Chapter 3: What Was on the Phone
The hotel was a plain, tired place off the main road — the kind with thin curtains and a vending machine humming in the corridor.
Megan opened the door before I had finished knocking.
She looked like she hadn't slept in days.
Her hair was pulled back, no makeup, a cardigan she'd clearly been wearing since yesterday.
But her eyes were steady.
"Come in," she said.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
She sat across from me in the small desk chair and picked up her phone from the nightstand.
"I found this three weeks ago," she said.
"I wasn't snooping.
His phone was on the kitchen counter and a message came through while he was in the shower.
I saw the name."
She turned the screen toward me.
The name at the top of the conversation was saved as *Dana W.*
"I don't know who Dana is," Megan said.
"I'd never heard that name before."
I looked at the messages.
I didn't read every word — Megan scrolled slowly — but I read enough.
*Can't wait to see you Thursday.*
*Tell her you have a work trip.
She'll believe it.*
*She always does.*
My stomach turned.
"How long?" I asked.
"The messages go back eight months." Megan set the phone down.
"But I think it started before that.
I think the messages before that were deleted."
"Did you confront him?"
"I tried." She pressed her lips together.
"He said it was nothing.
A colleague.
That I was being paranoid."
"And then he asked me to stop visiting," I said slowly.
"Two days later." She nodded.
"He told me you'd become too involved.
That you were making things worse between us.
I was already so hurt and confused — I believed him.
I thought maybe he was right."
I sat with that.
"He needed us both distracted," I said.
"Me feeling guilty for something I never did.
You feeling like you had no one."
Megan's jaw tightened.
"Yes."
"Does he know you have the screenshots?"
"No.
I sent them to my own email the same night.
Then I deleted the sent message so he wouldn't see." She paused.
"He thinks I left because I was overwhelmed.
He's been texting me every day saying he loves me and he wants to work on things."
She picked up her phone again and showed me the texts from Eric.
Warm, patient, concerned.
The kind of messages a good husband sends.
"He thinks he's managed it," I said.
"He thinks I'm just emotional and I'll come back."
I looked at my daughter-in-law — this woman I had spent years keeping at arm's length because of things my own son had told me — and felt something shift.
"Megan," I said.
"What do you want to happen?"
She didn't answer immediately.
She looked at the window, at the thin curtain moving slightly from the air vent below it.
"I want Chloe to be okay," she said finally.
"That's the only thing I'm sure about."
"Then we start there."
She looked back at me.
"You said you knew how we could teach him a lesson.
What did you mean?"
I leaned forward.
"I mean we don't react.
We don't confront him yet.
We let him believe everything is fine — that you're just upset and I'm staying out of it — while we find out exactly what he's been doing and how far it goes."
Megan was quiet for a moment.
"You think there's more."
It wasn't a question.
"I think a man who lies this carefully about small things," I said, "has been lying carefully about bigger things too."
Her phone lit up on the nightstand.
We both looked at it.
A text from Eric: *Megan, please come home.
Chloe misses you.
I miss you.
We can fix this.*
Megan stared at it for a long moment.
May you like
Then she turned the screen face-down.
"Tell me what to do," she said.
