The toilet seat was up. One of the many clues to fuel my suspicion that my wife, of fifteen years, may be cheating on me. I know for sure that I had left the toilet seat down this morning. I’d known better than to leave it up. The first few years of our marriage she constantly berated me for leaving it up.

I was still doubtful that she was cheating, even though things hadn’t been so good with Nancy and I since her promotion. I thought the promotion would be great; an increase in salary and for her to finally spend some quality time with our two boys; she was usually too busy finishing up patient reports to tend to the boys.

The first few months were great. I saw how relieved she’d become not to have to do any reports when she got home. She was happy to finally have some time with the boys, and even some alone time with me as well. It was great. We were even having sex on a daily basis.

When she got all settled in to her new role as Director, that was when things started to slowly change. She began coming home late. It started off with one day and has now progressed to her coming home late every night. She even started to go in to work on weekends.

I didn’t think much of it at first. I was way too occupied to suspect anything. Her becoming busy had also affected how busy I became at home. As soon as I got home from work, I had to get dinner ready for the boys, then go over their homework, made sure they bathed, and that they were in bed on time.

I did not even notice or suspect anything when the length of her outfits became shorter and shorter. Her explanation was because she had to look the role, and it was ME not being used to seeing her in business attire rather than the hospital scrubs she wore when she was a home care nurse. Pretty legit excuse I thought.

Then came the nights out with co-workers, at bars no less. She said it was much needed as work had become quite stressful.

She doesn’t even drink.

When we made love it was like her mind was elsewhere. She barely touched me and there was hardly any animation on her end. It was like making love to a dead fish. As soon as I’d finish, she’d roll over to her side of the bed and go to sleep.

So exactly a week later I decided to call out of work to confirm my suspicion. I actually didn’t have any concrete evidence that she was really cheating on me. I was relying more on instinct and on how things got out of its regular routine. So it was a long shot whether or not my suspicions would be confirmed. That morning I did what I would normally do when getting ready for work. I kissed her on the lips and said to her “have a good day and see you later.”

I had it all planned out. I even parked my car in my assigned spot at the train station, if she were to check, it would appear as if I went to work. Then, I took a cab back home and told had the driver drop me off a few blocks from the house and walked the rest of the way. When I got home, the house was empty.

Four hours later I’m all caught up on my favorite TV shows that I had saved in my DVR. I chuckled at myself for thinking she would ever cheat on me. Maybe it was ME that actually left the toilet seat up.

I didn’t realize that I had fallen asleep. I was awakened to the sounds of car doors closing. I looked outside from the living room window to see Nancy cheerfully holding hands with another man whom I did not recognize. I became furious when I saw them kiss, even more so when I saw him fondling my wife’s breast. I quickly ran down to the basement to retrieve my glock.