Online Affair

His laptop chimed at 1 a.m., and the message glowing on the screen was not meant for me. What he said next was even harder to believe than what I read.

I broke into the tablet expecting to find another woman. What I found was so much sadder, and somehow so much worse.

He deleted everything to prove he had nothing to hide. But there was one site he never closed without wiping it first, and I couldn't stop wondering why.

A harmless little pop-up told me my husband had started a new game. I only wanted to know who had been kind enough to buy it for him.

She said it was art. But when I opened the shared folder, the photos were addressed to her ex.

He set a little date next to a heart on his gaming profile, certain I would never look closely enough to ask what it meant.

A sleepless night at my mother's bedside. A green dot that should have been offline. And a game that only two people can play.

He swore his phone was clean and that my friend was lying. So I stopped arguing, opened the app store, and let his own phone tell me the truth.