You are hurting me. Every second you sit there trying to make yourself feel better with apologies that don't mean anything, you're hurting me. I walked to the bookshelf where I had hidden the folder, pulled it out, set it on the key table between us with a sound like a judge's gavvel. This is 6 months of evidence. Phone records, credit card statements, security footage from the office parking garage showing you leaving together at midnight on dates when you told me you were working late.
Screenshots of texts where you called him baby and where he told you what he wanted to do to you when you were finally alone. Rachel stared at the folder like it was a bomb. You've been spying on me. I've been protecting myself. I corrected.
There's a difference. You created this situation and I responded to it. Don't try to make me the villain in your story. She reached for the folder with a shaking hand, opened it, started flipping through pages. I watched her face as she saw it all laid out, the evidence of her betrayal, organized chronologically, highlighted, annotated.
I'd spent 14 days building this case with the thoroughess of a prosecutor preparing for trial. What are you going to do with this? She asked finally. That depends on what? On whether you're capable of telling me the truth.
The whole truth. Not the edited version you have been rehearsing on the drive home. Not the sanitized story where you minimize what happened and maximize my supposed failures as a husband. The actual complete truth about you and Marcus. She closed the folder, pressed her palms against it like she could somehow erase what was inside.
We slept together. The words hung in the air. Even though I'd known, had known for days, really. Hearing her say it out loud was different. It made it real in a way that evidence never could.
It transformed abstract betrayal into concrete fact. When my voice sounded distant to my own ears. The first time was in July after the company summer party. We'd both been drinking and he drove me home because you were out of town and I invited him in for coffee and I don't need the playbyplay. How many times total?
She hesitated. I don't know. Maybe maybe 10, 12 in the Bahamas trip. We were together the whole time. It wasn't a work retreat.
There was no conference. We just we wanted time alone away from everything. I nodded slowly, absorbing this. Did you use our savings account to pay for your half of the trip? The account we've been building for the down payment on a bigger house.
Her silence was answer enough. Okay. I walked back to my chair, sat down, picked up my book. You should pack a bag. What?