Waking to Another Woman's Name

I heard him before I saw him.

The front door opened with that familiar drag—the bottom corner had been scraping the hardwood for three months and Kade kept saying he'd fix it. He never did. I'd learned to use the sound as a clock. Tonight it scraped at 2:07 AM.

I was in Mia's room, folding laundry on the floor because the dresser was too small and the changing table was covered in things that had nowhere else to go. That's what nobody tells you about having a baby—it's not the sleepless nights that break you. It's the laundry. The endless, relentless laundry that multiplies like something alive.

I heard his footsteps in the hallway. Uneven. He'd been drinking.

The door pushed open and then he was there, filling the frame, tie loosened, top button undone, that lopsided look on his face that used to make me laugh in college. He crossed the room in three steps and wrapped his arms around me from behind, chin dropping to my shoulder, weight settling into me like I was a wall he'd been walking toward all night.

"Still up," he murmured. Not a question.

"Still up," I said.

"Good." He pressed his face into the curve of my neck. "Still good. You're still here. Good."

And then: "Still good that I have you."

I should have leaned back into him. That's what I would have done six months ago, a year ago, two years ago—I would have turned my face toward his and said something soft and he would have kissed my temple and we would have been fine.

Instead, I went still.

Because there was a smell.

Not his cologne. Not the bar smoke that usually clung to him after a night out with clients. Something underneath all of that. Sweet. Synthetic. Coconut.

My fingers tightened around the small white onesie in my hands—the one with the yellow ducks on the snaps, the one Mia had worn home from the hospital. I held it like it was the only solid thing in the room.

I breathed in again. Slow. Deliberate.

Coconut shampoo. Unmistakable. Not mine. I used the unscented kind because Mia had sensitive skin and I'd gotten so used to it I'd forgotten what fragrance even smelled like. This was fragrance. This was someone else's hair pressed against my husband's neck long enough to leave a mark.

Kade's breathing slowed against my skin. His arms went heavier. He was falling asleep standing up, just like that, like a man with nothing weighing on him.

I set the onesie down.

---

It took me forty minutes to get him into bed.

He was dead weight—cooperative but useless, mumbling half-words while I worked his shoes off, pulled the blanket up, moved his phone from his chest to the nightstand before it could wake Mia through the wall. He didn't thank me. He didn't say anything. He just sank into the pillow and his face went slack and peaceful.

I stood over him for a moment.

Five years. I knew every line of that face. The small scar under his chin from a bike accident when he was nine—he'd told me the story on our second date, laughing, showing me with his finger. The way his jaw set differently on his left side. The way his lashes looked almost too long when his eyes were closed.

I knew this face.

I sat on the edge of the bed and I did not lie down.

The coconut smell was still in my nose. It had settled there like something that intended to stay.

I told myself it was nothing. Someone hugged him at the bar. A coworker. A friend of a friend. People hug. That's a thing that happens.

I told myself that for about four minutes.

Then I noticed his phone.

It had slid halfway out of his jeans pocket when I'd moved him, and the screen was still lit—not locked, just dimmed, the way it does when it hasn't timed out yet. A small rectangle of light against the dark bedspread.

I had never gone through Kade's phone. Not once. Not in five years of dating and marriage, not in the hard months after Mia was born when he was working late and I was home alone at 3 AM with a screaming infant and a hollow feeling in my chest that I told myself was just hormones. I had never been that person. I was proud of not being that person.

My hand moved before I made a decision about it.

I picked up the phone.

Instagram was open. The app was sitting right there, mid-scroll, on a profile page.

A girl. Young—her bio said UT Austin, Music Department, Class of 2025. She was laughing in her profile photo, head thrown back, high ponytail catching the light. Pretty in that uncomplicated way of people who haven't been tired yet.

She was wearing a gray hoodie.

I recognized it before my brain fully caught up. The gray Champion hoodie with the small logo on the chest. I'd bought it for Kade last Christmas, wrapped it myself, put it under the tree. He'd worn it to Mia's first pediatrician appointment.

The girl had the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her caption was a single heart emoji.

I scrolled down.

Kade's account—I could see the activity markers, the small hearts—had liked every post. Not a few. Not the recent ones. Every single one, going back months, the kind of systematic attention that isn't accidental, that isn't drunk-clicking at 2 AM. That's something you do on purpose, repeatedly, over time, when you want someone to know you're watching.

My thumb moved to the messages icon.

I don't know what I was hoping to find. Something explainable. Something that would let me put the phone down and lie next to my husband and close my eyes.

The conversation loaded.

It was long. The kind of long that means months. The most recent message was timestamped 11:47 PM—sent by Kade, less than three hours ago. I could see the first few words of it at the top of the thread, and my eyes started to focus, started to read—

Behind me, the mattress shifted.

Kade rolled over, the sheets rustling, his arm reaching out across the empty space where I should have been lying. His voice came out thick and slow, still mostly asleep.

He said a name.

It wasn't mine.