I was very wrong.
Two days later, my social media notifications were absolutely on fire.
Mark had published a massive, dramatic post claiming that I was a controlling, obsessive woman who was entirely incapable of love.
According to his version of events, I had humiliated him for years, treated him like an underpaid employee, and essentially forced him to seek affection in the arms of another person.
His mother, Martha, shared the post with a caption: “A mother always knows when her children are suffering in total silence.”
His sister, Brenda, added her own comment: “There are some women who would rather see a man destroyed than see him truly happy.”
The worst part was reading the comments from people I barely even knew.
They were giving their opinions as if they had spent years living in my house.
“Jessica always seemed like such a heavy, difficult person to deal with.”
“I bet he simply could not take her coldness anymore.”
“Poor Melanie, at least she actually loves him.”
For a moment, my hands were trembling with rage.
Then I remembered something extremely important: Mark was charming, but he was also incredibly careless.
I called up my old college friend, David, who worked in IT and had helped me several times with office data backups.
He arrived at my house that evening with his laptop and a bag of coffee.
“I am not going to delete or invent anything,” he warned me at the table. “We are just going to see what he left behind on his devices.”
On an old tablet that Mark had completely forgotten in the back of my closet, his email account was still logged in.
