For three weeks, my husband would come home late, fall asleep without saying a word, and whisper another woman’s name in the dark. He swore he didn’t know her, but then I found her number on his phone. I called her and discovered my husband had been keeping a secret that could cost us everything
Jake and I had been married for two years. We made dinner together. We went to bed at the same time. He would text me in the middle of the day for no reason.
Then the messages decreased and he started working late.
At first I wasn’t worried, but I should have been.
One night, Jake walked in looking like he’d been dragged by a bus.
“Working late again?”
“We’re finishing a big project. You know how it is.”
He didn’t know that. His job had never demanded so much of him.
At first I wasn’t worried, but I should have been.
But I nodded anyway, because that’s what you do when you want to be the understanding wife.
The weeks passed with sleepless nights and short, curt replies.
One night, I got into bed after Jake had already fallen asleep. I closed my eyes and there was silence.
“MARLENA.”
I sat up and stared at Jake. He was fast asleep
“Jake?”
Nothing.
The weeks passed with sleepless nights and short, curt replies.
I lay back down and told myself it was nothing. But less than a minute later, he said it again
“Marlena. Marlena. MARLENA!”
This time she wasn’t whispering. It sounded urgent. It sounded… intimate
I couldn’t just lie there. I reached out and shook his shoulder.
“Jake. Wake up. Jake!”
He groaned, squinting in the darkness. “What? Rose? What’s wrong?”
“Who is Marlena?”
It sounded urgent.
She looked at me as if I’d started speaking in tongues. “What are you talking about, Rose?”
“You just said his name three times, Jake. Who is he?”
Jake rubbed his face with his hands. “I didn’t say anything. You’re having a nightmare.”
“I wasn’t dreaming, Jake. I was wide awake. You shouted it.”
She sighed and turned over, lifting the sheets. “You were probably dreaming. Go back to sleep.”
“I wasn’t dreaming,” I said to him from behind.
But he was already falling asleep again.
“I didn’t say anything. You’re having a nightmare.”
It happened again the following night.
I was falling asleep when I heard Jake murmur, “Marlena.”
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
The next morning, I tried to calm down.
“Last night you were talking in your sleep.”
Jake snorted, without looking up from his cup. “No, I didn’t.”
“You kept saying a woman’s name, Jake. Marlena.”
It happened again the following night.
He took a slow sip of coffee and shook his head. “I didn’t dream about anything. You’re imagining things, Rose.”
Imagining things. His constant insults stung.
“I was just thinking…”
“Rose, I’m exhausted. I have a million things to do at work. Can we please not do this right now?”
I let it go.
Well, I told him I let it go. But inside, I was building a case
His constant disparaging remarks stung.
During the following nights, I became a detective in my own room.
He paid attention to everything.
Jake would come home late, eat a few bites of what I’d cooked, and keep his phone face down on the table the whole time. He’d fall asleep even before I’d put on my pajamas.
And almost every night he called out to Marlena in his dreams.
Sometimes he was gentle. Sometimes he sounded like he was asking a question. Once he sounded almost terrified, as if he were running away from something.
I became a detective in my own room.
I stopped shaking him to wake him up. What was the point? He’d just lie to me again.
Three weeks. That’s how long I lasted.
Three weeks since he came home late and looked right through me.
Three weeks hearing that name in the dark.
We didn’t know anyone named Marlena, and he had never mentioned a colleague with that name either.
She was a complete mystery, and in my world, mysteries usually mean trouble. If I didn’t talk about her during the day, it meant she was someone I was hiding.
Three weeks hearing that name in the dark.
I stopped pretending it was just a strange sleep habit.
I needed to know if my husband was having an affair.
One night, after Jake’s breathing reached that heavy, rhythmic pace of deep sleep, I did something I’m not proud of.
I went over to the bedside table and picked up her phone.
My heart was beating so hard I was sure it would wake him. My fingers trembled as I searched through his contacts, and there she was: Marlena.
I did something I’m not proud of.
My hands got cold and sweaty at the same time. It wasn’t just a dream. It was real. It was a contact in his phone.
He had lied to my face, over and over again.
I copied the number onto my own phone and put his back exactly where I found it.
Then I sat in the dark, watching the man I thought I knew, wondering what secret he was hiding from me.
Was he deceiving me? The worst-case scenarios were playing on a loop in my brain.
He had lied to my face.
The next morning, as soon as I left the garage, I sat down at the kitchen table and dialed Marlena’s number.
The phone rang three times before she answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Jake’s wife.”
There was a long, heavy pause on the other end
“How do you know my husband?” I insisted.
The woman cleared her throat.
I dialed Marlena’s number.
