I Found His Mistress a Man with an STD

The night I discovered Daniel Carter's affair, I had just wiped birthday cake cream off his tie. He crouched in front of our son, Noah Carter, and placed a GoPro in his small hands. "You're 8 now, Noah. Starting today, you need to learn how to be a responsible man." Noah nodded solemnly. I raised my phone and captured the two of them with their foreheads pressed together, then posted the photo on i********:. Monica: My two boys. Ten minutes later, I found a photo of another woman's new lingerie on one of those boys' phones. It was a Friday. The sun set late in Fairview, the birthday balloons were still up in the yard, and a few sausages remained on the grill. We had been married for 10 years. In our second year, I gave birth to Noah and rented my first dance studio. I taught classes by day and nursed him at night, while Daniel drove students around in a used Ford with diapers and a portable ballet barre permanently crammed into the trunk. We now owned three children's dance centers, and enough parents waited for spots in our weekend classes to crowd the reception area. Once we made it through those brutal first three years, our annual net income climbed past $700,000. I had always been proud of that. Who said having a child had to derail a woman's career? My son was healthy, our business was profitable, and the parents at our studios thought my husband was a respectable man. In hindsight, respectability was only ever for outsiders. In the living room, Daniel and Noah were trying to figure out one of the camera's features. Noah stamped his foot in frustration, and Daniel laughed as he told him to be patient. "Monica, the purchase email should be on my phone. Can you find the manual for us?" His phone was lying beside me. The password had always been our wedding anniversary. Looking back, that struck me as particularly funny. The moment I opened his inbox, a notification appeared at the top of the screen. The sender was Audrey White. Audrey: I'll wear it for you tomorrow night. Promise me you won't tear it again this time. She followed it with a kiss-mark emoji, then a photo. Noah called from the living room. "Mom, did you find it?" "Almost." I had to force the word past my throat. When the photo finished loading, my mind went blank. My thumb froze on the screen, and for a moment, I even forgot to lift it. The woman stood in front of a mirror with her phone covering half her face. Her white swimsuit made her skin look as though it had been brushed with honey. Her waist was narrow, her stomach perfectly flat, without so much as an extra crease. It was the body of a woman who had never given birth. She didn't need to show her face for me to hear the boast in that picture: Look how young I am. I opened the previous messages. Desert Springs. A spa suite. Check-in on Saturday afternoon. Daniel had told me he was meeting a potential franchisee that Saturday. "Dad, look! It's recording!" Daniel's laugh came through the camera. "Nice work, buddy." I closed the conversation, marked it unread again, found the purchase email, and forwarded the manual to myself. On my way over, I even picked up the wrapping paper Noah had dropped on the floor. "Here. You two pressed the wrong button." Daniel gave my wrist an affectionate squeeze. "Mom's the smart one." I smiled and slipped my hand free. Of course I was. If I weren't smart, how could I have supported him so well that he had time to cheat on me? At 10:00 p.m., Noah fell asleep clutching his present. I went upstairs, filled the bathtub with warm water, and opened a sheet mask. I needed some peace and quiet to think through the numbers. Time didn't just give women wrinkles. It also taught us to find out what something was worth before we smashed it. Daniel was 42, with a receding hairline and an advancing waistline. Did he really think a woman in her 20s would enjoy listening to him snore if he didn't have the wealth we had built together? If I divorced him, I would be handing over a share of everything I had worked for so he could enjoy it with someone else. If I stayed, he would keep using money that was partly mine to play the generous lover. Either way, I was the one losing. I didn't like to lose. That had been 8 years earlier. I had lain in a delivery room gripping Daniel's hand, in too much pain to form a complete sentence. Now, on our son's birthday, I was researching the bed his father had booked for another woman. The bathwater slowly cooled. At last, I picked up my phone and searched for Audrey's account. The instant I enlarged her profile photo, I recognized her. I knew this woman. Four months earlier, I had personally told her, "I'm sorry, but we can't hire you."