Too much cologne. Too much enthusiasm. Too much of absolutely everything for someone who was supposedly just going to “work” on a dreary Saturday morning.
I turned away before he could catch my reflection in the glass and padded silently down the hallway, the plush carpet absorbing the sound of my bare feet. I entered the kitchen, the cool granite of the countertops grounding me. I stood by the espresso machine, watching the dark, rich liquid of the morning coffee finish pouring into his favorite ceramic cup.
In my right hand, hidden against the folds of my robe, I held a small, unassuming plastic bottle of liquid laxative.
This wasn’t an impulsive decision. I hadn’t woken up in a manic frenzy, driven by sudden, blind rage. No, the heavy little bottle in my palm was the culmination of a slow, agonizing death by a thousand paper cuts. It was the result of six months of oppressive silence over dinner. It was the product of hushed phone calls that abruptly ended the second I walked into the living room. It was the bitter harvest of all those “urgent strategy meetings” that miraculously always seemed to fall on Friday nights.
And above all, it was about the digital ghost I had encountered the night before.
At 1:00 AM, while Julian snored softly beside me, his phone had buzzed on the nightstand. The screen had lit up, casting a pale, clinical glow across his sleeping face. I usually never checked his phone. I had always prided myself on not being that kind of wife. But intuition is a terrible, feral thing when it finally wakes up.
