I wasn’t snooping.
I feel the intense need to state that clearly because later, everybody in my family acted like I had illegally wiretapped his devices and conducted a malicious criminal investigation.
I was just sitting there, staring blankly at the wall, when the screen suddenly lit up with a message preview.
I glanced down.
My sister’s name appeared.
Khloe.
The message read, “I hate waiting for you to decide when we’re telling her.”
I stared at that glowing rectangle for so long that the screen eventually timed out and went dark.
There are moments in life when your physical body figures out a devastating truth seconds before your conscious brain can process it.
My face instantly burned hot.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
I could hear the shower water running down the hall.
And I remember thinking, very stupidly and numbly, that I should carefully slide the phone back exactly a quarter inch to the left, exactly where it had been, so he wouldn’t know I had accidentally seen anything.
Then the phone buzzed again.
The screen lit up.
Another message from Khloe.
“You said after the baby things would be different. You promised.”
That was the exact moment I picked up the device and swiped it open.
I knew his passcode.
It was our anniversary, ironically enough.
I opened the text thread.
There were months of messages.
Not every single day and not a constant barrage, but more than enough to shatter my reality.
There were affectionate little inside jokes I didn’t understand, constant complaints about my behavior, and elaborate plans to meet at hotels near his office.
In one sickening conversation, Khloe explicitly asked whether he still loved me.
Greg replied that he cared about me because I was the mother of his child, but he wasn’t in love with me.
Another exchange showed Khloe saying she was tired of being treated like a dirty secret and wanted to go on real dates.
But the worst part came when I scrolled back far enough.
There were messages from when I was still heavily pregnant with Leo.
That detail still makes me feel physically nauseous if I dwell on it too long.
He was complaining to my sister about my mood swings while I was carrying his son, and she was validating him.
The bathroom door opened.
Greg came down the hallway with a damp towel wrapped around his waist, rubbing his wet hair with another towel.
He walked into the living room and froze.
He found me sitting rigid on the couch, holding his unlocked phone in my hands, tears streaming silently down my face.
He didn’t bother asking what I was doing.
He looked at my devastated face, looked down at the glowing phone in my lap, and slowly sat in the armchair across from me.
“How long?” I asked.
My voice was completely devoid of emotion.
It sounded like a stranger’s voice.
He rubbed both hands over his face and let out a heavy sigh.
“Elena…”
“How long have you been sleeping with my sister, Greg?”
He didn’t deny it.
He told me it had started emotionally long before it became physical, which is one of those pathetic, sanitized explanations cowardly people give because they mistakenly think adding gradual stages makes the ultimate betrayal sound more organized and somehow less awful.