That resolve had lasted until ten minutes ago, when my phone buzzed with a notification of a credit card transaction:Purchase - $400 - Millfield Motor Inn.
Millfield. A town thirty minutes away that Sam had no reason to visit.
My hands went cold. I’d discovered my ex-fiancé’s affair through a credit card statement - charges at a hotel neither of us had stayed at. The irony wasn’t lost on me that history might be repeating itself through the exact same method.
I stared at the notification while a litter of golden retriever puppies tumbled around the exam room, their vaccinations complete, their energy boundless. Normally, puppy appointments were my favorite part of the job – all that fluffy innocence and pure joy. Today, even their adorable antics couldn’t distract me from the sick feeling growing in my stomach.
Like the way animals sensed when something was wrong in their environment before they could identify the threat, my body was picking up on something even as my brain tried to rationalize Sam’s behavior. The hypervigilance that kept prey animals alive was kicking in, making me notice things I might have otherwise overlooked.
“Dr. Parker?” Jenny appeared in the doorway with another carrier. “The kittens are here for their second round of shots.”
“Perfect,” I said, forcing a smile. More fluff. More innocence. Maybe six tiny kittens could do what the puppies couldn’t – keep my mind off whatever the hell Sam was doing at a motel in Millfield.
But as I prepared the vaccines, my phone seemed to burn in my pocket. Four hundred dollars at a motel. In a town where we knew no one.
What are you hiding, Sam?
Around two o’clock, my phone rang. Sam’s name flashed on the screen. “Hey,” I answered, stepping into my office for privacy.
“Hey.” His voice sounded tired, strained. “I, uh, I went by the house to see how you were doing. Since I hadn’t heard from you this morning.”
Guilt flickered through me. “Sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you. I figured you had a lot going on, and I had work to catch up on after being gone for two days.”
“Right. Yeah.” A pause. “Chloe, we still need to have that talk. I’d planned to come home as soon as you woke up, but—”
“I know, but I really do have a lot to catch up on here.” I kept my voice light, still clinging to that reassurance I felt this morning. There was a logical explanation for that motel charge. “And you should probably focus on work too. I know how busy Wednesdays are for you.”
Another pause, longer this time. When he spoke again, his voice was careful. “I really need to tell you something. It’s important.”
My stomach clenched. “Is anyone dying? Anyone in imminent threat of death?”
“What? No. No one’s dying.”
“Then it can wait.” I heard the edge in my own voice and softened it. “Sam, I’m still exhausted. I’m going to wrap up here and go home and go straight to bed. And I expect you to stay at work instead of making your team cover for you. Is that clear?”
The silence stretched out. I could almost hear him thinking, trying to figure out what to say.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I continued when he didn’t respond. “A proper conversation when we’re both ready. When I’m not exhausted.”
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Clear. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I confirmed, and ended the call before either of us could say anything else.
I stared at my phone for a long moment. Part of me wanted to call him back, to demand answers right now. But a larger part — the exhausted, overwhelmed part that had just spent two days dealing with births and deaths — needed one more night before whatever was coming crashed down on us.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of routine appointments that had been missed over the last two days.
The house was empty when I got home, as expected. I dropped my keys on the kitchen counter and stared at our shared calendar on the refrigerator. Sam’s neat handwriting marked his usual commitments: bar inventory on Tuesdays, delivery meetings on Thursdays, dinner with his parents on Sundays.
This time, I couldn’t stop myself. I opened my laptop and logged into our shared Google calendar – the one we’d created when Sam moved in, the symbol of our domestic partnership and transparency. The online version showed the same pattern as the paper copy, but with one difference: several entries were marked as “Private.” Blocks of time that simply showed as “Busy” without any details, times when Sam had deliberately hidden what he was doing from me.
What was he hiding?
My body knew something was wrong before my brain fully accepted it.
That’s what I kept telling myself as I closed the laptop and sat there in the quiet house, too nauseated to even think about dinner. Physical symptoms didn’t lie. I was a veterinarian – I knew how bodies responded to stress, to threat, to loss.
Elevated heart rate. Check. Difficulty sleeping. Check. Loss of appetite. Check. Constant low-grade anxiety. Check.
