After the betrayal
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«Mommy,» Sophia came closer, her small hands touching Anna. «Why are you crying?»
Anna knelt to be level with her daughter. She wanted to say something comforting, something that would protect Sophia from this pain. But the words stuck in her throat.
«Because adults make mistakes too,» she finally said, stroking her daughter’s head.
«Daddy makes mistakes too?» Sophia asked, and her voice held such sadness that Anna wanted to die.
«Yes, sweetie,» she whispered, pulling her daughter close. «Daddy makes mistakes too.»
She held Sophia tightly, feeling her small body tremble. Her daughter, her most precious being in the world, already sensed that something was wrong. She had seen Daddy leave, seen Mommy cry at night, seen their home fill with silence instead of laughter.
After Sophia fell asleep that night, Anna returned to the laptop. She opened her diary and began to write, feeling each word tear another piece from her soul.
«Today I found the tickets. Tickets to Paris for the date of his „business trip.“ I checked his email because I could no longer pretend everything was okay. And I saw their photo by the Eiffel Tower. He was laughing. The way he hasn’t laughed with me in a long time. I didn’t scream. I didn’t break any dishes. I just sat and stared at the screen while my world crumbled around me.»
«Sophia asked why I was crying. I said adults make mistakes too. But the truth is, I’m not mistaken. I see. I always saw. The look in his eyes when he thought I wasn’t watching. His hands that no longer touched me the way they used to. His words that had become empty. I saw it all. And I still didn’t believe it.»
«Why didn’t I believe? Because I was afraid of losing what I had? Because I was afraid I wasn’t good enough? Or because it was easier to live in an illusion than to face the truth?»
«I don’t know how to breathe anymore. I don’t know how to look him in the eye and pretend nothing happened. I don’t know how to protect Sophia from this pain. But I know one thing: I can no longer pretend. I can no longer close my eyes.»
«Now I know what the end looks like.»
Anna closed the diary and looked out the window. Outside, life went on as usual. People walked down the street, laughing, talking. But for her, everything had changed. Today, for the first time, she felt that their perfect world was just a facade, hiding cracks beneath the surface.
She remembered their first meeting when Maxim came to her friend’s party. He was wearing a black sweater that hugged his athletic frame, and he smiled in a way that took her breath away. They had talked all night, laughed at silly jokes, danced to music that was too loud. At the end of the evening, he had walked her home and kissed her so deeply her head spun.
«I’ll never let you go,» he had whispered then.
Anna closed her eyes, trying to push the memories away. But they only grew stronger. She remembered their wedding, how he had looked at her as if she were his entire universe. She remembered him holding her hand while she gave birth to Sophia, whispering, «You’re the strongest woman I know.»
Now she understood it had all been a lie. Or maybe he had truly meant it in those moments. But the love that had once been their entire world had disappeared. Or perhaps it had simply faded away, and he hadn’t noticed until he found someone new.
Anna opened the laptop again and started searching for information about Ksenia. Her social media profiles were private, but Anna found a few photos in public groups. Ksenia looked younger, slimmer, more confident. She smiled widely, laughed loudly, dressed in fashionable clothes. Anna looked at her own reflection in the laptop screen and saw a tired woman with bags under her eyes, disheveled hair, wearing an old T-shirt.
«That’s why he left,» she thought.
But she immediately dismissed the thought. It wasn’t true. Maxim had loved her for who she was. Or at least, he used to.
She closed the browser and opened her diary again. The pen shook in her hand as she wrote:
«I compare myself to her. I look at her photos and think: what can she give him that I can’t? Maybe she’s a better cook? Maybe she isn’t tired at the end of the day? Maybe she doesn’t ask why he’s always on his phone?»
«But I know the truth. He didn’t leave for her. He left me. Because I stopped being who I was. Because I became a mother, a wife, a homemaker, but I stopped being myself. I dissolved into our family, forgetting that I have a right to happiness too.»
