The message appeared on my husband\u2019s phone while he was in the shower.<\/p>\n
I was standing in our kitchen, rinsing the coffee cups and thinking about the ordinary things that filled our mornings: the laundry waiting in the machine, the groceries we needed, and whether I had remembered to pay the electricity bill.<\/p>\n
Then his phone buzzed on the counter.<\/p>\n
I glanced at the screen without thinking. I had never been the kind of wife who searched through her husband\u2019s messages. After twenty-two years of marriage, I believed trust was something you offered freely, not something you demanded proof of every day.<\/p>\n
But the name on the screen caught my attention.<\/p>\n
Mike from work:<\/strong> Last night was amazing. Can\u2019t wait to see you again, babe.<\/p>\n For several seconds, I simply stared at the words.<\/p>\n My husband, David, had worked at the same insurance company for nearly fifteen years. He often complained about his coworkers, told me stories about office meetings, and occasionally brought home birthday cake or leftover sandwiches from company events.<\/p>\n I knew the names of the people he worked with. I had met some of them at Christmas parties and retirement dinners.<\/p>\n There was no Mike.<\/p>\n I read the message again, hoping I had misunderstood it. Perhaps it was a joke. Perhaps someone had sent it to the wrong number.<\/p>\n Then I noticed the word babe<\/em>.<\/p>\n My stomach tightened.<\/p>\n The shower continued running down the hall. I could have carried the phone to the bathroom door and demanded an explanation. I could have shouted until David came out dripping wet, confused and defensive.<\/p>\n Instead, I placed the phone exactly where I had found it.<\/p>\n I made his breakfast, toasted his bread, and packed his lunch in the brown paper bag he preferred. When he came into the kitchen wearing his usual blue shirt and dark trousers, I smiled as though nothing had happened.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you sleep well?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cFine,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n He kissed my cheek, took his lunch, and checked his watch.<\/p>\n \u201cBig day,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to finish a project before Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood luck.\u201d<\/p>\n He paused at the door, glanced back at me, and smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n For the first time in our marriage, those three words sounded like something he had memorized rather than something he felt.<\/p>\n \u201cI love you too,\u201d I answered.<\/p>\n Then I watched him drive away.<\/p>\n I did not cry. I did not throw anything. I stood by the window until his car disappeared around the corner, then sat at the kitchen table and allowed the truth to settle over me.<\/p>\n If I confronted him immediately, he could deny everything. He could say Mike was a nickname, a client, an old friend, or some ridiculous misunderstanding.<\/p>\n I wanted to know whether I was about to destroy my marriage over a message\u2014or whether my marriage had already been damaged by a secret I knew nothing about.<\/p>\n So I decided to find Mike.<\/p>\n At eleven thirty, I prepared a large tray of sandwiches, bought a box of cookies from the bakery, and drove to David\u2019s office. I told myself I was simply being a thoughtful wife bringing lunch for the team.<\/p>\n The receptionist, a young woman named Rachel, greeted me with a cheerful smile.<\/p>\n \u201cHello! Can I help you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m David\u2019s wife,\u201d I said. \u201cI brought lunch for everyone. He\u2019s mentioned a colleague named Mike so often that I thought I\u2019d finally meet him. Is Mike around today?\u201d<\/p>\n Her smile faded slightly.<\/p>\n \u201cMike?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. Mike from his department.\u201d<\/p>\n Rachel looked toward the offices behind her, then back at me.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anyone named Mike in David\u2019s department.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cReally? That\u2019s strange. Perhaps he works on another floor?\u201d<\/p>\n She checked the company directory on her computer.<\/p>\n \u201cNo Mike in this building,\u201d she said. \u201cLet me check the staff list.\u201d<\/p>\n She searched again, carefully scanning the results.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m afraid we don\u2019t have an employee named Mike anywhere in the company.\u201d<\/p>\n For a moment, I could hear nothing but the quiet hum of the office printer.<\/p>\n I managed a small laugh.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, perhaps I got the name wrong. David mentions so many people.\u201d<\/p>\n Rachel looked as though she wanted to ask another question, but I handed her the tray.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease share these with everyone. I hope you enjoy them.\u201d<\/p>\n I left before she could respond.<\/p>\n In the parking lot, I sat behind the steering wheel with both hands gripping it tightly. The sandwiches rested on the passenger seat, and the box of cookies had slid onto the floor.<\/p>\n There was no Mike.<\/p>\n The message had not been a harmless misunderstanding, and the person who sent it had apparently chosen a name that would sound ordinary enough to escape suspicion.<\/p>\n I drove home slowly.<\/p>\n That afternoon, I cleaned the house because I needed something to do with my hands. I folded towels, dusted shelves, and watered the plants on the porch. Every familiar object seemed to belong to a life I had believed was secure.