The Secret Under the Seat
We had been married for six years. I thought I knew everything about him. I knew his coffee order, his favorite childhood movie, and the password to his main phone. But yesterday, while I was driving his car to run errands, I dropped my favorite lipstick. It rolled deep under the passenger seat. I pulled over, reached blindly into the darkness to retrieve it, and my hand brushed against something cold and plastic.
I pulled it out. It wasn't a piece of trash. It was a cheap, prepaid flip phone—a Burner Phone—duct-taped to the metal frame of the seat. My hands were shaking as I flipped it open. There was no passcode. I went straight to the contacts. There was only one number saved, listed simply as "Pizza Hut."
"My stomach dropped. Who calls Pizza Hut at 2 AM on a Tuesday?"
I pressed the call button. It rang twice. Then, a husky, female voice answered. She didn't say, "Hello, can I take your order?" She whispered, "Hey Baby, are you free?" The silence that followed was deafening. I didn't say a word. I just hung up, drove home, and packed his bags.
When he came home from work, I didn't scream. I just tossed the burner phone onto the dinner table. The color drained from his face faster than I’ve ever seen. He tried to claim it wasn't his, but the call log told a different story. He had been living a lie for two years, and it took a dropped tube of lipstick to bring the whole charade crashing down.
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