foolish glimmer of warmth stirred in my chest.
Before I could reach out, a clerk in a beige apron hurried over. "Here, sweetie, let me grab that high shelf for you."
"Thank you!" Emmy chimed, giving the clerk a dazzling, angelic smile.
The clerk looked over at me, her eyes brimming with admiration. "Your daughter is so incredibly thoughtful. She’s stocking up a whole recovery kit for you!"
Emmy’s smile vanished instantly. She pulled back in disgust, speaking loudly enough for half the aisle to hear.
"These aren't for the nag. These are for my real mommy."
The clerk froze, the polite smile curdling on her lips as she glanced between us in profound awkwardness.
Emmy’s high-pitched voice echoed across the marble floor. "The nag only knows how to waste Daddy’s cash. She doesn't deserve good medicine. Mama Genevieve is gentle and beautiful, and she just gave Daddy two baby boys. She needs to rebuild her strength."
She casually tossed another fifty-dollar box of recovery tea into the cart.
"The mother at home is old, ugly, and tired. I can't stand looking at her. Once Mama Genevieve crosses over to our world, we’ll finally be a real family of five."
The clerk turned bright red, nervously clearing her throat. "Ma'am... kids say the strangest things when they play pretend. Don't take it to heart."
I didn't answer. Because I knew Emmy wasn't playing pretend. In her heart, Genevieve had already erased me from existence.
Just then, my phone chimed in my pocket, and a man’s voice called out from behind us.
"Excuse me—Mrs. Dalton?"
I turned. A delivery driver holding a clipboard approached. "I’m from Apex Industrial. We had a cancellation in your neighborhood, so your shredder is outside on the truck now. Can we drop it off at your place in twenty minutes?"
I looked at Emmy, who was meticulously inspecting gold-embossed boxes of recovery tonics.
"Yes," I said quietly. "I’ll meet you there."
4
The moment I stepped through the front door, Simon pounced.
"Where the hell have you been, Leah? What took so long to buy formula?"
"The boys have been screaming their heads off! Just because they aren't yours, you let them starve?"
He violently snatched the shopping bag from my hand, tearing into the packaging and shoving the formula canister into my chest. "Hurry up and mix the bottles! Don't just stand there like a useless piece of furniture!"
"Useless."
The word lodged in my ribs like a sliver of broken glass.
Before they discovered their magical portal, I was the mother who could fix anything. If a knee was scraped, I had the cartoon bandages; if a nightmare struck, I sat by the bed singing until dawn. Even when I threw together a simple pasta bake, they used to cheer around the table.
Now, I was merely an obstacle between them and their manufactured perfection.
I mixed the bottles in silence and handed them over. Simon clumsily jammed the nipples into the babies' mouths.
From down the hall, Emmy shouted from her bedroom doorway. "I'm starving! Nag, make me dinner!"
Ten minutes later, I placed a bowl of plain instant chicken ramen in front of her.
Emmy stared at the steaming noodles, her brow furrowing in genuine shock. "You always said instant ramen was garbage food full of preservatives. Why are you giving me this?"
I looked at my daughter’s small, familiar face. So she "did" remember every rule I had ever laid down. She knew every boundary was set out of love. She just chose to weaponize it anyway.
"Eat it if you're hungry," I said calmly.
Emmy sneered, picking up her fork. "Don't think you can win me over by pretending to be cool like Mama Genevieve. You’ll never be her. You’re nothing to me."
She began inhaling the noodles, completely indifferent to the woman standing over her.
Fortunately, my heart had gone completely numb. Her words couldn't cut me anymore; there was no soft tissue left to bleed.
In the living room, Simon finally managed to burp the infants into a milk-drunk slumber. Seeing me sitting on the sofa, eating a bowl of broth in silence, his temper flared again.
"Leah, honestly, what purpose do you serve in this house?"
I took a slow sip of broth and looked up. "None, apparently."
Simon stared at me, thrown off balance by the lack of tears or argument. He scoffed, clutching the babies tighter. "Unbelievable. Genevieve was naive enough to think you had a maternal bone in your body. Handing these boys to an unhinged woman like you would be child abuse."
He turned and hauled the twins up the stairs toward the attic.
Emmy heard the commotion and darted out of her room, dragging two enormous shopping bags packed with the luxury postpartum tonics.
"Daddy, wait for me! I'm coming to see Mama Genevieve too!"
"I bought her so many recovery gifts! She’s going to be so happy!"
Her small frame was bowed under the weight of the bags, but her face was flushed with pure, radiant joy—the kind of joy she hadn't shown me in over a year.
Father, daughter, and their phantom infants vanished into the attic room.
I listened to the latch click shut. Then I pulled out my phone and dialed my attorney.
"Mr. Barnes," I said, my voice steady. "Draft the divorce petition."
"Contested divorces can be protracted, Leah," Barnes replied gently. "Unless you have concrete, irrefutable evidence of abandonment or infidelity."
My gaze drifted to the discrete 4K nursery monitor mounted high in the corner of the ceiling moldings—the one Simon had never bothered to notice.
"I have footage, Mr. Barnes. More than enough."
An hour later, the delivery technicians rolled a commercial-grade, multi-blade steel shredder into the entryway.
"All set, ma'am. Plugged in and tested. This thing can grind through five hundred pages of heavy cardstock in under thirty seconds."
"Thank you," I said, signing the invoice and charging the final balance to our joint credit line.
After the men left, I climbed the attic stairs and pushed open the door.
From the glowing depths of the vintage storybook, peals of silvery laughter drifted into the dusty room.
"Mama Genevieve, please come live in our world! I only want you as my mommy forever!"
"Look at our boys, sweetheart... they have your eyes. I can’t wait to introduce you to my parents..."
I didn't blink. I didn't cry.
I reached down, lifted the leather-bound book from its gilded stand, walked over to the roaring steel blades of the shredder, and dropped it into the hopper.