Jodie

The air in our house had been thin lately, stretched taut like a rubber band about to snap. I’d noticed the late nights Jodie was pulling at "the office," the hushed phone calls, the way her eyes darted away when I asked about her day. But you push those thoughts down, don't you? You tell yourself it’s stress, a new project, anything but the truth. ​It was a Tuesday, a regular, unremarkable Tuesday. Jodie had said she was working late again, a big presentation. I was making myself a solitary dinner, the silence of the house amplified by her absence. My phone buzzed – a notification from our shared photo cloud. Usually, it was just a memory, a picture of us from years ago popping up. But this one was current. ​My heart hammered against my ribs. It was a photo of Jodie, undeniably her, laughing, her head thrown back, a man's arm around her waist. Not my arm. The setting was an upscale restaurant downtown, one we’d talked about going to for our anniversary but never quite got around to. They looked… happy. More than happy, they looked intimate. ​My hand started to shake, the glass of water I was holding rattling against the counter. It wasn't just the picture. It was the sudden, undeniable understanding that clicked into place. The late nights, the evasiveness, the subtle shift in her touch – it all made a horrifying kind of sense. The rubber band didn't just snap; it disintegrated