«But does that give him the right to betray me? Does my fatigue justify his lies?»
«No. No amount of fatigue justifies betrayal. No amount of pain justifies lies. He could have talked to me. He could have told me how he felt. Instead, he chose secrecy and deception.»
«And now I have to decide: what to do next. Forgive him? Leave? Stay and pretend nothing happened?»
«I don’t know. Today, I just can’t breathe.»
Anna closed the diary and went to bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. Instead, images flashed before her eyes: Maxim laughing with Ksenia by the Eiffel Tower; Maxim kissing her in the car; Maxim lying to her every minute for the past months.
She didn’t know that the next day would bring new discoveries. She didn’t know that tomorrow she would overhear Maxim’s phone conversation with Ksenia. She didn’t know that tomorrow her world would collapse completely.
But today she understood one thing: she could no longer pretend that everything was okay. She could no longer be blind. Because the truth, no matter how painful, was better than the sweetest lie.
When Maxim returned late that night, Anna pretended to be asleep. She felt him kiss her forehead, heard him whisper, «I’m sorry.» But the words meant nothing. Because now she knew the truth. And the truth was as bitter as black coffee without sugar.
She lay with her eyes closed, listening to him move around the house, put his suitcase in the closet, check on Sophia. And for the first time in their five years of marriage, she felt like a stranger in her own home. As if everything she had believed was hers had turned out to be an illusion.
In the morning, when Maxim sat down for breakfast, he smiled at her as if nothing had happened.
«Good morning,» he said, as if returning from a regular business trip.
Anna looked at him, and her eyes held no anger, no pain. Only emptiness.
«Morning,» she replied, pouring him coffee.
And in that moment, she understood that the game had begun. A game she no longer wanted to play but from which there was no escape. Because now she knew the truth. And the truth changed everything.
Chapter 3. The Diary of Silence
The silence that had settled in the house after Maxim’s departure on another «business trip» was of a different quality. Before, the silence had been full – echoes of recent laughter, the ghost of shared conversations, the anticipation of his return. Now, it was an emptiness, ringing like an empty glass vessel. And in this ringing void, Anna’s thoughts sounded too loud, too intrusive, too painful.
She could no longer keep them inside. They were eating her alive from the inside, like acid. She needed to pour them out somewhere, give them form, make them tangible. To prove to herself she wasn’t going insane. To make these tiny, piercing shards of suspicion form a single, albeit horrifying, picture.
She took down a thick volume in dark blue leather binding with gold embossing from the top shelf of the bookcase. A gift from Maxim on their first anniversary. He had joked then: «For your great literary creations, my muse.» She had laughed and put it away, preferring to jot notes in her phone. Now, this book seemed the perfect sarcophagus for their dying love.
She sat at her desk by the window, pushed aside the sketches for new projects, and opened the first page. Clean, smooth, ruthlessly white. She took her favorite fountain pen – another gift from him; he always knew how to pick the perfect, expensive things – and wrote at the top in a sweeping, forceful script: Diary of Silence.
Why silence? Because she couldn’t utter aloud any of the questions burning her soul. Because her silence was the only defense she could pit against his lies.
And she began to write. Meticulously, methodically, like an accountant tallying losses.
«October 16th. Said he was delayed by a meeting with investors. But at 3:30 PM I called Olga Petrovna (his secretary) to ask about the electricity bill. She said the meeting was in the morning, at 10:00, and had long been over. Where was he for those 5 hours?»
«October 18th. Came home tired. Said he was „snowed under at work.“ Went to sleep, turned toward the wall. I smelled of my new jasmine cream. He always loved that scent. Today, he didn’t even notice. Or pretended not to?»
«October 20th. Woke up in the middle of the night – he wasn’t in bed. Found him in the study, sitting by the window in the dark, looking at his phone. When he saw me, he quickly turned it off. Said: „Can’t sleep, thinking about work.“ What thoughts glow on a phone screen at three in the morning?»
