… hunched over his laptop, the pale blue light illuminating a smile I hadn’t seen in months. He was wearing a headset and whispering.
I moved closer, my heart pounding in my ears, terrified of what I would see. Porn? Gambling sites? But it was a video call. A young woman with bright red hair was on the screen, laughing.
“I know, babe, it’s perfect,” Jason whispered to her. “I told her the snoring was getting unbearable. She feels so guilty she hasn’t come near the door in weeks. She’s practically sleeping standing up trying to fix it. We have the whole night.”
My blood ran cold. The tea, the nasal strips, the sleeping upright, the humiliation—I had tortured myself for weeks over a medical problem that didn’t even exist. There was no snoring. There was just him, gaslighting me so he could carry on an affair in the next room without me bothering him.
I didn’t confront him right then. I didn’t scream. I quietly pulled out my phone, recorded twenty seconds of his conversation as proof, and crept back to the master bedroom.
The next morning, I didn’t mention the snoring. I simply packed his bags, placed them on the front porch, and changed the locks. When he came home from work to find his key didn’t fit, he checked his phone. I had sent him the video file with a single text: “Sleep tight.”
