Caught Red-Handed

We were laughing at memes on her phone when his text slid down from the top of the screen: "Can't wait to see you again ❤️." She lunged for it half a second too late.

I was making coffee while my husband ran his big presentation from the next room. Then a coworker messaged me, and I looked closer at the screen.

I bought the little robot to handle the floors while we worked opposite shifts. One afternoon it started grinding on something it couldn't swallow.

He swore he slept like the dead at the cabin. The little band on his wrist had been keeping its own quiet record of the night, and it told a different story.

My husband never let his phone out of his sight. The one night he forgot it on the counter, a payment request told me everything in nine words.

He always ordered a plain black coffee on his way to the site. So why did the rewards app know exactly how she took her vanilla latte?

A routine violation notice arrived in the mail. I almost paid it without looking. Then I looked.

I spent four months building the perfect surprise for his fortieth. I never imagined he would be the one to surprise everyone in the room.

He offered to order dinner for the whole family, tapped reorder on our usual, and paid. An hour later the food still had not come, and the app said it had already been delivered.

He saved forty cents at the checkout and typed in a number out of pure habit. That tiny reflex unraveled eight years of careful lies.

He came home green and shivering, crashed into bed, and forgot one small thing in the kitchen. By midnight, it was glowing on the appliance door.

Every night she sat alone in her parked car before coming inside. She called it unwinding. I needed to know what she was really listening to.

A coworker slipped me an address and a name. I typed it into a map to see the house. I never expected the map to show me my husband.

A sleepy good-morning text, sent in two seconds before coffee. The phone finished the sentence for him, and the ending was a name that was not mine.

My wife never rushed to greet me. The day she did, she shoved a garbage bag into my hands and ordered me back outside. I should have known.

My husband swore he was alone at the office finishing a deadline. Then my phone buzzed with a delivery receipt that told a different story.

A plain USB drive showed up in our mailbox with no note and no return address. I almost threw it away. I wish I had.

He kissed me goodbye, rolled his suitcase to the curb, and flew off to a conference two states away. So why did the console in our living room light up at 3 a.m.?

We synced our fitness trackers to keep each other honest about workouts. I never imagined the data would expose something neither of us could explain away.

My husband swore he slept through the night. A single line on our toll statement said his car was twelve miles away at three in the morning.

He blamed late shifts for the empty side of the bed. The navigation app remembered every turn he swore he never took.

She was too drunk to drive, so she called the one person she trusted to come get her. She forgot he was the one she was hiding from.

He let no one touch his truck. So why was there a stranger's makeup pressed into the seat he saved for no one?