For three weeks, my husband came home late, barely spoke, and fell asleep whispering another woman\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarlena.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first I told myself it meant nothing. Dreams are weird. Stress does things.<\/p>\n
But he said it every night.<\/p>\n
When I asked, Jake brushed me off. \u201cYou\u2019re imagining things, Rose.\u201d
Again. And again.<\/p>\n
So one night, while he slept, I checked his phone.<\/p>\n
There she was.
Marlena.<\/p>\n
The next morning I called her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m Jake\u2019s wife,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
A pause. Then, carefully: \u201cWe work together. You should talk to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Careful. Not confused. Not innocent.<\/p>\n
My stomach dropped.<\/p>\n
By noon I was at his office with a bag of lunch and a heart ready to explode. I walked in expecting lipstick, secrets, betrayal.<\/p>\n
Instead, I found paperwork stacked to the ceiling and Jake looking like a man drowning.<\/p>\n
Then the door opened.<\/p>\n
\u201cJake, I need those signatures\u2014\u201d the woman said, stopping when she saw me.<\/p>\n
She held out her hand. \u201cI\u2019m Marlena. Internal compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned to my husband.
\u201cAre you under review?\u201d<\/p>\n
He tried to laugh it off. She didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
After she left, the truth spilled out. Bad numbers. Failed oversight. A job hanging by a thread.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want you to worry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought you were cheating,\u201d I whispered. \u201cBut you were just lying.\u201d<\/p>\n
And somehow, that hurt almost as much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For three weeks, my husband came home late, barely spoke, and fell asleep whispering another woman\u2019s name. \u201cMarlena.\u201d At first I told myself it meant nothing. Dreams are weird. Stress does things. But he said it every night. When I asked, Jake brushed me off. \u201cYou\u2019re imagining things, Rose.\u201dAgain. And again. So one night, while …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4179,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions\/4179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}