An Intimate Photo on Her Phone

I, Jimmy Zeller, put the phone back on the coffee table with the screen facing down.

The sound of the shower stopped.

Whitney Sullivan walked out of the bathroom while drying her hair with a towel. As usual, she picked up her phone and swiped across the screen twice. Her expression remained the same.

I stared at her side profile.

I'd known that face since our college days eleven years ago. I could draw it with my eyes closed.

She suddenly turned around. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I said.

She smiled and reached out to tuck my hair behind my ear.

Her fingertips brushed against my earlobe. It felt cool against my skin. I could smell the grapefruit scent of her body wash.

"You must be tired today," she said. "Get some rest early."

I nodded, but I stayed awake until dawn.

The next day, I took the day off work.

After her car left the residential complex, I returned home and opened her spare phone.

There was no 'M' in her contacts, but the photos were still in the cache folder.

There wasn't only one from last night.

There were photos from two years ago, a year ago, and even six months ago. They were all taken at different places but with the same man.

One was of the man standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows of a hotel. He was wrapped in a bathrobe and raising a glass of red wine.

There was another one on a seaside boardwalk where his arm linked with hers as the sun set behind them.

Another one showed them at a sushi restaurant. He was feeding her a piece of salmon.

The last photo was recent.

In the photo, the man had one hand resting over her lower abdomen while he bent forward to kiss her forehead.

It was taken two months ago.

My phone rang. It was a message from her.

[It's a slow day at work today. I'll be home for dinner tonight. What do you want to eat? I'll pick something up.]

I turned off the screen without replying.

I called the sushi restaurant in one of the photos.

"Hello, I'd like to check the reservation records for a private room by the window from around two months ago. The reservation was under the surname Sullivan."

"Please hold. Yes, we had a reservation for Ms. Sullivan. It was a party of two. The gentleman accompanying her was Mr. Merkel."

I hung up.

She had never taken me to a sushi restaurant. She always said she didn't like raw food.

It turned out it wasn't that she didn't like it.

She just didn't want to eat it with me.

I spent a week trying to figure out who 'M' was.

Ethan Merkel, thirty-one years old, was a cellist with the city symphony orchestra.

He was neither the first man she cheated on me with nor some fleeting affair she had.

He had entered her life much earlier than I had imagined.

Eight years ago, she gave a charity lecture for the orchestra. He had been sitting in the front row.

Seven years ago, she was invited to a New Year's concert. He played a solo, and she presented him with flowers.

Six years ago, we had just registered our marriage.

That same year, his social media account began frequently featuring someone called Ms. Sullivan.

There was never a clear photo of her face. Only her hands were ever shown.

They were the same hands helping him out of a car, the same hands carrying his cello case, and the same hands holding a wineglass beside him on his birthday.

I went through five years of his posts one by one.

He once posted a sheet of music with a caption.

[It's been seven years since she taught me how to read music.]

He once posted a photo of a stuffed cat with a caption.

[When you're not here, it keeps me company.]

He once posted a blurry view from a window with a caption.

[She said she'd bring me here again next time.]