One Way or Another
Prologue
Swiping up on the tablet screen, I enter the passcode and hear the click of it unlocking. Roger uses the same passcode for all his devices, 0921, September twenty first, the day we met. Staring down at the icons, I click on the messages app with its seventeen unread messages. Clicking on the highlighted text thread between Roger and ‘Steve-Work,’ I scroll to the most recent messages.
Steve-Work
Dinner tonight?
Yeah, I have a project I can pin it on.
Steve-Work
We can go to the sushi place you like. We can get that private table in the corner, again.
Only if you’ll let me feel how wet you are sitting at thetable.
Steve-Work
You make me so wet, especially when you slide your fingers inside me at dinner. I’m wet right now thinking about it.
I want to throw up reading through the message thread. My husband of a decade, discussing fingering a strange woman at a restaurant. Dropping my hand to the small swell of my belly, I cradle my little baby.My baby, our baby.I just wanted a family, and now, I’m not sure what’s going to happen.
My phone pings with an incoming text message. Opening the text thread with Roger, I read the predictable message.
Roger
I have to take a client to dinner. I’ll be late, don’t wait up.
Are you sure? I was already cooking.
Roger
Callie, I have to take a client to dinner. I’ll be late, don’t wait up.
Do I need to repeat it again?
No, I got it. Goodnight, I guess. I love you.
Roger
I love you too.
Returning his tablet to the drawer beside the bed, I settle in for another night by myself. There have been a lot of lonely evenings recently, and it seems this has become a pattern for Roger.
In the morning, I clean the house from top to bottom before printing out the text transcripts between Roger and his mistress.
When he gets home after work, I wait calmly in the dining room, my evidence laid out on the table.
“Hey Callie,” he says as he walks into the house, dropping his keys on the front table and his backpack to the floor. “Where are—what are you doing?” he asks as he walks into the dining room and finds me sitting here with all the papers surrounding me.
My hands shake as I prepare to confront him. “Hi, Roger. Would you like to sit down?”
He looks at me warily before looking at the papers spread on the table, the text messages, the dating website profile, the pictures I found deleted, months’ worth of evidence from the tablet that mirrors his phone.
“What the fuck is all this, Caroline?”
“You tell me what it is; you know.” My voice is even, emotionless. I feel my belly, heavy under my shirt, and my sweet, innocent baby that I’m keeping safe.
