Page 4 of Pretend You Love Me

It’s not shock, really. It’s not even surprise, though God knows I should be surprised. It’s a type of stillness that reminds me of standing at the edge of a frozen pond as a child, listening to the crack beneath my feet and knowing, in that suspended moment before the fall, that everything has already changed.

My brain, usually so loud, so quick with a comment or a joke or a self-deprecating observation, goes completely quiet. There’s nothing to say. No joke to make. No observation that doesn’t taste like ashes in my mouth.

I don’t confront him. The thought doesn’t even cross my mind. Instead, I keep sitting there, the phone in my hand suddenly feeling like it weighs twenty pounds, and I begin to look. Not because I want to find more, I’ve already found more than enough, but because some distant, practical part of my brain has already started calculating how much I need to know before I can decide my next move.

I exit Snapchat, my thumb moving with a steadiness that surprises me, and check his regular messages. Nothing there. Just the usual, work group chats, texts from his mom asking if we need anything, the thread between him and me that’s mostly logistics and baby updates these days. I swipe to his call log. Nothing unusual there either, just incoming or outgoing calls to people I recognize, spread out over the past few weeks in a pattern that suggests nothing out of the ordinary.

His apps tell the same story. Email, calendar, weather, the shopping app I originally reached for. All of it perfectly, painfully normal. The phone of a man who has nothing to hide.

But I know what I saw. And more importantly, I know Daniel, know how his mind works, how he approaches problems. He’s always been the practical one, the one who thinks three steps ahead. If he’s going to hide something, he’s not going to leave it somewhere obvious.

My hands don’t shake as I open the browser on his phone. They should, probably. I should be crying or at the very least not sitting here in stunned silence, but instead I’m typing “how to find hidden apps on Samsung Galaxy” into the search bar, watching as the results populate with exactly the information I need.

It’s surprisingly easy. A few swipes, a specific gesture on the home screen, and suddenly I’m looking at a folder I’ve never seen before. A folder labelled “Utilities.” Of course it’s labelled Utilities. Of course it is. Because Daniel has always had a gift for naming things to hide what they really are. I used to find it endearing when he called the toaster a ‘bread pop.’ Now it just makes me feel sick.

Inside the folder are three apps. Two messaging platforms I don’t recognize, not WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or anything I’ve ever used, and one with a small flame icon that I don’t have to open to know is some kind of hookup app.

I open them one by one, working my way through with the methodical focus of someone defusing a bomb. And it’s all there, the full, documented history of my husband’s betrayal, laid out in timestamps and usernames and explicit photos that make my stomach turn.

He started seven months ago from what I can see. When I was almost eight months pregnant with the twins, my body so swollen and uncomfortable that getting off the couch required both hands and a running start. When I was in so much pain from the pressure on my sciatic nerve that I cried every time I stood up. When he stopped touching me because, he said, he was “worried about hurting me or the babies.”

Turns out he was just worried about finding someone who didn’t waddle.

There are multiple women. At least three, including the one from the snapchat message, JazzyGirl (Jasmine, I confirm from one message where she mentions her full name), someone who goes by Lexi, and a third who uses her full name, Victoria, which feels almost courteous given the circumstances. They all know about me. Not by name, but by circumstance, “my pregnant wife,” “the twins’ mom,” “things at home.” They know he’s married. They know about the babies. And they don’t care. Or worse, they care just the right amount, enough to ask how he’s holding up, enough to offer support and understanding and very enthusiastic sex, but not enough to make him feel guilty about any of it.

The most recent messages are from last week, explicit plans to meet at a hotel near Daniel’s office during his “lunch break,” complete with a photo of the room key and a message about how “worth the wait” she’s going to be. I scroll back further, my thumb moving faster now, past the dates that blur together, afternoons when he was “working late,” weekends when he “needed to clear his head with a drive,” nights when he came to bed smelling like soap and mint gum and something I couldn’t quite place.

Then I find something even worse. A message thread timestamped two days after the twins were born. The day they were transferred to the NICU because Maisie’s breathing was irregular and Milo had developed jaundice. The day I sat in a plastic chair between their two tiny plastic isolation beds, my body still bleeding, my breasts aching, watching the monitors track each laboured breath.

Daniel: “Can’t meet tonight. Things complicated with the babies. In NICU.”

Lexi: “Oh no! Poor things. Hope they’re okay. Thinking of you. Let me know when I can help take your mind off things.”

Daniel: “Will do. Might be a few days. They’re keeping them for observation.”

Lexi: “No rush. I’ll be here. Send pics when you can?”

And then, twenty minutes later:

Daniel: “Here’s one of me in the hospital bathroom. Thinking of you.”

There’s a photo attached. I don’t open it. I don’t need to.

The lawn mower is still going outside, but the sound has changed, it’s making a different pitch of noise now, which means Daniel is almost finished with the front yard and heading back towards the house. I have maybe five minutes before he comes inside.

I carefully move Milo down onto the sofa, thankfully keeping him asleep as I switch to my own phone, open the camera app, and select screen recording. Then I go back to Daniel’s phone and start scrolling. I capture everything I can stomach, usernames, photos, timestamps, the specific messages about hotels and motels and the back seat of his car in the parking lot behind his office. I record the calendar where he’s marked our anniversary in one colour and his meetups with the women in another. I record the Venmo transactions, $40 for “drinks” on a Tuesday night when he told me he was working late. $60 for “dinner” the night before Maisie’s one-month checkup.

My hands are steady. My breathing is even. The only sign that anything is wrong is the single tear that tracks down my cheek and lands on the back of my hand, a perfect round drop that I watch with detached curiosity, as if it belongs to someone else.

The lawn mower cuts off. Just like that, the mechanical hum replaced by sudden, overwhelming silence.

I close everything, each app, each folder, each incriminating thread, with quick, efficient movements. I put the phone back on the coffee table, just where it was, screen facing down, case slightly askew the way Daniel always leaves it. I pick up my paperback from beside the couch cushion, open it to a random page, and settle back against the pillows just as the back door opens and closes.

Daniel appears in the doorway to the living room, sweaty and flushed from the heat, grass clippings stuck to his shoes. “Hey,” he says, his voice warm and familiar. “You want me to start dinner? I was thinking pasta.”

I look up from my book, my face arranged in what I hope is a normal expression. “Yes please,” I say, my voice steady. “That would be great.”

He smiles, the same smile he’s been giving me for years, the one that used to make my stomach flip, and disappears into the kitchen. A moment later, I hear the water running, the soft clatter of pots being moved from cabinet to stove.