My Husband Thought His Mistress’s Baby Was His

The tea was still hot when I opened Tate's Strava app. I didn't mean to snoop. I was just bored, curled on the couch with my phone dead and his iPad sitting on the coffee table. He was in the shower. I could hear the water running through the wall.

I scrolled through his recent runs. Ten miles tonight. Eight miles yesterday. He'd been so consistent lately. I smiled a little. He always said running cleared his head.

Then I scrolled back. And back. And kept scrolling.

Every route ended at the same place.

I zoomed in. A residential building downtown. I zoomed out. The routes changed shape — some loops, some straight lines, some that curved like hearts. But every single one terminated at that same pinpoint.

I scrolled faster. One week. Two weeks. A month. Three months.

Three hundred days.

My hand was steady as I took screenshots. One for each month. One zoomed in on the address. One showing the full timeline. The shower shut off. I closed the app, set the iPad back exactly where it had been, and picked up my tea.

Tate came out in his towel, hair wet, grinning. "What are you up to?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just sitting."

He kissed the top of my head. "I'm beat. Long run tonight."

"I know," I said.

He didn't hear the edge in my voice. He never did.

---

The next morning, I waited until his car pulled out of the driveway. Then I opened my laptop and typed the address into the county property database.

Resident: Violette Lane.

I stared at the name. I'd heard it twice in our entire marriage. Once when we were dating and I asked about his exes. Once at a wedding when someone mentioned her and Tate changed the subject fast.

Ancient history, he'd said both times.

I made another cup of tea. I sat at the kitchen table with my hands wrapped around the mug and let myself feel it for exactly five minutes. The shock. The betrayal. The sick, hollow drop in my chest.

Then I opened a new browser tab and started researching monitoring software.

---

It took three days to install everything. Phone. Laptop. Secondary email account I found buried in his browser history. I was careful. I didn't rush. I used a VPN and encrypted storage and hid the backup drive inside a hollowed-out cookbook on our kitchen shelf — one of those decorative ones we got as a wedding gift and never opened.

The data started flowing in within hours.

Text messages. Instagram DMs. Photos. A burner account I didn't know existed, following Violette's private posts. And comments. So many comments.

*She still doesn't know.*

*Barren and clueless.*

*You're the only one who gets me.*

I read every single one at two in the morning while Tate slept beside me. My face didn't move. I took screenshots. I logged timestamps. I added everything to the archive and closed the laptop without making a sound.

---

"Show me," Sylvia said.

We were at a coffee shop three blocks from my house. I slid my phone across the table. She swiped through the Strava screenshots, and her face went white.

"Maeve. Oh my God. Maeve."

"I know."

"You need to call him right now. You need to go to that building and —"

"No."

She looked up. "What?"

I set my coffee cup down. "We're not doing any of those things."

"Maeve, he's been lying to you for a year. You can't just —"

"I need more," I said quietly.

She stared at me. "More?"

I didn't answer. I didn't know how to explain it yet. That confronting him now would give him time to spin it, to apologize, to make me feel crazy for not forgiving him. That I needed to see the whole picture before I made a single move.

Sylvia reached across the table and squeezed my hand. "Okay," she said finally. "Okay. What do you need me to do?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just don't tell anyone. Not yet."

She nodded. But I saw the way she looked at me. Like she didn't quite recognize me anymore.

I didn't recognize me either.

---

The text came that night.

No words. Just a photo. A woman's hand resting on a man's bare chest. A chest I knew. The small scar below the left collarbone, from the bike accident when he was twelve. He'd told me the story on our third date.

I stared at the screen. Then I took a screenshot, logged the sender's number in my archive, and set the phone face-down on the nightstand.

Tate was asleep beside me. His breathing was slow and even.

I lay in the dark for a long time. My hands were folded on my stomach. My eyes were open.

I didn't cry.

I was done crying.