The next unexpected record came from an app we had both used for about two years. We shared a car service account because it gave us consolidated billing and a small discount, and our trips appeared on the tablet we kept in the kitchen. I sometimes used it when a work trip left me without my own vehicle. Kate used it more often for downtown events when parking was inconvenient. Neither of us had ever regarded the shared trip history as particularly sensitive.
One evening while she was showering, I opened the app to check a recent charge that appeared on the household statement. The billing view led me to the trip history. As I scrolled past familiar locations, I saw repeated destinations in a neighborhood across town where we had no family, friends, or regular appointments. The times were mostly on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, days when my work often kept me late. I kept scrolling, and the same area appeared again and again.
There were eleven trips over four months. Some were brief rides from her office to an intersection near a row of apartment buildings; others were trips home from the same area late at night. The locations alone didn't prove who she'd met or what had occurred there. But they contradicted the picture she had given me of one isolated night, and the pattern was too consistent to dismiss without question. I photographed the shared account's records and saved the dates without trying to access any separate account or private device.
By the time Kate emerged from the shower, I had closed the app and placed the tablet back beside the coffee maker. She came into the kitchen wearing an old gray T-shirt and asked whether we had any of the expensive coffee left. I told her there was a little in the jar above the counter. She opened it, sniffed it, and complained that I hadn't sealed it properly. I almost laughed, not because anything was funny, but because the complaint was so ordinary and her voice so familiar.
We made our drinks while standing only a few feet apart. She asked whether I'd watched the episode of a show we'd started together, and I said I hadn't. She described something amusing that had happened in her office, deliberately not naming the colleague whose messages I'd seen. I listened and answered at the appropriate places. Between us, the ugly orange mug sat beside the sink with its handle pointing toward me, and I wondered whether it had been there on the evenings she returned from the neighborhood across town.