The first time I noticed, I assumed it was nothing.
I woke around three in the morning and realized Daniel wasn’t in bed.
A few minutes later, the front door opened.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“Taking out the trash.”
At three in the morning?
He shrugged and climbed back into bed.
The next night, it happened again.
By then, my mind was racing.
Daniel had been distant lately, and now he was disappearing in the middle of the night.
On the third night, I set an alarm and pretended to be asleep.
When Daniel got up, I quietly followed him.
He walked past our trash cans.
Then he crossed the street.
That was when I saw him unlock the gate at Mrs. Harper’s house.
She was an eighty-year-old widow who lived alone.
I stood frozen as Daniel disappeared inside.
A few minutes later, I saw him through the kitchen window.
He wasn’t meeting another woman.
He was making tea.
Mrs. Harper was sitting at the table wearing an oxygen tube.
Daniel later explained that she had recently started a new medication that sometimes made her dizzy at night.
Her son lived several states away, and she was terrified of calling an ambulance every time she felt weak.
So Daniel had given her his number.
Whenever she felt frightened, she texted him.
He hadn’t told me because she was embarrassed and had asked him to keep it private.
I felt awful for what I had suspected.
The next morning, I knocked on Mrs. Harper’s door with breakfast.
After that, she had two people she could call at 3 a.m.
