5. Corey
— ? —
Corey
The warmth started the night I fell asleep at the anniversary dinner.
I remember waking up with a blanket over my shoulders, my neck stiff from sleeping in that ridiculous chair, guilt sitting heavy in my chest like a stone.
The next few days were normal, the usual distance, her disappointment radiating off her in waves I’d learned to tune out because acknowledging them meant admitting I was failing her.
And then something shifted. She started texting me during the day, just to say she was thinking about me.
Little things, random things, a photo of a dog she saw on her lunch break or a memory from when we were dating.
Then came the dinners cooked every night, the waiting up no matter how late I worked, the reaching for my hand when we watched TV like she used to when we were first married and still couldn’t believe we got to touch each other whenever we wanted.
Last night she looked at me like I was worth saving. She said she loved me like she meant it more than she’d ever meant anything. She took me to bed and made me believe, for a few perfect hours, that we could find our way back to each other.
But now I’m sitting in my study at 3 a.m., staring at my laptop screen without seeing it, and I can’t stop doing math that makes me sick to my stomach.
The change started right after that night. The night she left at midnight and came home smelling like someone else’s house. The night she wouldn’t tell me where she’d been or what had happened or why she’d been crying.
She’s been different since then, warmer, more attentive, more present than she’s been in months, maybe years.
And in my experience, people don’t suddenly become kinder without a reason.
Kindness is currency. It buys forgiveness for the things you haven’t confessed yet. It softens the blow that’s coming.
I think about my mother. The way she’d turn sweet right before she asked for money, right before she needed a favor, right before she pulled the rug out from under me.
I learned about love from a woman who used affection like a weapon, and no matter how many times I tell myself that Willow isn’t her, my brain won’t stop making the comparison.
Willow isn’t my mother. She’s good and kind and honest, the most honest person I’ve ever known. She doesn’t have a manipulative bone in her body.
But the midnight run. The dinners with Glenn, three in the past two weeks. The way she lights up when she talks about work, which really means when she talks about him. The text I saw on her phone when she left it on the kitchen counter: Dinner again tonight?
I close my laptop and sit in the dark, listening to the silence of the house.
I should go back to bed, wrap myself around my wife, and trust that the woman who chose me over her own family wouldn’t throw that choice away for someone like Glenn Skair. I should be the husband she deserves instead of the paranoid wreck I actually am.
But my phone is in my hand, and I’m opening our shared cloud account before I can stop myself.
We synced our phones years ago, back when we shared everything, back when we had no secrets worth keeping.
I haven’t looked at her messages in months.
Maybe years. It felt like a violation, like something a jealous boyfriend would do, not a husband who trusted his wife.
I don’t feel like a trusting husband right now.
Mostly work stuff. Reminders about meetings, threads with colleagues about projects I don’t understand. A conversation with a friend about brunch on Sunday, complaints about a difficult donor, mundane everyday things that shouldn’t make my heart race but do.
And Glenn. Message after message with Glenn.
Dinner again tonight?
Thanks for listening. I don’t know what I’d do without you.
Same time tomorrow? I’ll buy this time.
You’re the only person I can talk to about this.
The messages span weeks. Dinners, coffees, late-night phone calls. She’s been spending more time with him than with me, and she never mentions it. She comes home and asks about my day and acts like everything is normal, like she hasn’t been living a whole separate life I know nothing about.
I put the phone down. Pick it up again. Put it down.
This is insane. I’m invading my wife’s privacy because I’m too broken to trust her, too damaged by my shitty childhood to believe that someone could love me without ulterior motives.
She’s having dinner with her boss. Her friend.
People do that. Normal people do that all the time without it meaning anything sinister.
But the midnight run. The smell of someone else’s house. The way she came home with tears on her face and wouldn’t tell me why.
I stand up. Sit back down. Stand up again.
Tomorrow I’ll follow her. Just once, to see where she goes, what she does, who she’s with, to put my mind at rest and prove to myself that I’m being paranoid, that the demons in my head are liars, that my wife loves me the way she says she does.
The thought makes me physically sick. Trailing my wife like she’s a suspect, spying on her like I’ve already convicted her of a crime she hasn’t committed.
It’s wrong, invasive, controlling, exactly what I swore I’d never do, because I know how it feels to be watched, to be suspected, to have every move analyzed for signs of betrayal.
But I need to know, or this suspicion is going to eat me alive. It’s going to poison everything we have left until there’s nothing worth saving.
I close my laptop and lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.
She’s probably innocent, probably just being a good friend to someone going through a hard time, and she’s probably going to be horrified if she ever finds out what I’m planning, if she ever learns that I doubted her this deeply.
But I need the truth, even if it destroys me, even if it destroys us.
I have to know.