0:00
The text message arrived like a bomb, a
0:02
detonation of a secret I never knew
0:06
My wife had just left a restaurant, a
0:08
quiet lunch with my sister and her
0:09
husband, my brother-in-law. He had tried
0:12
to confess something to her, something
0:14
that was clearly a lie. And she, a
0:17
nononsense woman with a spine of steel,
0:19
had shut him down and walked out.
0:22
I was on the phone with her, a frantic
0:25
conversation filled with fragmented
0:27
sentences and rising panic when the
0:29
texts began to flood her phone. I didn't
0:32
mean it, he wrote. It's only
0:34
infatuation, blah blah blah. The cliches
0:38
of a man caught in his own web of lies.
0:41
She left work early and came home, her
0:44
phone an incessant blinking beacon of
0:48
I told her to answer, to put him on
0:50
speaker. I needed to hear this for
0:54
He was crying, his voice a pathetic,
0:59
Please don't tell your sister, he
1:01
begged. I thought she was flirting with
1:04
me. I thought we had a moment in the
1:08
My wife, a major bull buster with a
1:10
playful personality, often teases my
1:13
family. I could see how, to a man
1:15
desperate for a sign, her playful banter
1:18
could be mistaken for flirting. But she
1:20
wasn't that kind of person. She was
1:22
loyal, honest, and fiercely protective
1:25
of our family. He turned his pleas to
1:28
me, begging me to understand.
1:32
"It's just your wife," he said, swearing
1:35
on his kids' lives that he had never
1:36
cheated on my sister before. "I was
1:41
I told him I wouldn't do anything
1:43
tonight and would call him tomorrow. He
1:45
was a broken man, a pathetic mess. But I
1:48
couldn't bring myself to feel anything
1:51
My wife, ever the pragmatist, told me to
1:54
drive over there and tell my sister
1:55
everything. But the thought of it, of
1:57
shattering my sister's world, of
2:00
watching her family fall apart, was
2:03
My nieces, my sister, my brother-in-law,
2:06
our family. I knew the right thing to do
2:09
was to tell her, but the thought of the
2:11
fallout, of the permanent rift it would
2:13
cause made me sick to my stomach. I was
2:15
caught between a rock and a hard place,
2:18
and I had no idea what to do. A little
2:21
after midnight, the bomb finally went
2:23
off. My sister called me, her voice
2:26
trembling. "I have to tell you
2:28
something," she said. "Your wife tried
2:31
to begin an affair with my husband."
2:33
"Well, well, well." He had gone to her
2:37
first and tried to pin it on my wife.
2:40
The audacity of the man was
2:41
breathtaking. I told her the truth, that
2:44
it was the other way around and that I
2:46
would be right over. I called my parents
2:48
and my brother, waking them all up to
2:52
My mom and dad went to my sister's house
2:54
to sit with her kids, and my brother
2:56
came to our house to sit with ours.
2:59
My wife and I drove over, the silence in
3:02
the car, a heavy, suffocating thing.
3:04
When we arrived, my sister was on the
3:06
front porch with my brother-in-law. He
3:08
looked defeated, a ghost of the man he
3:10
used to be. He knew we had the texts,
3:12
the voicemails. He knew he was caught.
3:14
My wife handed my sister her phone, and
3:16
she read every text, listened to every
3:18
voicemail. He started sobbing. A big,
3:22
tough firefighter reduced to a broken
3:24
child. My sister, a woman with a spine
3:27
as strong as my wife's, had no patience
3:29
for it. Stop it, she said, her voice a
3:33
cold, sharp thing. Pack a bag and go. I
3:36
can't stand to look at you. There was
3:39
more begging, more pathetic please for
3:41
forgiveness. But she just walked off to
3:44
talk to my wife. I saw them hugging, a
3:47
silent promise that their friendship, a
3:49
bond that had existed since college,
3:51
would survive this that left me with
3:53
him. He was a broken man, a hollow
3:59
I'm sorry, he whispered. I couldn't help
4:02
it. It's not hard to fall in love with
4:06
I felt a strange mixture of sympathy and
4:08
disgust. He was right. My wife was
4:12
stunning. But he was also a man who had
4:14
betrayed his wife, his family, and his
4:17
friend. He eventually picked himself up
4:20
and left, leaving a gaping hole in our
4:26
My sister, a woman of meticulous detail,
4:29
went through her husband's phone and
4:30
computer. There were no texts, no
4:33
suggestive messages, nothing to suggest
4:35
my wife had reciprocated his feelings.
4:38
She had been her playful teasing self,
4:40
and he, in his pathetic desperation, had
4:46
The only thing they could find was a
4:48
moment in the kitchen, a playful jostle
4:50
for a beer, a brief touch around the
4:53
waist. My wife admitted it felt a little
4:55
inappropriate, but she hadn't wanted to
4:58
make a big deal of it. I wish she had,
5:01
but then the real horror began. My
5:04
sister started searching his MacBook and
5:06
found hundreds of pictures of my wife
5:08
secretly snapped over the years.
5:11
Pictures from family vacations, from
5:13
birthdays, from casual gettogethers. One
5:16
set of photos taken on a couple's trip
5:18
to the Caribbean showed my wife in a
5:20
bikini she rarely wore. He had taken 50
5:22
pictures of her in that bathing suit
5:24
alone. It wasn't just a crush. It was an
5:27
obsession. It was creepy and it was
5:29
terrifying. The next day, my sister
5:32
agreed to talk to her husband to let him
5:34
explain himself. She put my wife on
5:36
FaceTime and I listened in, a silent
5:39
witness to the final painful
5:42
He admitted it all. The obsession had
5:45
started the day he met my wife before he
5:47
had even met me. He had thought it was
5:50
only physical at first, but over time it
5:52
had become more. He was in love with my
5:55
wife. He had convinced himself that she
5:58
felt the same way, that there was a
6:03
and that an affair would be the first
6:04
step toward them being together.
6:07
My wife and sister, a united front of
6:14
The phone call ended with a lot of
6:16
screaming and cursing. My wife, shaken
6:19
and distraught, assured me the
6:20
attraction was one-sided. I never
6:22
doubted it. My sister, a pragmatic
6:25
woman, immediately contacted a lawyer to
6:27
begin the process of getting full
6:28
custody of her kids. He didn't even
6:30
fight her on it. He knew he was done. He
6:34
had lost everything for a fantasy, a
6:36
delusion he had built up in his mind.
6:38
The kids, who had always been a distant
6:40
presence in his life, were now his only
6:42
connection to the family he had so
6:44
carelessly destroyed.