Each entry was a drop of poison. Each date – a headstone on the grave of her trust. She wrote and felt her heart icing over. It was a strange, masochistic ritual – day after day sticking the needles of her own suspicions into herself, to finally kill off any hope.
But the most tormenting part wasn’t documenting his lies. It was the constant, obsessive comparison. It started spontaneously. After she looked at Ksenia’s social media profile for the hundredth time, pieced together from bits found in mutual groups and friends’ tags.
She couldn’t help but compare. She studied photos of that woman – young, well-groomed, with a confident, defiant gaze. And she transferred that gaze onto herself – in the mirror, in shop windows, in her own old photographs.
«She is younger. Not even thirty. She has smooth skin without the crow’s feet I got last year when Sophia was sick and he was away.»
«She is slimmer. Clearly goes to the gym. I never have time: work, home, child. „You could lose a little weight, Anya,“ he joked once at dinner. Was it a joke?»
«She works at his company. They see each other every day. Shared interests, shared projects, shared victories. And me? I ask how his day was, and he brushes me off: „You wouldn’t understand, it’s nuanced.“ Have I become „clueless,“ distant from his world?»
She wrote these words, and her pen dug into the paper, leaving ragged, ugly marks. She hated herself for this weakness, for this pettiness, but she couldn’t stop. It was like picking at a wound: painful, but impossible to resist.
One night, she woke up to a thought of her own. The room was plunged in darkness, rain was lashing against the window. And in that oppressive dark, her consciousness, unshackled by daytime conventions, delivered the most terrible, most shameful question. It sounded in her head with frightening clarity:
«Would I want to be her? Young, free, desired? Or do I just want him back? Want us back?»
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish this treasonous thought. To want to be the one who destroys your family? It was unthinkable, disgusting. But the seed of doubt was sown. What if he left not because she had become worse? But because that one was better? New, fresh, unburdened by everyday life and children? And if she could become like that too… maybe then everything would go back to the way it was?
She recoiled from these thoughts in horror, but they had already seeped inside, poisoning her with their venom.
In the morning, she was wrecked, sleep-deprived. Her hands shook as she poured coffee. Maxim, on the other hand, looked fresh and energetic. He was humming something cheerfully as he gathered papers into his briefcase. His good mood cut her to the quick. Her world was falling apart, and he was singing.
She set her cup down on the table and, with an awkward movement, brushed against the edge of her diary. The heavy volume fell to the floor with a dull thud, splaying open on the very page where she compared herself to Ksenia.
Anna’s heart sank. She froze, expecting an explosion, a scandal, questions.
Maxim bent down, picked up the diary. His gaze skimmed the open page, covered in her nervous, angular handwriting. She saw his eyes scan the lines. A second. Two. Something flickered in them – surprise? Irritation? But then he simply closed the book softly, almost casually, and handed it to her.
«Here,» he said, his voice calm, even light. «Take care of your ’great creations’.»
And then, looking at her pale, frightened face, he asked with the most genuine, sincere concern:
«Anya, is something wrong? You’ve been so nervous lately. Maybe you should see a doctor?»
In that moment, Anna understood everything completely. He had seen. He had read. He had understood. And his reaction – this indifferent, light remark and false concern – was worse than any hysterics. It meant he didn’t care. That her suffering, her torturous doubts, her pain were merely an annoying inconvenience to him, «nerves» that needed to be treated by a doctor.
She silently took the diary from his hands, pressed it to her chest like a shield. She looked at him but didn’t see him. A stranger stood before her. Handsome, successful, utterly alien.
«It’s nothing,» she whispered, and her voice sounded hoarse and unrecognizable. «Everything’s fine.»
He nodded, satisfied with the answer, plastered his morning smile back on his face, kissed her on the cheek – a quick, dry, ritualistic kiss – and left the house, whistling the same cheerful tune.
