Thread by @nwaoma007

Betrayed

1./ Ivie’s hands trembled on the steering wheel as she backed out of the gate. She instinctively raised a hand in acknowledgement of the greeting by the security guard who manned the gates for the mini gated community of townhouses where they lived.

2./ Hot tears were burning the backs of her eyes. She prayed they wouldn’t drop. The children were in the car and she knew that if they saw her tears, she would have a tough job explaining them away.

3./ They bickered good-naturedly in the backseat as they were wont to do on the school-run; whereas she had to make a superhuman effort to keep her mind on the road and not crash into other cars as she drove out onto the main road. Her emotions and thoughts were in disarray.

4./ Oh God why? Why did she have to see what she saw? She wished she could unsee it. Or should she be grateful to be in the know? People said “Knowledge is power.” But they also said “Ignorance is bliss.” Which was it to be?

5./ Both were diametrically opposed so it had to be one or the other. Life may not have been blissful before she saw that message but she’d had her peace of mind and she was relatively happy. She hadn’t spent time second-guessing Osaze’s every move. If he was running late,

6./ she didn’t wonder where he was, or if he was with another woman. If he had to travel, she didn’t wonder if he was traveling with or to another woman. She took him at his word. This message altered everything. In one fell swoop,

7./ her assumptions about her marriage and the dynamics of her marital life were destroyed. Would she ever return to that place of trust? That place where she looked at her husband and had the assurance that she was the most important woman in his life? She didn’t think so.

8./ Ordinarily, she had a policy of not looking at her husband’s phone. When some her friends talked of how they stealthily kept tabs on their husbands’ movements, she had wondered how and why they would demean themselves in such a manner.

9./ It had never occurred to her to wonder about the series of circumstances that brought them to that sad pass. Ivie shook her head at her naïveté. This morning’s event gave her an inkling. She hadn’t intended to look at Osaze’s phone this morning either.

10./ But he was expecting a message from a major client and had been like a cat on a hot tin roof all morning. When he went to shower, he had left his phone out in the bedroom. She was putting the finishing touches to her makeup when she heard the “beep beep”

11./ indicating that he had a message coming in. She rushed to take the phone to him in the bathroom. On picking the phone she glanced at the header which had popped up when the message came in.

“Babe, you really worked me over yesterday.

12./ Thinking about it is making me wet again. . . Can’t wait to see you on Friday. Enchanted forest needs Magic Wand. BTW. Alert received. Too generous. You’re the best Boo. What would I do without you?” Those words made her feel like she had been doused in icy water.

13./ The message went on, but that had been as much as she could see from the header. It was bad enough. Instinctively, she’d clicked on it to see the rest of the message, but the prompt came up asking her to input the password.

14./Osaze had always had a password on his phone but that had never bothered her because she didn’t make a habit of looking at his phone &anyway, she also had a password on her phone. The fact that they hadn’t exchanged telephone passwords had never been an issue for her either.

15./ Although she had an idea what his password might be, she was far too devastated by the much she had seen. She however quickly took a screenshot of the message then dropped the phone.

16./ She had already been running behind schedule and she knew that any confrontation she would have with him would probably result in the kids not going to school.
Ivie wanted so badly to turn back now and go and have that confrontation.

17./ No way was she going to be able to survive the day at work with these thoughts churning within.

The simultaneous sounds of a loud blast of honking from the car beside hers and the shout of “Mummy!” from the kids pulled her sharply out of her reverie.

18./ She had veered out of her lane and had almost slammed into the car in the next lane.

No. Ivie thought. She couldn’t go to work in this frame of mind. As soon as she dropped the children, she was going back home. This needed to be thrashed out this morning.

19./ They came to a set of lights that turned red just as they drew up and she had to stop. Immediately she sent a message to Osaze telling him that she needed to talk to him about something and could he wait for her because she was coming home once she dropped the children off.

20./ He replied to say he would wait since he didn’t need to be at the office until noon.

Ivie wondered how she would introduce the topic. Wondered if he would deny. Did he suspect that she knew? Was this his first foray into infidelity? For how long had this been going on?

21./ Was this the only person? Or did he have more than one? So many questions? Why did he feel the need to have someone on the side?
If anyone had asked, she would have said they had a better than satisfactory sex life. Certainly, the bedroom wasn’t boring in her opinion.

22./ They still did creative stuff. Maybe not as often as they used to. But it wasn’t all missionary. Sometimes even when she was tired or not in the mood, she willed herself into the mood to avoid leaving him hungry, and now this? What was the point?

23./ In addition to the blow of imagining Osaze in bed with another woman, adoring her body and doing all the things he did to her to and with her to and with the other woman, she thought of the part of the message where she was thanking him for “the money.” The money?

24./ It was bad enough that he was cheating on her, but that he was also giving away money. . . So much so that the girl or woman was saying that he was too generous. So, this wasn’t a one-off, nor was it likely it was the first time he was giving money to this woman.

25./ Okay, so they weren’t in financial dire straits, but they weren’t awash with cash either. They needed to husband their resources carefully. Ivie didn’t know which hurt more. The fact of his physical involvement with this woman,