Chapter 1My Wife, the Cooking Pro

Everyone thought I had married the perfect wife—gentle, capable, and a true catch. Little did they know, the moment she stepped into the kitchen, she became a walking disaster.

Ask her to cook, and she’d mistake salt for sugar or dish soap for oil. Send her to the market, and she’d return with wilted, yellowed cabbage, unable to tell it was spoiled. No matter how much I taught her, every time she entered the kitchen, chaos followed.

So, over our three years of marriage, the kitchen slowly became my territory alone. I often joked with friends, “If my wife ever left me, she’d probably live on takeout forever.”

That changed when I went on a business trip. Worried she wasn’t eating well, I checked our smart home app. To my shock, the woman who couldn’t even light a stove was wearing my apron, expertly reducing sauce for braised pork and stir-frying with fluid, confident movements.

Sitting on our sofa was a man I’d only seen in her phone album. My wife, Claire, arranged the dishes gracefully before him, handed him utensils carefully, and gazed at him with a tenderness I’d never seen. “David,” she said softly, “I promised these hands would cook only for you. All these years, I kept my word.”

Staring motionless at the screen, a deep silence washed over me.

She wasn’t a bad cook—she had simply saved every bit of her culinary warmth for someone else.

* * *

When I got back from my trip, my plan was to wait for Claire to get home and confront her about what I saw on the monitor.

But when I opened the door, the first thing I saw was a few takeout containers artfully placed at the top of the trash bin. Then I looked at the stovetop, polished to a mirror shine. Even the pots and pans were arranged in the exact same way I’d left them.

The fire of anger and betrayal inside me was suddenly extinguished, replaced by an icy dread.

Two years of dating, three years of marriage. For five years, Claire had flawlessly played the part of a kitchen idiot.

When we first got married, I had daydreams of us cooking together, a cozy, domestic scene. But every time Claire set foot in the kitchen, it was a catastrophe.

A simple stir-fried vegetable dish? She’d use sugar instead of salt, serving up something sickeningly sweet.

A pot of soup? She’d burn it to a black crisp, ruining an expensive enamel pot.

She couldn't light the stove, couldn't tell one green leaf from another, couldn't distinguish between spices. The kitchen was a war zone after she was done with it.

Patiently, I would clean up the mess while trying to teach her.

She would just stand aside and sigh helplessly. "I guess I just don't have the talent for cooking. It's a good thing I married such a capable husband, or I’d probably have blown up the kitchen by now."

I believed her. I thought she was genuinely, naturally unsuited for cooking, so I gladly took over all the meals.

Only now did I realize the truth. Her skills were exquisite; it was just that her warmth, her fire, was reserved for another.

While Claire was working late, I found the man from the video.

To my shock, he was living in the old apartment Claire and I had shared before we bought our house. Claire had told me she’d rented it to a friend of a colleague.

Apparently, that "friend" was the man from her photo album. David.

Seeing him standing in front of me, I felt a strange sense of dislocation.

When I first met Claire, I'd jokingly asked her what her ideal type was.

She'd answered without hesitation, "Dark curly hair, pale skin, and two dimples when he smiles."

At the time, I dismissed it as a girlish fantasy. I had seen David’s photo once, but only for a fleeting second before Claire snatched the phone away and deleted it. It wasn't until I saw his face today that I understood. Her ideal type was never a fantasy; it was a checklist based on a real person.

I look nothing like David, but I never forgot what she said. Over the years, I'd started perming my hair and taking better care of my skin. Except for the dimples, at a quick glance, I suppose I did start to resemble him.

And yet, my wife's affection for the two of us was worlds apart.

Claire and I met when we were 24 and married at 26. Now, approaching 30, I thought we were set for a lifetime of happiness. I always told myself, she just can't cook. Nobody's perfect. I can do a little more.

For five years, she hadn't lifted a finger in the kitchen. Even when I was bedridden with a fever, she never once made me a simple bowl of soup.

But for David, she would tie on an apron and spend an entire afternoon at the stove, whispering promises that her hands were for him alone.

I had given her five years of my heart, and I never even knew what her real cooking tasted like.

All the questions I wanted to scream at him boiled down to one, pathetic curiosity.

"David," I asked, my voice hollow, "is Claire a good cook?"