He walked ahead. She followed, head lowered, a soft smile blooming on her face.
And then I remembered. I knew that man.
The year we got married, Averie said a college classmate was in town and invited us to dinner.
She’d called him “an old friend from back then.”
After the meal, she walked him downstairs. When she returned, her eyes were red.
She said that a classmate had praised me for being a good man.
Now, he had reappeared. By my wife’s side. At a hotel entrance.
After the last photo, the detective sent one final message. [They stayed for five hours. When she came out, she had changed clothes.]
I didn’t reply.
I sat alone on the sofa, swallowed by darkness. The lights were off, and my phone screen had long gone black.
Silence filled the room.
From the kitchen, the fridge ticked steadily. Upstairs, someone dragged a chair across the floor. Outside, rain tapped lightly against the windows.
I sat there like a hollowed-out shell, empty and unmoving.
She had lied to me.
Not for a day. Not for a month. But for years.
I replayed the look in her eyes every time she left the house, the softness in her voice over the phone, and the faint scent on her clothes when she returned.