<\/p>\n The framed photograph on the mantel showed David and me on our twentieth anniversary, standing beside the lake where we had spent our honeymoon. His arm was around my waist, and my head rested against his shoulder.<\/p>\n I remembered how he had laughed when the wind blew my hair into my mouth.<\/p>\n I remembered the years we had spent saving for our house, caring for his mother when she became ill, and supporting our daughter, Emily, through college.<\/p>\n We had not built a perfect marriage. We had argued about money, disagreed over parenting, and occasionally gone to bed angry. But I had believed we had something stronger than romance: a shared history, a home, and the quiet certainty that we were on the same side.<\/p>\n Now I wondered how much of that certainty had been mine alone.<\/p>\n David came home at six fifteen, carrying his briefcase and humming softly. He kissed me, asked what was for dinner, and complained about a meeting that had run late.<\/p>\n I listened without interrupting.<\/p>\n He spoke about a difficult client, a report that needed correcting, and a coworker who had forgotten to send an important document.<\/p>\n Not once did he mention Mike.<\/p>\n During dinner, he reached across the table and took my hand.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve been quiet today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHave I?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSomething bothering you?\u201d<\/p>\n I looked at him carefully.<\/p>\n \u201cNo. Just thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n He squeezed my fingers.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t let yourself worry too much. Everything is fine.\u201d<\/p>\n I almost laughed at the timing.<\/p>\n Everything was fine. That was what he had said while sitting across from the woman he had apparently deceived.<\/p>\n After dinner, David watched television while I washed the dishes. He came into the kitchen later and wrapped his arms around my waist.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know you\u2019re the best thing that ever happened to me, don\u2019t you?\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n I turned off the faucet.<\/p>\n For one foolish second, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to rest against his chest and pretend the morning had never happened.<\/p>\n Instead, I gently stepped away.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m tired,\u201d I said. \u201cI think I\u2019ll go upstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked surprised but did not follow me.<\/p>\n That night, I barely slept.<\/p>\n I lay beside him listening to his steady breathing, wondering whether he had met someone else in a hotel room, in an apartment, or somewhere close enough that he could return home and kiss me without a trace of guilt.<\/p>\n I wondered how long it had been happening.<\/p>\n I wondered whether he had laughed at my trust.<\/p>\n But beneath all those questions was another one, quieter and more painful.<\/p>\n If he had betrayed me, would I ever be able to look at him without remembering this night?<\/p>\n The following morning, I waited until he had showered and dressed. Then I picked up his phone from the counter and placed it on his side of the bed, screen facing upward.<\/p>\n When he came into the bedroom, he stopped.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYour phone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can see that.\u201d<\/p>\n I folded my arms.<\/p>\n \u201cMike called. He wants his sweater back.\u201d<\/p>\n The color drained from David\u2019s face.<\/p>\n He looked at the phone, then at me. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. For the first time in twenty-two years, I watched my husband look genuinely afraid of me.<\/p>\n \u201cWho told you about Mike?\u201d he finally asked.<\/p>\n I stared at him.<\/p>\n \u201cYou mean besides the message on your phone?\u201d<\/p>\n He swallowed.<\/p>\n \u201cYou read my messages?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI saw one message that appeared on the screen. Then I went to your office and asked for Mike. Nobody there has ever heard of him.\u201d<\/p>\n David lowered himself onto the edge of the bed.<\/p>\n For several seconds, he rubbed his palms against his trousers. Then he covered his face with both hands.<\/p>\n \u201cI can explain,\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n \u201cThen explain.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked up, his eyes already wet.<\/p>\n \u201cMike isn\u2019t a man.\u201d<\/p>\n I felt something cold move through my chest.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMike is a woman. Her real name is Michelle. Everyone calls her Mike because she\u2019s been using that nickname since college.\u201d<\/p>\n I stared at him, struggling to understand why this distinction mattered.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd she works where?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe doesn\u2019t work with me. She works for a supplier we use. We met through a project last year.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen why did you tell me she was from work?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI never told you that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe message said \u2018Mike from work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s how I saved her number. I thought it would look less suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n The honesty of that sentence struck harder than any excuse could have.<\/p>\n I sat down in the chair opposite him.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you having an affair with her?\u201d<\/p>\n David stared at the carpet.