I Discovered My Husband’s Secret Second Phone and Decided to Follow Him – Story of the Day

“Tom!” she called softly when he emerged several minutes later, buttoning his coat against the chill in the air. “I thought maybe we could… you know, have a little surprise tonight. At home.”

But Tom brushed off her efforts. “That sounds nice, Marge, but I’ve got this mound of paperwork,” he said. “It’s going to be an all-nighter. Probably won’t be home till morning.”

“Oh, I understand. Work comes first.”

Margaret watched him leave, feeling their love fade away.

When she returned home, the silence was haunting her. She had no idea how she would fix things. But then her girls, Lisa and Rosa, came in, distracting her from her disturbing thoughts.

“Mom? Something’s different about you today. Everything alright?” Lisa asked, looking worried.

Margaret tried to smile. It felt good that they cared. And then Rosa said something sweet, “Mom, you’re really pretty, you know?”

Those words made Margaret feel stronger. She realized she didn’t just have to wait around for Tom to notice her. She had her girls, and that was enough.

With a new kind of energy, she told them, “You know what, girls? We’re going to be just fine. Even better than fine.”

It was like she was saying she was done being sad about Tom not caring. Like she was ready to take on whatever came, just her and her girls.

After tucking the girls in for the night, Margaret opened her old dresser. She thumbed through the worn pages of her leather-bound address book until Tom’s boss, Mr. Dickens’s name, appeared. She recalled Mr. Dickens’s words about his daughter, “Pearl is the gem of my life.”