The door closed. Anna stood in the middle of the kitchen, clutching the diary – the only silent witness to her collapse. And her silence in response to his question was not weakness. It was the declaration of a war. A war she had declared on him. And on herself.
Chapter 4. The First Lie
Morning arrived not with the first rays of sun piercing the cracks in the bedroom shutters, but with an icy heaviness on her heart that woke Anna before dawn. This heaviness was alive, pulsating, like a huge, immovable stone pinning her to the bed, preventing her from taking a full breath. She lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, where the passing cars’ headlights painted fleeting, meaningless pictures. Pictures of her life. A deafening hum still filled her ears – the hum of the silence that had followed yesterday’s discovery, drowning out even the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room.
She heard every beat of her own heart – loud, slow, like a death knell. It was sounding the alarm, trying to warn her of the impending disaster, but it was too late. The disaster had already entered her home, her life, spreading through the rooms like an invisible, poisonous fog she now had to breathe. Anna turned onto her side, toward the cold, untouched half of Maxim’s bed. The sheet was smooth, perfectly made. He hadn’t slept at home. Again. «Urgent business trip.» Those words now sounded like the most cynical and cruel mockery.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force the image from her memory: the tickets in the velvet box, two seats in the stalls, the name of the concert hall in Paris. And the photo. Black and white, slightly blurry, apparently taken by a random passerby. Maxim and that other woman. Ksenia. They stood embracing against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower’s intricate metalwork, and he was looking at her in a way he hadn’t looked at Anna for years – with adoration, delight, with the very fire that had once made her believe in fairy tales. And then there was his car’s glove compartment, where she had found those cursed tickets, and the kitchen sink, where his phone had fallen when her disobedient, trembling fingers had typed «Ksenia Petrova» into the search engine and stumbled upon her social media profile. The profile was private, but the avatar showed that same smile, that young, self-assured face, with the caption: «Architect. Love Paris and its atmosphere.»
Anna rubbed her eyes fiercely with her fists, trying to erase these images. But they were burned into her retinas, searing her from within. She had to pull herself together. For Sophia. Her little daughter must not see, must not feel, that the crystal castle of her childhood had cracked, and icy water from the real world was about to come pouring through.
Like a robot programmed for a perfect life, Anna got out of bed, took a shower – too hot, almost scalding – put on a soft bathrobe, and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. The coffee maker hissed, filling the air with a bitter, invigorating aroma. Yogurts, cheese, and fruit for Sophia came out of the fridge. Her hands performed the habitual actions automatically, while her mind raced in a vicious circle: «Why? For what? How could I not have noticed?»
«Mommy, is Daddy coming back today?» a sleepy little voice came from the doorway.
Anna started, nearly dropping the plate of sliced banana. Sophia stood there in her unicorn pajamas, clutching a worn-out teddy bear Maxim had given her for her birthday. Her large, clear eyes, so like his, looked at her mother with a quiet, unchildlike question.
«Of course, sunshine,» Anna’s voice sounded hoarse, foreign. She forced a smile, bent down, and hugged her daughter, burying her nose in her silky hair that smelled of baby shampoo. «Daddy’s just held up at work. Come sit down for breakfast.»
She poured herself a cup of coffee but couldn’t take a sip. A lump in her throat made it hard to breathe. She watched as Sophia neatly ate her yogurt and thought about how many more such morning lies lay ahead. How many times she would have to lie to the most precious person in the world to protect her from a truth that now seemed ugly and dangerous.
Suddenly, the familiar sound of an engine was heard outside – Maxim was home. Anna’s heart stopped, then began to beat so violently she felt faint. She grabbed the countertop to keep from falling. The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin icy.
The key clicked in the lock, the door opened. And he walked in. Not travel-weary, not tired after a night flight, as someone returning from an «urgent business trip» should be. He walked in looking fresh, shaven, smelling of the expensive cologne she herself had once chosen for him. And in his hands was a huge bouquet of roses. Scarlet, perfectly shaped, as flawless and deceitful as his smile.
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