<\/p>\n \u201cI made a terrible mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat isn\u2019t an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n He drew a shaky breath.<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n The word hung between us.<\/p>\n I had imagined this moment countless times during the sleepless night. In some versions, I screamed. In others, I slapped him or threw his belongings into the street.<\/p>\n Instead, I felt strangely calm.<\/p>\n \u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAbout eight months.\u201d<\/p>\n Eight months.<\/p>\n Eight months of shared dinners, family birthdays, grocery shopping, and ordinary conversations. Eight months of him asking whether I had taken my medicine when I had a headache, whether I wanted tea before bed, and whether we should visit our daughter on Sunday.<\/p>\n Eight months of pretending.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you love her?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s convenient.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m serious. It started as talking. She was going through a difficult time, and I was having problems at work. We started having lunch together. Then we began meeting outside work.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd eventually you were calling her babe.\u201d<\/p>\n David winced.<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you think about me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen you knew exactly what you were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n He bowed his head.<\/p>\n \u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n I waited for him to offer a better explanation. He spoke about feeling older, feeling invisible, and worrying that his life had become nothing but work and responsibilities. He said Michelle made him feel interesting again. He said he had not planned to hurt me.<\/p>\n I listened until he ran out of words.<\/p>\n Then I asked the question that mattered most.<\/p>\n \u201cWere you planning to leave me?\u201d<\/p>\n He hesitated.<\/p>\n That hesitation told me more than his confession had.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he admitted. \u201cI kept telling myself I would end it before things went too far.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEight months is not a momentary lapse in judgment, David. It\u2019s eight months of choices.\u201d<\/p>\n He began to cry.<\/p>\n I had seen David cry only a handful of times: when his father died, when our daughter was born, and when we said goodbye to our old dog. His tears had always moved me.<\/p>\n These did not.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens now?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n I stood and walked to the bedroom window.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPlease don\u2019t make a decision today. We can fix this. I\u2019ll end it. I\u2019ll block her number. I\u2019ll do whatever you want.\u201d<\/p>\n I turned toward him.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy should I believe you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou told her you couldn\u2019t wait to see her again.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked down.<\/p>\n \u201cI was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou were dishonest. That\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n He reached for my hand, but I stepped away.<\/p>\n \u201cI need you to sleep somewhere else tonight,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n He stared at me as though I had spoken a foreign language.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is my house too.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. It is. But I cannot share a bed with you while I\u2019m trying to understand who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n After a long silence, he nodded.<\/p>\n He packed a bag and went to stay with his brother.<\/p>\n When the front door closed behind him, I sat on the sofa and cried for the first time.<\/p>\n I cried for the woman I had been the day before, the one who had packed his lunch without suspicion. I cried for the years I could no longer remember without wondering what had been true. I cried because the man I had trusted with my future had made me question my own judgment.<\/p>\n But I also cried because, for the first time in a long while, I did not have to pretend everything was fine.<\/p>\n Three days later, David called.<\/p>\n He said he had ended the relationship with Michelle. He said he was willing to attend counseling and answer every question I had. He offered to give me access to his phone, his email, and his calendar.<\/p>\n I told him I needed time.<\/p>\n Then, on the fourth day, I received a call from an unfamiliar number.<\/p>\n \u201cHello, is this Laura?\u201d a woman asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy name is Michelle. I\u2019m sorry to contact you like this, but David told me he had confessed everything. I thought you deserved to hear the truth from me too.\u201d<\/p>\n My hand tightened around the phone.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n I almost hung up.<\/p>\n Instead, I asked, \u201cDid you know he was married?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you know he came home to me every night?\u201d<\/p>\n Her voice trembled.<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen what exactly do you think an apology can change?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing. I know that. I just wanted you to know that he never promised he was leaving you.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement was intended to comfort me, perhaps, but it only made me feel worse.