Perry Garland was thirty-four when his entire world collapsed on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoon in October.
He didn’t discover his wife’s betrayal through suspicious text messages or lipstick on a collar. He learned the truth because Bonnie forgot to end a phone call.
He was sitting in his home office in downtown Seattle, Washington, reviewing architectural blueprints for a mixed-use development project when his phone buzzed. Bonnie’s name lit up the screen.
They’d talked an hour earlier.
She was out shopping with her sister, Valerie, getting ready for a charity gala they were attending that weekend. Perry figured she was calling to ask his opinion on dress colors or whether he’d picked up her dry cleaning.
“Hey, babe,” he answered, already pulling up his calendar to double-check he hadn’t forgotten something.
Silence.
“Bonnie? You there?”
More silence, but not the empty kind.
He could hear background noise—muffled voices, distant traffic, the electronic chime of a store entrance.
Pocket dial.
It happened sometimes. Perry was about to hang up when he heard her voice, distant but clear enough to catch the words.
“God, Val… I can’t believe I’m actually going through with this.”
Bonnie laughed—sharp, clipped, nothing like the soft, musical sound Perry had fallen in love with eight years ago.
“I mean… part of me almost feels bad. Almost.”
Perry froze, his finger hovering over the end-call button, his stomach tightening with a dread he couldn’t explain.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” another voice said.
Valerie.
Definitely.
“That man has had you living like you’re middle-class when you could be so much more. You deserve better than his thirty-something architect salary and that modest little life.”
Perry’s throat constricted.
He made good money—nearly $120,000 a year. They lived in a nice condo.
They took vacations twice a year. They didn’t worry about bills.
But Perry had always been careful with money. Conservative.
There was a reason for that—one he’d never shared with Bonnie, one he’d planned to reveal on their tenth anniversary, two years away.
“It’s not just about the money,” Bonnie said, and Perry heard the soft scrape of hangers sliding across a rack.
“Though God knows I’m tired of him acting like spending three hundred dollars on a dress is some major investment decision.”
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