08/06/2026
I ordered a dozen white roses every Friday for 11 months, and not one of them ever went to my wife Deborah. I know most of you already have a word picked out for me, and it's probably fair. The woman they went to is named Sloane, and she works two floors down from me. Deborah found out because of a phone call I never imagined would happen: the florist called our house to confirm the standing order, and my wife answered.
I'm 51. Deborah and I have been married 24 years. Two kids, both in college now. A brick ranch in Chattanooga with a mortgage we finally almost k*lled off.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you Deborah did something to deserve this, because she didn't. That's the part I can't dress up. She's a good woman. She packed my lunch on Fridays, the same Fridays.
The affair started at a work conference in Nashville. I'm not going to explain it away. I could tell you I felt invisible, that I felt old, that Sloane looked at me like I was somebody. All of that is true and none of it is an excuse and I know the difference.
The flowers were my stupid ritual. Every Friday, a dozen white roses to Sloane's apartment, on a standing order at a little shop on Frazier called Petal and Stem. $58 a week. I paid cash the first month, then got lazy and put it on the card.
That was the crack in it. That's always how these things go. Something small.
The florist, a nice older lady named Ruth, had a policy of calling to confirm any standing weekly order once a quarter, to make sure the card was still good. She called the number on file.
The number on file was our home landline. Deborah's mother's old number that we never changed.
Deborah answered at 4 in the afternoon on a Thursday, folding laundry.
Ruth said, and Deborah told me this later in a voice I'd never heard her use, "Hi, I'm just confirming your standing Friday order, the dozen white roses to the Riverbend apartments, is everything still the same?"
Deborah said yes. She said thank you. She wrote down the address.
She has never received a single flower from that shop. She knew that in the first three seconds. But she said yes, and got the address, and hung up, and finished folding the laundry, because that's the kind of steady she is.
I found all this out an hour ago. I'm writing this from my truck.
I got home tonight at my normal time. The house was dark, which was strange, because Deborah always has the kitchen light on.
She was sitting at the table in the dark. There was a stack of paper in front of her. Credit card statements. Eleven months of Fridays, highlighted in yellow, one line at a time, $58 after $58 after $58.
She had the flower shop address written on a Post-it, stuck to the top.
She didn't cry and she didn't yell. She just looked at me and asked me one question, the only question, and her voice was completely level.
"Who is she, and how long."
And I stood there in my own kitchen with my keys still in my hand, and I opened my mouth to answer herβ
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