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you knew he was staying with me while he was seeing you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThank you for being honest,\u201d I said. \u201cPlease don’t contact me again.\u201d<\/p>\n I ended the call.<\/p>\n That evening, I told David about it. He was furious that Michelle had contacted me, but his anger did not impress me.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t get to be angry about how she behaved,\u201d I told him. \u201cYou invited her into our marriage. You don’t get to act as though you\u2019re the only person who has been hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n He fell silent.<\/p>\n For the next several weeks, I lived as though I were learning to walk again. I went to work, met my sister for coffee, and visited Emily on weekends. I told my daughter that her father and I were having serious marital problems but did not burden her with every detail.<\/p>\n Emily was twenty-five and living in a small apartment across town. When I finally told her what had happened, she listened without interrupting.<\/p>\n Then she hugged me.<\/p>\n \u201cMom, you don\u2019t have to decide whether to stay or leave just because Dad is sorry,\u201d she said. \u201cYou get to decide what kind of life you want now.\u201d<\/p>\n I held her tightly.<\/p>\n I had spent so many years making sure everyone else was all right that I had forgotten to ask myself that question.<\/p>\n What kind of life did I want?<\/p>\n I wanted honesty. I wanted peace. I wanted to stop wondering whether every unexpected message or late meeting concealed another lie.<\/p>\n And, to my own surprise, I discovered that I still wanted to understand whether our marriage could be saved.<\/p>\n Not because I was afraid of being alone. I had spent enough nights alone with my thoughts to know that loneliness was not the worst thing that could happen to me.<\/p>\n The worst thing would be staying in a marriage where I could no longer respect myself.<\/p>\n David began counseling. He attended every appointment and did not ask me to forgive him on a schedule. He answered questions even when the answers embarrassed him. He admitted that he had enjoyed the secrecy and the attention, and that he had convinced himself he could control the situation without facing the consequences.<\/p>\n For the first time, he stopped describing the affair as something that had simply happened to him.<\/p>\n He called it what it was: a decision.<\/p>\n We attended counseling together after several months. Some sessions ended in silence. Others brought arguments we had avoided for years. We discussed how we had gradually stopped talking about our fears, how we had begun treating our marriage like a machine that would keep running without maintenance, and how easily ordinary routines could hide emotional distance.<\/p>\n None of those problems excused his betrayal.<\/p>\n Our counselor made that distinction clear, and I needed to hear it.<\/p>\n A troubled marriage could explain why someone felt lonely. It could not make deception inevitable.<\/p>\n David had to accept responsibility for his choices without expecting me to share the blame for them.<\/p>\n For a long time, I did not know whether I could forgive him.<\/p>\n Some days, I remembered the man who had held my hand during my mother’s funeral and driven through a snowstorm to bring Emily home from college when her car broke down. Other days, I remembered the message on his phone and wondered how he could have kissed me after writing words like that to another woman.<\/p>\n Both memories were true.<\/p>\n That was what made the decision so difficult.<\/p>\n Nearly six months after the discovery, David asked whether I would consider allowing him to move back into the house.<\/p>\n We were sitting on the porch, watching rain slide from the roof into the garden.<\/p>\n \u201cI know I don’t deserve to ask,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I want to come home. Not because I’m lonely or because it’s convenient. I want to rebuild our marriage if you’ll let me.\u201d<\/p>\n I looked at him for a long time.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you think rebuilding means?\u201d<\/p>\n He took a breath.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means accepting that you may never trust me the way you did before. It means telling the truth even when it costs me something. It means understanding that saying sorry doesn’t erase what I did. And it means being willing to prove myself for as long as it takes, without demanding that you reward me for it.\u201d<\/p>\n I had heard promises before. What mattered was whether his behavior would continue after the fear of losing me faded.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not ready for you to move home,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n His shoulders fell, but he nodded.<\/p>\n \u201cAll right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019m willing to keep going to counseling. We can see where that takes us.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked at me, his eyes shining.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon’t thank me yet,\u201d I said. \u201cThis is not forgiveness. It’s a decision to see whether something honest can grow from what you broke.\u201d<\/p>\n He accepted that answer.<\/p>\n Another six months passed.<\/p>\n David continued counseling. He stopped hiding behind work and began making time for conversations that were uncomfortable but necessary. He learned to listen without immediately defending himself. He did not ask to inspect my phone or demand that I reassure him when I grew quiet.<\/p>\n He also understood that I was not responsible for making his guilt easier to bear.<\/p>\n Slowly, I began to feel less like a detective in my own life.