The evening I discovered Garrett was betraying our marriage, I was not searching for evidence of his lies. I was simply trying to find a charging cable for my dying phone so I could set my alarm for the next morning.
It was nearly eleven o’clock at night, and our master bedroom was swallowed in shadows except for the harsh blue glow of my husband’s phone on the nightstand. Garrett was in the bathroom with the shower running, and I could hear him humming a cheerful tune like he was the happiest man in the entire world.
I leaned over the edge of the bed to reach for the cord, but his screen flashed brightly before my hand could find it. A notification appeared from a contact saved as Natalie H, and the words on the screen felt like a physical blow to my chest.
The message said that she could still smell his expensive cologne on her pillowcase from earlier that afternoon. For a long moment, the air in the room felt too thick to breathe, and I remained frozen in the darkness.
I knew that the right thing to do was to put the device back and wait for a calm moment to speak, but my heart was racing too fast for logic. After nine years of building a life together and moving across the country twice for his promotions, I felt I deserved the truth.
I had abandoned my own career path to support his ambitions, and I had spent countless nights alone while he supposedly worked late at the firm. I unlocked the phone and found a long history of messages that stretched back for more than six months.
