Chapter 1After Five Years as a Stay-at-Home Husband

My husband, Mike, was an Ivy League prodigy.

The moment he graduated, he was flooded with offers from Fortune 500 companies, each one a golden ticket to a brilliant career. But for me, he traded it all in to become a stay-at-home dad.

To everyone else, I was the woman who had it all, the one they all envied.

In the dead of night, lying beside him in the quiet dark after we’d made love, he fell asleep. On a sudden, reckless impulse, I picked up his phone.

My face smiled back at me from the lock screen.

But pinned to the top of his chat history was a woman named “Leo’s Mom.” She was the mother of our daughter Lily’s friend from preschool.

A new message from her popped up: "Mike, it's getting cold tomorrow. Don't forget to bundle up."

Mike had replied with a GIF of a nodding kitten. "You too," he'd written.

I scrolled up, my thumb flying across the screen, page after page, hundreds of them. On all those countless nights I was stuck at the office working late, they had been here, trading these small, intimate words of care.

I couldn’t remember the last time he’d sent me a GIF, or even asked if I was tired after a long day.

I didn't sleep a wink. I read their entire chat history, from the very beginning to the very end.

Thousands of pages.

Mike never said he liked her, never said he loved her.

But he would brag to her about a new recipe he’d perfected. He’d send her a goofy, teary-eyed dragon meme asking for sympathy. When the temperature plunged, he’d ask her if she’d switched to a warmer blanket…

"Huge storm tonight, there might be thunder. Is your Leo scared of it?"

"Not at all! He's a brave little guy. It's me, his mom, who gets so scared I can't sleep."

"Don't worry. If you're scared, I'll stay up and chat with you until you fall asleep." He followed it with a GIF of a cat flexing its muscles.

"Okay!" she replied, with a GIF of a cat throwing confetti.

He hadn't sent me a GIF in years.

That was the night of the storm of the century, when thunder cracked over the city all night long. I was trapped at the office, unable to get a cab, and ended up huddled in my desk chair, terrified, snatching bits of restless sleep.

He’d sent me one text confirming I wasn't coming home, and then… silence.

All his comfort, all his care, had been funneled to another woman.

As dawn broke, he stirred. His eyes fluttered open and landed on me, sitting up in bed, his phone in my hand. He froze for a fraction of a second before casually wrapping an arm around me, smoothly plucking the phone from my grasp.

"You're up early. It's your day off, isn't it? Come back to sleep with me."

He nuzzled my neck, not a trace of panic in his voice.

I snatched the phone back, opened the chat with "Leo's Mom," and shoved the screen in his face. "Don't you have something you want to explain to me?" I asked, my voice a carefully constructed wall of calm.

"Oh. Lily's good friend at preschool is named Leo. That's his mom. I just ask her for parenting tips sometimes."

"If it makes you unhappy, I'll delete her."

And just like that, he tapped the red delete button. It was done.

He looked me straight in the eye, his gaze clear and open.

Suddenly, my all-night anguish felt absurd, like a fit of baseless jealousy. He made it seem like I was the one making a big deal out of nothing.

I said nothing.

He tightened his arm around my waist and started tickling me. "Come on, my beautiful wife, it's the weekend. Give that brilliant brain of yours a rest. She's nobody important. You're the only one I love, always."

He teased and tickled until I was breathless with laughter, and for a moment, the dark thoughts were pushed aside.

And just like that, it was over.

After all, we had been in love for eight years. We had our daughter.