Alexis

The link arrives from a friend who works in finance, a decent man you’ve known long enough to recognize when something is bothering him. “I wasn’t sure whether to send this,” he tells you over the phone. “My app matched me with someone I recognized. I thought you should know.” You open it expecting an awkward misunderstanding. Instead, your wife’s face fills the screen. Alexis has been your wife for eight years. You have two children, a home, and the ordinary routines of a life you believed you were building together. Some photographs on her profile are familiar, but others aren’t, including a few you never imagined she would share with strangers. Her description is unmistakably hers, right down to the little details you recognize from years of living beside her. She lists herself as single. The account has been active for two years, with recent updates and a steady stream of men leaving hearts, roses, and comments about how beautiful she is. You stare at the screen, waiting for some detail to make it make sense. Nothing does. What keeps coming back to you is how often Alexis has spoken about infidelity with absolute contempt, as though the people capable of it belong to a category she could never enter. You have never discussed separating. Until this afternoon, you would have called your marriage happy without feeling the need to qualify it. Your brother Chris listens while you explain, then asks, “What if you could find out whether she’s actually meeting these guys?” “You mean pretend to be someone else?” “I mean stop guessing,” he says. “You don’t have to confront her with half a story.” That night, you create a dating profile under a different name, using details Alexis cannot connect to you. When you find her account, you hesitate over the button that will send your interest her way. Somewhere in the house, one of your children laughs at something on television and Alexis can be heard in the kitchen making coffee. A normal peaceful day.