Revelations

The truth shall set you free

It wasn’t easy finding out about her but even so, Frances was relieved.

She had been suspicious for months, so finding out the truth — finally — eased much of the pressure she had been feeling.

For weeks on end now, she had felt this unwieldy weight, sometimes on her chest, sometimes on her back, always in her head and, some would say, on her mind. Sometimes the pain was everywhere; a dull, ache that nebulously floated in, around and through her body. Other times, it was only fog; her thoughts were unclear and blurred by the ache and daily dread she was feeling.

Isabella. Apparently that was her name.

She had seen the initial “I” with no last name showing up as a contact on his phone. She wasn’t prying, of course; she just happened to see the oddly placed character on call display one morning. He had left his phone on the counter as he hurriedly abandoned the kitchen to sign for yet another Amazon delivery at the front door. The temptation to pick up the phone and answer was strong — who is “I” anyway, she thought to herself? — but stopped short of doing so by the third ring. Good thing, too. What would she have said? Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Uneasy, she left for work shortly after, her head pounding, as was the norm these days.

No one had said it was going to be easy.

“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” her best friend Alex had told her. “If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you,” she repeated. This was the elephant in the room, no, in her head, that she didn’t want to face. Frances had met her husband when he was otherwise taken. No — he was more than taken — he was married, and had been for over a decade.

He had promised Frances that he would leave his wife when the time came; an unclear and distant date in the future but “soon,” according to his words.

He had told her repeatedly that he didn’t love his wife and that he was only staying for the kids. “They’re too young for their father to move out,” he would remind her. After much nagging on Frances’ part, she got a partial commitment to their relationship: “When Hanna turns 10, I think they’ll be able to handle it then,” he promised her.

“Ten,” she had thought to herself over and over again. Hanna was only seven when they started their covert relationship; could Frances hold on for another three years? And yet she did, spurred on by the promise of a new relationship with her beloved, resolute in the notion that true love would wait and they would, indeed, be married. She just had to be patient.

Being a man of his word (she thought), he left his wife just a few months shy of Hanna’s tenth birthday.

She had finally given in to her suspicions and scrolled through his phone. This time, however, it was while he was in the bathroom, showering. For weeks she had been feeling uncertain and anxious. Something, something just wasn’t right.

Isabella.

The name sounded so sophisticated. To Frances’ ear, and in her mind, this woman was everything Frances wasn’t.

Late one evening, she went through his phone. There they were: the text messages she didn’t want to see. The images she couldn’t forget. The words that seared into the canals of her inner mind, settled there forever.

“Who’s Isabella?” she asked calmly.

She wasn’t going to lose it. She had promised herself after that long and wretched cry, that this would be the only time. The tears had come like a flood, and Alex, ever the good friend, wiped them from her face as quickly as they fell. That night they had stayed up for hours and through many glasses of wine and a shot or two of whiskey, they — she — survived.

His face immediately changed.

She couldn’t discern whether it was abject fear or complete disinterest. Either way, it wasn’t good.

“Oh, just a friend from work,” he replied nonchalantly.

“How come you’ve never mentioned her before?” she pressed.

“Okay, what’s up? Did you go through my phone? Are you spying on me?”

His defensiveness belied his previous demeanour. It had been an act. A split-second act but one nonetheless. She had gotten under his skin and he had reacted. Her hunch had been proven true and she couldn’t have been more disappointed…and relieved.

For the years since he had left his wife, she had struggled with what she felt, deep down, to the truth: “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

Alex had told her this repeatedly, but not as many times as she had told this to herself. Yet when she did, she immediately pushed down what she knew to be true into the annals of her clouded, misdirected mind. There had been no time to focus on useless adages; her relationship would be different.

And yet it wasn’t.

Alex had been right all along.

He did it to his wife and now, he was doing it to her, just as prescribed.

She felt foolish yet relieved; the crushing weight on her chest, back and beyond immediately disappeared. Somehow, she felt lighter. Lighter but sadder. Clarity broke through the fog that had been clouding her mind all these many months.

The truth shall set you free, she thought to herself for the first time ever.

© Samantha Kemp-Jackson 2019