“No, that’s odd,” Jesse said, rubbing his face with a towel to see her clearly. “My phone did update last night, though. Maybe something happened to it in the update?”
“What about your passcode?” she asked. “It’s always been my birthday.”
“Yeah, that was part of the security update too,” he said. “I had to reset it.”
Eliana frowned. They had the same phone, on the same plan, and she’d not gotten an update.
“Well, what’s the new code?” she asked nonchalantly while her miserable heart begged,please just give me the password.
Instead, he stepped from the shower with a clear film of soap still clinging to his skin as he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist.
“Here, let me do the fingerprint. It sounds like you’ve tried it a couple of times, and I don’t want it getting locked up if you key it in wrong.”
She stared. “Do you not want me to have access to your phone?”
“Huh?” To Jesse‘s credit, he looked genuinely puzzled, despite the fact that he gently pulled the phone from her grasp. “Why would you say that?”
“Because youstillhaven’t told me.”
The muscle in his jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. “I don’t understand where this is coming from. Do you not trust me?”
“This isn’t abouttrust,” Eliana hissed. “It’s aboutsecrets.”
“I’m not keeping any secrets from you,” he answered, his tone rising.
“Then what is the password, Jesse?”
“It’s your birth year,” he snapped before stomping out of the room, phone in hand. “Are you happy now? I’m going for a drive.”
“But what about din–" Eliana’s arms fell loose to her sides, and her lips twisted in a grimace as the door snapped shut behind him with a note of finality.
Making accusations against a man who had always been faithful and honest. She knew his heart, why was she doubting it now? What kind of wife was she?
Guilt clawed at her heart as she sniffed, blinking against the burn of his dismissal, and straightened her shoulders. Then she walked out to the kitchen and began prepping a frozen pizza for the girls, having lost her appetite for the fancy pasta dish she’d had in mind. With all the traveling Jesse did, their nights together were so few and far between. Why had she gone and made such unfounded assumptions? What could’ve been a perfectly pleasant evening was ruined . . . all because of her.
The sound of the key turning had Eliana spinning in place, pizza in hand, just as Jesse walked back through the door. His brow was set, his eyes focused on her, as he ate up the space between them in seconds. He held out his unlocked phone, the home screen front and center, but Eliana pushed it back, shaking her head. Neither said a word, but he was quick to step forward and wrap her in a hug. And, for a moment, things felt right again.
He carried the pizza to the living room for her and flipped on a movie with the girls, joking and laughing together as they always did. She didn’t even mind when a popcorn fight broke out, knowing she would need to clean it up later. She felt happy and content and was simply grateful that the evening had been salvaged.
But when it came time for bed, Eliana found that shecouldn’t sleep. She couldn’t help the nagging curiosity. The worry—No. Theintuition. It pulled at her relentlessly, until she slipped out of the bed deep in the midnight hour and padded around to his side.
For a long moment, she simply stared down at the phone, wondering why she couldn’t justbelieve. Having no answers, she silently picked it up and, with a deep breath, keyed in her birth year.
Denied.
3
WATCHING
In the weeks that followed, Eliana didn’t bring up the phone again. She’d sat up that first night, thinking . . . and scheming. She wasn’t sure why he’d tell such an easily disproven lie, or when he’d become so proficient at it. Was this really where it began, or was this a pattern she’d only just begun to recognize? Was it anger driving him? Boredom? Pride?Arrogance?
At first, when the code didn’t work, she was hit with a pang of sorrow so deep, it carved its marks into her bones. A hand flew to cover her mouth as she choked on a sob. There was no way, not at that point, that hewasn’tup to something. No way to reason that lie away. Though she was sure he’d have some bullshit excuse if she bothered to ask. He’d say she’d gotten the year wrong, or he had to change it again, or maybe he’d just deflect and say he was hurt by her lack of trust.
She froze at the thought, at the countless memories of him using such a phrase to brush aside her words. It had seemed so innocuous each time, but now . . . Now she scoffed, allowing anger to slide into the driver’s seat.
Her first instinct had been to use the Victorian stained glass lamp sitting atop the bedside table as a battering ram—to put a large enough hole through the window that she could launch his clothes onto the lawn. But she was smarter than that . . . and it would’ve been such a regretful waste of a gorgeous antique.
She considered waking him up to hash it out—but then remembered the drive he’d taken and how he’d offered her the phone unlocked. If therehadbeen anything incriminating, it was long gone. It would simply result in another circular argument that left her feeling like the back end of a donkey.