Her voice was calm and controlled. “We work in the same office. That’s all I can say.”
“Is that all you can say?” I felt a wave of heat rise up my neck. “If they only work together, why has he been screaming your name in his sleep for a month? Why does he come home at ten every night?”
“Does he shout my name in his dreams?”
She let out a short, sharp laugh. “I can’t talk to you about this. You should talk to your husband.”
And the line was cut.
“We work in the same office.”
My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat.
If she were his lover, she probably would have denied knowing him. If she were just an ordinary person, she would have sounded confused.
Instead, she sounded… careful. Like she was reading from a script.
At that moment I realized I wasn’t going to get the truth by asking. I had already tried that.
I needed to see what was happening with my own eyes.
If she were his lover, she probably would have denied knowing him.
Around noon, I drove to his office building.
Along the way I stopped at a deli and got a bag of food: sandwiches, chips, everything. I needed a reason to be there.
The receptionist looked up and gave me a rehearsed smile.
“Hi. I’m here to see Jake,” I said, showing him the bag. “I brought him something to eat. A little surprise.”
He tapped his keyboard. “He’s in his office, hidden at the end of the hall. Go upstairs.”
I drove to his office building.
The elevator ride felt like an hour. My stomach was in knots. What was I going to find? Was Marlena going to be sitting at her desk? Was my whole life about to explode?
I arrived at her door and took a deep breath.
I knocked softly.
“Yes?” Jake’s voice came through the wood. He sounded distracted, tired
I pushed the door open.
“Surprise.”
He froze.
Was he about to blow up my whole life?
He was sitting behind a mountain of folders, with his tie loose and his hair disheveled.
“Rose?” Her smile appeared, but it was two seconds too late to be real. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d bring you some food,” I said, entering the room and holding up the bag. “You’ve been working so hard lately that I thought you might have forgotten to eat.”
“That’s… that’s very kind, Rose,” he glanced down the hall and then back at me. “But it’s not a good time. I’m right in the middle of something big.”
He was sitting behind a mountain of folders.
“I won’t be staying long,” I said.
Jake opened his mouth to say something else, but then the door behind me opened.
“Jake, I need you to…”
The voice was the same one from the phone. Marlena!
We both turned around.
There was a woman at the door. She was holding a thick blue folder and looking at me with a strange expression.
The voice was the same as on the phone.
“I’m sorry,” he looked between us, “I didn’t realize you had company.”
Jake swallowed. “This is my wife, Rosaline.”
“Oh… Let me introduce myself properly.” She stepped forward and extended her hand. “I’m Marlena, the internal compliance supervisor here. I need Jake to sign a few things before our big review meeting this afternoon.”
“Internal compliance?”
My throat was so dry I don’t know how I forced the words out
Marlena looked me in the eyes and nodded.
I lunged at Jake.
“I didn’t realize you had company.”
“Jake, are you under some kind of review?”
Jake let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh. “It’s all a big misunderstanding, Rose. Really. Nothing to worry about.”
Marlena tilted her head. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Jake with an expression that told me everything I needed to know.
“Don’t lie to me. Is it serious?” I asked, turning to Jake. “Could you lose your job? Is that why you’ve been working late so often?”
Jake let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh.
“I…” Jake swallowed. “Everything will be fine, Rose. There were just… a few mix-ups with the Johnson project. Some numbers didn’t add up. But I’m confident we can sort it out.”
Marlena didn’t seem so sure.
She slammed the blue folder down on her desk . “I’ll leave you two alone.”
He gave me a sympathetic look as he turned to leave. The door clicked shut, and we were left alone in Jake’s office.
“You lied to me every night for three weeks.”
He gave me a sympathetic look as he turned to leave.
“I was trying to protect us, Rose,” he pleaded. “I didn’t want you to worry. I thought if I could fix the project, you’d never have to know how close we came to losing everything.”
“Protect us?” I shook my head, feeling a bitter laugh rise within me. “Jake, I thought you were having an affair! I spent three weeks wondering if our marriage was over because you were too cowardly to admit you were having problems at work.”
“I would never do that to you!” he shouted. “I love you. I was just scared.”
“This isn’t much better,” I said. “You left me out. You let me think the worst of you because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.”
“I was trying to protect us, Rose.”
She had no answer. She just stood there among her messy piles of papers, looking smaller than she’d ever seen her
I turned around and left the office.
“Marlena” was not a secret woman, but a lie that pointed to something even worse: Jake had messed up and, instead of admitting it, had tried to bury it under excuses and lies.
Could she still be married to him after this?
I didn’t believe it.
Could she still be married to him after this?
If this happened to you, what would you do? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the Facebook comments.
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