Domestic Surveillance

The spinach boiled in the pot, the kitchen filling with that metallic green smell. Elena stirred it absently, her eyes returning again to the iphone on the counter. Marcus's phone.

They'd been together three years. She never checked his devices before. That was what insecure people did. That was what her friend Lisa did, scrolling through her husband's messages at 2 AM, convinced she was hunting for signs of betrayal, finding only fantasy football scores and pizza receipts.

"You're not a spy," Lisa had told her last week, drinks evaporating on the bar between them. "You're just aware."

Elena wasn't sure which was worse.

The phone had buzzed twenty minutes ago. A message from someone named Hannah. "Can't stop thinking about last night."

She hadn't opened it. That would require intentionality, a deliberate crossing of lines. But she'd hovered over it, that unread notification glowing like accusation.

The spinach reduced. She added cream, salt, nutmeg. Their anniversary dinner.

Marcus had been late three times this month. "Work emergencies," he'd said, kissing her forehead, smelling of someone else's perfume. Or maybe just the woman in the next cubicle. Or maybe the elevator.

Her finger hovered over the screen.

The front door opened.

Elena dropped the phone like it burned. Marcus entered, carrying flowers, tie loosened, exhaustion etched around his eyes.

"Sorry," he said. "Emergency at the office. System breach. I've been dealing with IT all afternoon."

He set the flowers on the counter. His phone lit up again. Another message from Hannah: "Thanks for covering for me."

Elena stared at it, then at him.

"Hannah?" she asked.

Marcus looked confused. "The new junior associate. She accidentally sent proprietary client data to her personal email. Could've lost us the account. I've spent the last four hours with legal and damage control."

He held up his phone, showing the thread. Work emails. IT alerts. Hannah's desperate gratitude.

"Why?" Elena asked, her voice catching. "Why wouldn't you just tell me?"

"You've been so stressed about your mother's health," Marcus said softly. "I didn't want to add to it."

Elena looked at the spinach, now overcooked. At her own phone, face-down on the counter. She wondered what secrets she kept from him, what small surveillances he practiced.

"We're terrible at this," she said.

"At what?"

"Trust."

"No," he said, covering her hand with his. "We're just practice."

They ate the burnt spinach in silence, phones between them like sleeping dogs.