Perry Garland was thirty-four when his entire world collapsed on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoon in October.
He didn’t discover his wife’s betrayal through suspicious text messages or lipstick on a collar. He learned the truth because Bonnie forgot to end a phone call.
He was sitting in his home office in downtown Seattle, Washington, reviewing architectural blueprints for a mixed-use development project when his phone buzzed. Bonnie’s name lit up the screen.
They’d talked an hour earlier. She was out shopping with her sister, Valerie, getting ready for a charity gala they were attending that weekend. Perry figured she was calling to ask his opinion on dress colors or whether he’d picked up her dry cleaning.
“Hey, babe,” he answered, already pulling up his calendar to double-check he hadn’t forgotten something.
Silence.
“Bonnie? You there?”
More silence, but not the empty kind. He could hear background noise—muffled voices, distant traffic, the electronic chime of a store entrance.
Pocket dial.
It happened sometimes. Perry was about to hang up when he heard her voice, distant but clear enough to catch the words.
“God, Val… I can’t believe I’m actually going through with this.”
Bonnie laughed—sharp, clipped, nothing like the soft, musical sound Perry had fallen in love with eight years ago.
“I mean… part of me almost feels bad. Almost.”
Perry froze, his finger hovering over the end-call button, his stomach tightening with a dread he couldn’t explain.
“Don’t you dare feel guilty,” another voice said.
Valerie. Definitely.
“That man has had you living like you’re middle-class when you could be so much more. You deserve better than his thirty-something architect salary and that modest little life.”
Perry’s throat constricted.
He made good money—nearly $120,000 a year. They lived in a nice condo. They took vacations twice a year. They didn’t worry about bills.
But Perry had always been careful with money. Conservative. There was a reason for that—one he’d never shared with Bonnie, one he’d planned to reveal on their tenth anniversary, two years away.
“It’s not just about the money,” Bonnie said, and Perry heard the soft scrape of hangers sliding across a rack.
“Though God knows I’m tired of him acting like spending three hundred dollars on a dress is some major investment decision.”
She exhaled a laugh that sounded like contempt.
“It’s that he’s so safe. So predictable. So boring.”
Something inside Perry cracked—clean, sudden, like ice splitting under pressure.
His breath caught.
“Perry is pathetically oblivious,” Bonnie continued, her voice dripping with disdain. “I’ve been seeing Derek for seven months now, and he hasn’t suspected a thing. Not once.”
Perry’s hand trembled around the phone.
Seven months.
The words echoed in his head like a death knell.
Seven months while he’d been planning anniversary surprises. Seven months while he’d been writing terrible poems because he thought it made her smile.
Or so he’d thought.
“You know what he did last week?” Bonnie went on, sounding almost amused. “He surprised me with reservations at that Italian place where we had our first date. Brought me flowers. Read me a poem he’d written.”
She laughed again. Cruel this time.
“A poem, Val. Like we’re teenagers. It was so embarrassing I could barely look at him.”
Perry’s grip tightened.
Every word was a blade sliding between his ribs—precise, practiced, devastating.
“So Derek’s definitely better than—” Valerie started.
But Bonnie cut her off.
“Derek’s everything Perry isn’t. Confident. Successful. He doesn’t second-guess every decision or ask my opinion about every little thing like he’s incapable of thinking for himself.”
Bonnie’s voice dropped lower, intimate in a way that made Perry’s skin go cold.
“And the chemistry is unreal, Val. I’d forgotten what it’s like to actually want someone.”
Perry felt heat rush to his face—then drain away.
The room seemed to shrink. The walls pressed in.
His hands shook so badly he almost dropped the phone.
But he couldn’t bring himself to end the call.
Some masochistic part of him needed to hear it all.
“When are you telling him?” Valerie asked, tone bright and excited, like they were discussing vacation plans.
“After the new year. Derek and I have it all planned out,” Bonnie said.
“I’ll file in January. Apparently, that’s better timing for the settlement. My lawyer said I should easily get half of everything—maybe more if we play up the right angles.”
Perry’s jaw clenched.
She said it so casually. Like this was a business deal, not a marriage.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page to discover the rest 🔎👇
