A Joint Revenge by the Men She Fooled

I stared at the photo on my phone screen, unable to look away.

The poster had blurred out the background, leaving only the back of a man in a bespoke suit, and the hand resting at his waist. That hand was slender and pale, with a plain platinum band on the ring finger.

Someone else might not have recognized it. I couldn't have mistaken it for anything else. I'd spent an entire afternoon at the counter last month picking out that exact ring. The clerk had told me it was a new couple's design, meant to symbolize "the one promise."

Melanie Parker had laughed as she slipped it on, then kissed my forehead and said, "Freddie, marrying you is the kind of fortune I must have earned over several lifetimes."

And now that ring, the one that was supposed to carry "the one promise," was sitting in some stranger's post accusing his wife of cheating.

I forced myself to stay calm and clicked on the poster's profile.

His page was clean, almost entirely photos of his daughter. There was a little girl, maybe two years old, laughing with two small dimples, a baby spoon in her hand and pumpkin puree smeared all over her face.

The caption read: [Baby said "dada" today. Too bad someone's on another business trip and missed it.]

Further down, there was a photo of a home-cooked spread he'd made: honey-glazed pork ribs, sautéed green beans, and a pot of creamy fish chowder.

The caption read: [Someone said she'd be home this weekend. Then she called to say she had to entertain a client instead. The food's gone cold. Can't bring myself to throw it out, though.]

Every single post felt like a pinprick lodged in my chest. It didn't hurt exactly. It just kept bleeding, one small puncture after another.

I couldn't stop myself. I kept scrolling.

Finally, I reached a post from over a year ago. It was a photo of an ultrasound printout, with one line of caption: [We're about to become a family of three! Time for me to give my whole heart to the person I love!]

Someone had liked that post. Their profile picture was a backlit silhouette. I'd asked Melanie once why she used a picture like that, and she'd told me it just felt more atmospheric.

Now that same profile picture, the one I knew better than my own, was sitting in another man's social circle, like a silent slap across my face.

The bedroom was quiet, the only sound the faint hum of the central air conditioner. On the nightstand sat a framed photo of Melanie and me, taken last winter skiing in Switzerland. I'd bundled her whole body into my coat, and only our two faces, red from the cold, poked out. We looked like a pair of idiots, grinning like that.

At the time, I'd thought it was what love was supposed to look like.

Looking at it now, all I felt was the bitter irony of it.