My Husband Left Me With His Dying Mother For A “business Trip,” But I Found Photos Of Him In Miami With Another Woman. He Thinks He’s Inheriting Everything, But My Mother-in-law Left It All To Me. How Do I Break The News?
The Struggle and the Screen
Outside, the rain continued to pour, washing away the last traces of Michael and leaving the sick old woman and me alone in that empty house. Three months passed, feeling as long as three centuries. My life had been turned upside down, trapped in a relentless cycle: the office, the hospital, and the kitchen perpetually smelling of medicine.
My mother-in-law’s health deteriorated faster than expected. Gut-wrenching coughing fits tormented her day and night, preventing me from getting a single full night’s sleep. Every morning I arrived at the office with dark circles under my eyes and my spirits crushed.
My boss had already reprimanded me twice for being late and for my lack of focus. But what could I do when every morning I had to clean her, change her adult diapers, and feed her puréed meals before I could leave the house?
The money on the card Michael left me barely amounted to $500 a month. He claimed part of his salary was being withheld for work insurance or some bureaucratic process. With $500, I could barely cover the diapers and some painkillers not covered by her insurance.
All the expenses for food, bills, and daily life came from the small savings account I had been building since I was single. Every Sunday night, Michael would video call. It was a moment I both anticipated and dreaded.
On the phone screen, Michael always appeared against a white wall or sometimes in the corner of a quiet coffee shop. He always complained it was so cold there and the work was so stressful. He had meetings late into the night; he had no time to even rest.
I looked at his face on the screen, his skin rosy and his hair perfectly styled—a stark contrast to my own disheveled and gaunt appearance. I wanted to scream, to tell him about the sleepless nights patting his mother’s back, the time she had vomited blood leaving me terrified.
But seeing his expression of a busy, important man, I swallowed my complaints.
The Laptop Reveals the Truth
One night, while searching for my mother-in-law’s old medical records to prepare for her next radiation session, I remembered that Michael had scanned and saved some documents on his old laptop which he had left at home. It was a computer he rarely used, tucked away in a closet because he said it was too slow.
I plugged it in, turned it on, and the screen lit up displaying the family folders. I found the medical file and was about to email it to myself to print, but when I opened the Chrome browser, Michael’s Google account was still logged in.
Perhaps in the rush of his departure, or because he thought I was technologically illiterate, he had forgotten to sign out. A small notification popped up in the top right corner of the screen: Google Photos has synced 12 new photos.
Out of curiosity, and also because I missed my husband, I clicked to see them. I thought they would be pictures of snow in Germany or of him with his foreign colleagues. But they were not.
What I saw was the deep blue of the sea and sky, a radiant and stunning landscape. The most recent photo had been taken two hours ago. It showed a lavish seafood platter with a huge red lobster next to a glass of sparkling wine. The location tag read: “A five-star resort in Miami.”
My heart lurched and my hand on the mouse began to tremble. I scrolled to the next photo. It was the back of a young woman. She was wearing a bright orange bikini and lying on a lounge chair with a cocktail in her hand, posing in a way that oozed sensuality and enjoyment.
Though it was only her back, I instantly recognized her light brown hair with large curls. It was Natalie, the former colleague from the marketing department whom Michael had introduced to me at the company Christmas party the previous year.
At the time, he had said she was a very dynamic girl, that he considered her a little sister. I kept scrolling. Tears began to well up, blurring the images on the screen.
The third photo was a shirtless selfie of Michael wearing sunglasses, grinning from ear to ear. Behind him was an infinity pool, and the silhouette of that girl swimming. There was no Germany, no key project, no snow, no late nights working.
Only Miami, golden sun, blue sea, expensive seafood, and a mistress. While I was here in this house, that mire of sickness and death, cleaning up after his dying mother, counting every penny to buy her soft food.
He, the husband I trusted blindly, was using the money he claimed was being withheld to fund a lavish and debauched affair. I slammed the laptop shut. The sharp snap echoed in the silent night.
The initial pain quickly gave way to a nausea that rose in my throat. I looked at my hands, the same hands that moments ago were washing a towel stained with my mother-in-law’s phlegm. Now they seemed ridiculous, pathetic.
My devotion, my trust—it had all been turned into a cruel joke by him. From the bedroom, my mother-in-law’s cough sounded again, a guttural sound that tore at my soul. I stood up and wiped away my tears, not because I was no longer sad, but because I knew that from that moment on, I was no longer the docile, self-sacrificing wife of yesterday.
