“Sissy, it hurts,” she cried. I cleaned the scrape, put on a cartoon Band-Aid, kissed her knee, and told her she’d be okay. She believed me right away, because little kids believe the people who protect them. And now that same little girl had been sneaking around with my fiancé in roadside motels. Life has a mean sense of humor.
Around three in the morning, when Mike was finally asleep, I got out of bed as quietly as I could. His phone was charging on the nightstand. In three years together, I had never once gone through his phone. I believed couples should have trust, respect, and privacy. I had been spectacularly naive.
His passcode was my birthday. Six simple digits. The irony was hard to miss. His messages with Katie were right there in plain sight. Not hidden. Not deleted. Not disguised under some fake name. Just sitting in the main message list under her real name and smiling profile picture.
He hadn’t even bothered to be careful. Either he thought I was too trusting to notice, or he simply didn’t care. I opened the thread and started reading. This wasn’t a one-time mistake. It was an ongoing affair.
“Mike, you need to call off the wedding,” she had written. “Katie, calm down. We’ve been over this,” he replied. “But I love you. Don’t you get that? I really love you.” “What we have is an affair,” he wrote back. “I like being with you. You’re fun, and the sex is good. But that’s all it is. If you want, we can keep seeing each other after I marry Alana, but I am marrying Alana.”
“If you don’t call it off, I’ll tell her everything.” “Don’t do that, Katie. Seriously. Don’t.” “Why not? Are you afraid to lose her because you love her more than me?” “I’m not building a life with you. You’re too young and too immature for that. This has no future.”
“You’re a coward, Mike. You’re just using me.” “I’m not using you. We’re having fun. Listen to me: I’m thirty-five, and you’re twenty. Your sister has a law degree, a career, and standing in the community. You don’t do anything. There was never going to be a future here.”
I kept reading and found another exchange from the week before. “I told Mom about us,” Katie wrote proudly. “You did what?” Mike replied. “Why?” “Relax. She won’t tell Alana. She said it’s just a fling and I’ll get over it.”
“Your mother knows you’re sleeping with your sister’s fiancé, and her only response is that it’s a fling?” he wrote. “Mom always takes my side. She thinks I’ll get tired of you and move on. She’s wrong. What we have is real. I love you, Mike, and I love you more than Alana does.”
“Katie, you’re too young for me. This is going nowhere. I’m never leaving Alana for a kid.” I stopped reading and stared at the wall. My mother knew. That hit me harder than anything else. My own mother knew my sister was having an affair with my fiancé.
She had known for weeks, maybe longer, and said nothing. To her it was “just a fling.” She was protecting Katie again, the way she always had. I put the phone back on the nightstand, went into the bathroom, locked the door, and looked at myself in the mirror.
The woman staring back at me looked exhausted and older than thirty. Brown hair in a messy bun. Dark circles under her eyes no concealer could hide. A successful attorney. Owner of her own firm. Two weeks from marriage. A woman who had believed she had her life under control.
What a joke. I went back to bed, stared at the ceiling, and made a decision. I was not going to call off the wedding in tears. I was not going to scream, beg, or demand explanations. That was what they expected. That was what people always expect from a betrayed woman….
