I drove home early, telling Rick I had a family emergency. Not technically a lie, I reasoned. My family was definitely having an emergency, even if they didn't know it yet. Megan's laptop was still on the kitchen counter where she'd left it that morning. She'd gotten a new MacBook from work and had been meaning to wipe this old one before donating it.
Lucky for me, she was a procrastinator. It took me about 10 minutes to crack her password. She'd always been terrible with computer security, using the same three passwords for everything. The third one worked. Emily 2003, our daughter's birth year.
What I found in her browser history made my stomach clench like a fist: dating apps, lots of them. Tinder, Bumble, Match, even some sites I'd never heard of. Her profiles were still active, filled with photos I recognized from our last vacation to the beach. Photos I'd taken. But it was the message history that really got to me.
Months of conversations with different men, including several with Nathan that went back to January. This wasn't some sudden impulse or midlife crisis. This was a campaign carefully planned and executed while I'd been fixing leaky radiators and debugging network servers. The most recent exchange with Nathan was from yesterday. Nathan, still on for tomorrow?
I made reservations at Shay Lauron. Megan, can't wait. Jack's being his usual clueless self. I don't think he suspects anything. Nathan, poor bastard.
You sure you don't want to just tell him? Megan, not yet. I want to see how far I can push this. It's actually kind of fun. Fun?
She thought destroying our marriage was fun. I screenshotted everything, uploaded the images to a secure cloud drive, and closed the laptop. My hands were shaking, but not from anger, from something colder, more focused. For the first time in months, maybe years, I felt completely clear about what I needed to do. Megan came home around 5, fresh from the salon with her hair styled and her nails done.
She'd bought a new dress, too, something black and clingy that she definitely hadn't worn for me in recent memory. "How do I look?" she asked, doing a little spin in the living room. Beautiful, I said, and meant it. She was beautiful. That had never been the problem.
I should be home by 11:00, she said, checking her reflection in the hallway mirror. Don't wait up. Have fun, I told her. She paused at the front door, her hand on the knob, and for just a moment, I thought she might change her mind. Come back and tell me this was all some elaborate test, some twisted way of getting my attention.
Instead, she smiled that bright false smile and walked out into the evening. I waited exactly 10 minutes, then grabbed my keys. Shay Lauron was exactly the kind of pretentious place I'd expected Nathan to choose. Valet parking, cloth napkins, and entre that cost more than most people made in a day. I parked across the street in the lot of a defunct electronic store and settled in to watch.
They were seated at a table by the window, perfect for my surveillance needs. Nathan had gone all out, suit, tie, probably enough cologne to choke a horse from 50 yards away. Megan was animated, laughing at whatever charming nonsense he was feeding her. She looked happy in a way I hadn't seen in years. That should have hurt more than it did.
I stayed for about an hour, long enough to take some photos with my phone and confirm what I already knew. Then I drove to Nathan's building, a glass and steel monument to young professional success downtown. The parking garage was easy enough to access. Just had to wait for another resident to swipe in and follow behind. Nathan's BMW was right where I expected it to be, gleaming under the fluorescent lights.
I walked around it slowly, admiring the paint job, the custom rims, the vanity plate that read Nate One. Everything about it screamed, "Look at me. I'm successful." I pulled out my keys and carved karma deep into the driver's side door. It felt better than I'd expected. Therapeutic even.
But I wasn't done. I'd brought a small notebook and pen, and I wrote out a fake parking citation complete with official sounding language about unauthorized use of visitor spaces. At the bottom, I added, "Next time, park where you belong." As I was tucking the note under his windshield wiper, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number. You're not as clever as you think. L I stared at the message, my pulse quickening.
Someone was watching me. But who? And how did they get my number? I looked around the garage, but it was empty except for the rows of expensive cars belonging to Nathan's neighbors. The security cameras were obvious enough.
Black domes mounted every 50 feet or so. Had someone seen me on the monitors? Was building security about to show up? I pocketed my phone and walked casually back to my car, fighting the urge to run. Whatever was happening, whoever l was, I'd deal with it later.
Right now, I had a cheating wife to get home to. Megan rolled in around midnight, reeked of wine and Nathan's cologne. I was in bed pretending to read when she stumbled into the bathroom. She took a long shower, probably washing off the evidence of whatever they'd done after dinner. "How was your evening?" I asked when she finally came to bed.