He stared at me like I’d started speaking in tongues. “What are you talking about, Rose?”
“You just said her name three times, Jake. Who is she?”
Jake rubbed his face with his hands. “I didn’t say anything. You’re having a bad dream.”
“I wasn’t dreaming, Jake. I was wide awake. You shouted it.”
He sighed and rolled back over, pulling the covers up. “You must’ve been dreaming. Go back to sleep.”
“I wasn’t,” I said to his back.
But he was already drifting off again.
“I didn’t say anything. You’re having a bad dream.”
It happened again the next night.
I was just drifting off when I heard Jake mutter, “Marlena.”
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
The next morning, I tried to play it cool.
“You were talking in your sleep last night.”
Jake snorted, not even looking up from his mug. “No, I wasn’t.”
“You kept saying a woman’s name, Jake. Marlena.”
It happened again the next 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 continued dismissals stung.
“I just thought—”
“Rose, I’m exhausted. I have a million things on my plate 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 continued dismissals stung.
For the next few nights, I became a detective in my own bedroom.
I paid attention to everything.
Jake would come home late, eat a few bites of whatever I made, and keep his phone face down on the table the entire time. He’d fall asleep before I even got my pajamas on.
And almost every single night, he called out for Marlena in his sleep.
Sometimes it was soft. Sometimes it sounded like he was asking a question. Once, he sounded almost panicked, like he was running away from something.
I became a detective in my own bedroom.
I stopped shaking him awake. What was the point? He would just lie to me again.
Three weeks. That’s how long I held it in.
Three weeks of him coming home late and looking through me.
Three weeks of hearing that name in the dark.
We didn’t know anybody called Marlena, and he’d never mentioned a colleague by that name, either.
She was a total mystery, and in my world, mysteries usually mean trouble. If he wasn’t talking about her during the day, it meant she was someone he was hiding.
Three weeks of hearing that name in the dark.
I stopped pretending this was just some weird sleep habit.
I needed to know if my husband was having an affair.
One night, after Jake’s breathing hit that heavy, rhythmic pace of deep sleep, I did something I’m not proud of.
I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed his phone.
My heart was beating so loud I was sure it would wake him up. I swiped through his contacts, my fingers shaking, and there it was: Marlena.
I did something I’m not proud of.
My hands went cold and sweaty at the same time. It wasn’t just a dream. She was real! She was a contact in his phone.
He had lied right to my face, over and over again.
I copied the number into my own phone and put his back exactly where I found it.
Then I sat there in the dark, watching the man I thought I knew, wondering what secret he was keeping from me.
Was he cheating? Every worst-case scenario played on a loop in my brain.
He had lied right to my face.
The next morning, as soon as he pulled out of the driveway, I sat at the kitchen table and dialed Marlena’s number.
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