My wife cheated on me with my uncle while he was living in my house. But that wasn't the part that changed my relationship with my father. My dad already knew something was going on between them. And when I told him I wanted my uncle out of my house, he looked me in the eye and told me to give him more time. I did.
The affair never stopped. I didn't know any of that at the time. My name is Mason Reed. I was 37 when this happened, and I'd been married to my wife, Jenna, for 8 years. We lived outside Nashville in a four-bedroom house we'd bought 5 years earlier.
The kind of place with more room than two people really needed, but that we'd convinced ourselves we'd grow into. We had talked about kids. We had talked about moving eventually. We had talked about all the normal things married people talk about when they assumed the person across the kitchen table is still living the same life they are. I worked as a regional sales manager for a commercial HVAC supplier.
It wasn't glamorous, but it paid well, and I liked the work. The downside was travel. Most weeks I was home, but two or three times a month I'd drive to Knoxville, Chattanooga, Louisville, sometimes farther, meet contractors or property managers, stay a night, and come back. Jenna knew my schedule better than I did. So did my uncle Travis.
Travis was my father's younger brother. He was 49, 12 years older than me. And growing up, he had been the uncle who never really acted like an uncle. He showed up at cookouts in a baseball cap and brought fireworks when my dad said not to. He taught me how to drive a stick shift in an old pickup when I was 15.
When I got married, he was one of the people still standing on the dance floor at midnight. I trusted him because there had never been a reason not to. About 10 months before everything came apart, Travis's marriage ended. I never knew every detail. He and his wife Melissa had been unhappy for a while.
There were arguments about money, his hours, her wanting to move closer to her sister. By the time the divorce papers were filed, Travis was already sleeping on a friend's couch. My father, Walter, called me one Sunday afternoon. Your uncle needs a place for a few weeks. That was how he put it.
A few weeks. Travis was waiting for some money to clear from the sale of the house, and the apartment he wanted wouldn't be available until the following month. Dad's place was smaller, and my mother had turned the spare bedroom into a sewing room years earlier. Jenna was in the kitchen when I told her. "Of course, he can stay here," she said before I even finished explaining.
"He's family." I remember that sentence because she said it more than once over the next several months. Travis arrived with two suitcases, three cardboard boxes, and a duffel bag full of tools. I helped him carry everything into the guest room. He offered me rent. I told him not to be ridiculous.
He offered again. I said, "Buy groceries once in a while and we're good." For the first month, having him there was easier than I expected. He left early most mornings. He did maintenance work for a commercial property company and picked up side jobs when he could. He fixed things around the house without being asked.
Once when I got home late from Knoxville, he had grilled steaks and left one covered in foil for me. Jenna seemed comfortable with him, but that didn't strike me as strange. She had known Travis for almost a decade. If anything, I was relieved they got along. There was one Sunday in that first stretch when the three of us spent most of the afternoon in the backyard.
Travis had borrowed a pressure washer from work and cleaned the patio while Jenna brought out sandwiches and complained that both of us were getting dirty water on the back door. Later, we sat outside with beers while the grill heated up. Travis made some joke about being the unwanted third roommate and Jenna told him he was easier to live with than I was because at least he put his coffee cup in the dishwasher. I remember laughing. It felt ordinary.
That was the point. Nothing about the three of us sitting there made me feel like I needed to protect my marriage from the man sleeping down the hall. The apartment Travis was supposedly waiting on fell through. Then he said he was looking at another place. Then that landlord wanted a bigger deposit than he'd expected.
Then work got slow for a couple of weeks. There was always a reason. By the third month, I started getting tired of sharing my house. It wasn't one big thing. It was little things.
I'd wake up on Saturday and find Travis already drinking coffee at the kitchen island. I'd come home and hear his television through the guest room wall. Jenna and I couldn't have an argument without wondering whether someone else could hear it. One night, I told Jenna I thought it was time for Travis to find somewhere else. She was folding laundry on our bed.
He's trying, she said. I know, but it's been 3 months. His whole life just fell apart. Mason, I didn't say throw him on the street. She looked at me like I was being harder than I realized.
He's family. Give him some time. So, I did. That was one of the things that bothered me most later. Not that she lied.
There were hundreds of lies by then. It was that she had made my decency useful to her. Around the fourth month, small things started happening that I noticed without really noticing. Travis knew my travel schedule. That wasn't strange by itself.
We all lived together, but sometimes he knew details I didn't remember telling him. One Monday morning, he asked whether I was still going to Chattanooga Thursday night. I said, "How do you know about that?" He shrugged toward Jenna. She mentioned it. Jenna was standing at the sink.
She didn't turn around. I didn't think anything of it. Another time, I came home from Louisville a day earlier than expected because a customer cancelled our second meeting. Travis was in the garage when I pulled in. He looked surprised.
Thought you weren't back until tomorrow. Meeting got cancelled. He nodded, then smiled. Good. Saves you a hotel night.
Nothing about that exchange seemed important. Then later, I remembered every word. Jenna also started asking what time I expected to leave before trips instead of just what day. Once I walked into the kitchen and they both stopped talking. I joked, "What?
Are you two planning my murder?" Travis laughed. Jenna threw a dish towel at me. I trusted them, so none of it felt like proof of anything. By the sixth month, I had decided Travis needed a deadline. I didn't tell Jenna first.