Chapter 2

Three months ago, I found the message.

Richard was in the shower when his phone lit up.

A notification came up, and I could not stop myself from reading it.

The message on the screen said: [Richard, thank you for being with me today.]

The contact name was Sophie Green.

It was a woman's name.

I read that line for a long time, then put the phone back and rolled over.

He came out of the shower with his hair still wet.

He picked up his phone, looked at it, and then looked at me.

I kept my eyes shut.

He thought I was asleep.

He answered the message, turned off the light, and lay down.

In the dark, I opened my eyes.

I didn't cry.

There was only one thing on my mind.

I wanted to know how long I was supposed to wait.

But I never got an answer.

Because the next day I found something else.

There was a locked folder in the photo app on his phone.

I worked out the passcode, which was his birthday followed by mine.

There were more than a hundred photos inside.

Every one of them was the same girl.

But she was not Sophie.

She was somebody else.

The contact name was Lucy Young.

In the photos, she had her hair in a bun and was wearing a slip dress, laughing on a beach.

In one of them, she was leaning on Richard's shoulder while he kissed her forehead.

The photo was dated May 2023.

We had been married three years by then.

I was home managing the renovation on our new place, and he was supposedly away on a business trip.

So that was what a business trip meant.

*****

I didn't say anything.

I kept going through the phone.

Besides Sophie and Lucy, there was one more name in his contacts, Chloe Miles.

The last conversation between him and Chloe had happened three days earlier.

Chloe: [Babe, I miss you.]

Richard: [Sweetie, I'll come see you tomorrow.]

Chloe: [Can you take me back to that restaurant?]

Richard: [Sure, you can have anything you want.]

Babe.

He let someone else call him "babe."

I looked at that word with my fingers shaking.

It wasn't anger.

It was cold.

It was a cold that came up from somewhere deep.

The man I had married had three women on the side.

No, there were probably more.

Three was all I had found.

I put his phone down, walked into the bathroom, and turned on the shower.

The water was scalding, and my skin went red under it.

But I didn't feel the heat.

I just felt dirty.

For five years, I had slept in a bed I had no way of counting the women in.

I had kissed a mouth that had kissed more women than I could count.

I had called a man babe while other women were calling him the same thing.

I crouched down in the shower and let the water run over me.

I didn't cry.

I stayed down there for a long time.

I stayed long enough for the water to run cold, long enough for my skin to wrinkle, and long enough for Richard to finish his own shower and knock on the door.

"Emma? You've been in there an hour," he called.

I turned off the water, dried off, and put on my pajamas.

Then I opened the door and looked at him.

"Why are you staring at me?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "There's a hair on your face."

I reached out and picked it off.

It was long and brown.

My hair was short and black.

It was not mine.

He didn't even notice.

"Thanks," he said, turning to leave. "Get some sleep."

I stood in the hallway and watched him walk away.

This man cheated openly and easily, as if it were the natural order of things.

He didn't think he needed to hide it.

Because it never occurred to him that I would find out.

Or because he didn't care if I did.

He believed I would never leave.