<\/p>\n I still had difficult days. A notification on his phone could bring back the morning that changed everything. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night and remembered the way his face had gone pale when I mentioned Mike.<\/p>\n But the memories gradually became less powerful.<\/p>\n After nearly a year, I agreed to let David move back into the house, with the understanding that we would continue counseling and that honesty would no longer be negotiable.<\/p>\n The first night was awkward. We ate dinner together, washed the dishes, and sat on opposite ends of the sofa. Neither of us knew how to return to an ordinary evening after so much had changed.<\/p>\n Eventually, David reached for my hand.<\/p>\n I let him hold it, but I did not pretend that everything was healed.<\/p>\n It wasn’t.<\/p>\n Trust did not return in one dramatic moment. It came back in small pieces: when he told me the truth about an uncomfortable situation, when he kept a promise without reminding me he had kept it, and when he listened to my anger without asking me to hurry through it.<\/p>\n One evening, almost two years after the message appeared on his phone, I found him standing in the kitchen holding the old brown lunch bag he used to take to work.<\/p>\n \u201cI found this in the cupboard,\u201d he said with a faint smile.<\/p>\n I recognized it immediately.<\/p>\n The same bag I had packed on the morning I discovered his affair.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n He looked at it, then at me.<\/p>\n \u201cI think about that morning a lot. You made my breakfast, packed my lunch, and kissed me goodbye while you were hurting. I don’t know how you managed to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was trying to understand what was happening before I let anger make the decision for me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou were stronger than I deserved.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe,\u201d I said. \u201cBut strength isn’t the same as being willing to accept anything.\u201d<\/p>\n He nodded.<\/p>\n \u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n I took the lunch bag from him and placed it on the counter.<\/p>\n For a moment, we stood together in silence.<\/p>\n Then I said something I had never expected to say.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t want to spend the rest of my life punishing you. But I won’t spend it pretending you didn’t hurt me either.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t expect you to.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood. Because if we’re going to stay married, I need a partner, not a man who thinks he can make one terrible decision and then return to normal because enough time has passed.\u201d<\/p>\n David reached for my hand.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand.\u201d<\/p>\n And this time, I believed that he understood what the words meant, even though I knew understanding and changing were not the same thing.<\/p>\n Our marriage did not return to the way it had been before. In some ways, that was impossible. The innocence I had once felt when he said he loved me was gone.<\/p>\n But something else began to grow in its place: a more difficult, less comfortable kind of honesty.<\/p>\n I learned that forgiveness was not a duty I owed my husband because we had shared twenty-two years. It was a choice I could make slowly, or not make at all. I learned that loving someone did not require me to ignore the harm they had caused. And I learned that the life I had built was still mine, even when the person beside me had disappointed me.<\/p>\n David had sent one message to another woman, believing he could keep the two parts of his life separate.<\/p>\n He was wrong.<\/p>\n The message had crossed the distance between his secret and our home, and nothing could make it unread.<\/p>\n But it had also forced me to confront a truth I had avoided for too long: a marriage cannot survive on history alone. It needs honesty in the ordinary moments, when nobody is watching and nobody is asking questions.<\/p>\n Sometimes I still think about the morning I carried sandwiches into his office looking for a man who didn’t exist.<\/p>\n I went there hoping to find proof.<\/p>\n What I found was the beginning of a choice.<\/p>\n I could spend the rest of my life chasing explanations, or I could insist on a future in which I no longer had to wonder whether the person I loved was telling me the truth.<\/p>\n I chose the future.<\/p>\n Whether David and I would grow old together remained a question neither of us could answer with certainty. We could only keep making choices, one day at a time.<\/p>\n And that was enough for me.<\/p>\n Because the greatest lesson I learned was not that every unfaithful husband should be forgiven, or that every marriage should be saved.<\/p>\n It was that a woman can love her husband, acknowledge the years they shared, and still refuse to abandon herself for the sake of keeping a marriage intact.<\/strong><\/p>\n Trust may be broken in a moment, but rebuilding it takes patience, accountability, and two people willing to face the truth.<\/p>\n And if those things are missing, no amount of history can replace them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The message appeared on my husband\u2019s phone while he was in the shower. I was standing in our kitchen, rinsing the coffee cups and thinking about the ordinary things that … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-best-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133889,"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133888\/revisions\/133889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discoverstory9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}