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I traveled occasionally. I stayed busy. And I told myself that the distance growing between Derek and me was just the natural settling of long-term marriage.
Two busy people. Normal friction. I was lying to myself, and somewhere underneath all that busyness, I knew it.
My coworker and close friend Simone was the one who said it out loud. Simone was 34, quick-witted, with natural locks she wore piled high, and a mouth that did not soften hard truths.
“Dominique,” she said one Thursday over lunch, “when is the last time Derek looked at you the way people look at something they’re afraid to lose?”
I stared at my food. “That’s what I thought,” she said. I went home that night and paid attention differently.
Derek came in at 8:15. He kissed my cheek, not my mouth. He asked about my day with the energy of a man completing a checklist.
He showered, checked his phone in the bathroom with the door slightly closed, and came to bed already retreating somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Derek, I kept my voice even. “Is there something you need to tell me?” He was quiet for 5 seconds too long.
“I’m just tired, baby.” I nodded. I turned off my light and I lay in the dark making myself face the thing I had been circling for months.
Something was wrong. Something had already happened or was happening. And the sick, certain feeling coiling in my stomach told me that somewhere in the web of this, Gloria was already involved.
I was right. I just didn’t know how deep yet. Her name was Patrice. I found out the way women always find out, not through dramatic confrontation, but through a tiny, mundane crack in the routine.
Derek left his email open on the shared laptop. Not his phone, his email, which he apparently felt safer about.
I wasn’t looking. I was searching for a restaurant confirmation I’d sent myself. And there it was, a thread, 47 messages.
The subject line of the most recent one, “Last night.” I did not read them all.