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The TV remote control died in the middle of a show I was viewing a week later. Troy always kept replacement batteries in the top drawer of his desk in the corner of our living room, so I got up from the couch and went to look for them.
I found what I was looking for right away when I opened the drawer, but I also discovered something unexpected.
Maybe fifteen or twenty hotel receipts, neatly stacked under some old mail and expired coupons.
Finding a few hotel receipts wouldn’t have been too alarming because Troy did occasionally travel to the company’s West Coast location for work. However, I noticed that the hotel was not in California, where his business was based, as I picked up the stack with trembling hands.
Each and every receipt was for the same Massachusetts motel. I had never once heard him mention this motel.
Each receipt was for the same room number. They had dates that stretched back several months, if not more.
I sat down hard on the edge of our bed and stared at those receipts till I lost all feeling in my fingers and my hands went absolutely numb.
I kept searching frantically for rational, benign explanations for Troy’s frequent trips to Massachusetts without informing me, but I was never able to come up with any. We had no acquaintances in Massachusetts. There was no family for him. There was no office for his company there.
I put them out on the bedspread after carefully counting them. A total of eleven receipts. He had concealed or lied to me about eleven different trips.
I had a physical tightness in my chest, as if my lungs were being squeezed. I grabbed up my phone and typed the hotel’s number from the receipt header into my contacts while my hands trembled furiously.
“How may I assist you today, Harborside Inn? Good afternoon.” A happy woman’s voice responded.
I forced my voice to sound firm and businesslike by clearing my throat. I said, desperately improvising, “Hi there.” I introduced myself as Troy’s new assistant at work and gave her his entire name. “I have to reserve his regular room for a trip that is coming up.”
Without any hesitation at all, the hotel concierge responded, “Of course.” One of our frequent visitors is Mr. Patterson. At this point, that space is essentially set aside for him. What time would he prefer to arrive?
I was having trouble breathing. The space whirled around me.
“I… I choked out, “I’ll have to give you a call back,” and hung up before she could reply.
Holding those receipts, I sat on our bed—the bed we had shared for 35 years—trying to figure out what they meant and what they demonstrated.
The marriage that ended with more unanswered questions
The following evening, I was sitting at our kitchen table with all eleven hotel receipts spread out in front of me like evidence at a crime scene when Troy got home from work.
When he noticed me sitting there with his briefcase still slung over his shoulder and his keys still in his fingers, he abruptly stopped at the doorway.
“What’s this?” I pointed to the receipts and inquired in a low voice.
His gaze flicked from the papers on the table to my face and back again.
He said, “It’s not what you think,” which is precisely what guilty people often say.
I tried to remain composed, but my voice rose as I responded, “Then tell me what it actually is.” “Troy, tell me about it. Make sense of it.
He simply stood in our kitchen doorway, staring at those hotel receipts as if I had purposefully placed them there to trap him and coerce a confession. His jaw was clenched, and his shoulders were defensive.
At last, he shook his head and declared, “I’m not doing this.” “You’re exaggerating this greatly.”
“Exaggerating the situation?” I raised my voice abruptly. “Troy, you’ve gone to that same hotel room in Massachusetts eleven times without notifying me, and money has been missing from our account for months. It’s obvious that you’re lying. What is it? Tell me what it is, please.
He said in a chilly voice, “You’re supposed to trust me.”
“I did have faith in you. I responded frantically, “I do trust you, but you’re not giving me anything to work with here.” “You’re not providing any explanation.”
He gave a headshake. “At this moment, I am unable to accomplish this. I am unable to have this discussion.
“Can’t or won’t?”
He remained silent. I was left sitting there by myself with those damning receipts as he simply turned and left the kitchen.
That night, I slept in the guest room, laying awake and gazing up at the ceiling. The following morning over coffee, I urged him to kindly explain himself once again, but he refused again, his expression remote and closed off.
My voice broke as I finally responded, “I can’t live inside that kind of lie.” “I can’t pretend I don’t see what’s going on every day when I get up. I can’t act like this is typical.
Troy gave a single, unreadable nod. “I anticipated that you would eventually say that.”
So that afternoon, with trembling hands, I dialed a lawyer’s number that a friend had given me.
I had no desire to. God, I had no desire to dissolve our union. However, I couldn’t wake up every day wondering what my husband was hiding, where he went after leaving the house, and who he was meeting.
I was unable to witness our money disappear from our bank account to unidentified locations that I was not permitted to inquire about.
The divorce that seemed to be the end of the world
Two weeks later, we were seated opposite from one another at a big conference table in a downtown lawyer’s office, surrounded by strangers dressed in pricey suits who handled our divorce like any other Tuesday.
Throughout the entire meeting, Troy never once glanced at me. He hardly talked to anyone. He made no attempts to defend our marriage, provide any justifications, or pledge to make amends.
When the lawyers discussed different terms and conditions, Dad simply nodded at the proper times and wrote wherever they pointed, using the identical signature that I had seen him write on our marriage certificate thirty-six years prior.
That was all. That was it.
Thirty-six years of marriage and forty-six years of friendship were reduced to a few pieces of paper filed at the courthouse and signatures on legal documents.
The months that followed were among the most perplexing and bewildering periods of my life.
I had broken up with him because he had lied to me about something important. That section was simple and easy to understand. However, I couldn’t put into words how everything else felt unclear, unresolved, and incomplete.
Because after our breakup, no other woman emerged from the woodwork, which was completely nonsensical. There was no mistress at his door. No major scandalous secret was made public.
Troy would occasionally be seen in the produce section of the grocery store, at our children’s homes at family get-togethers, and at grandchildren’s birthday celebrations. We would give each other courteous nods and engage in awkward small conversation about the grandchildren or the weather.
During all those travels to Massachusetts, he never told me what he had been hiding from me. And late at night, I continued to ponder and run through alternatives in my head.