The Cat Knew Everything

The cat watched from the windowsill as Maria traced her husband's movements on the iPhone screen. Three weeks of surveillance data, compiled through a find-my-device app he'd forgotten to turn off. A modern spy in her own marriage.

She'd married a man she thought she knew. Now, she watched digital coordinates form a pattern: Tuesday evenings at a downtown address. Thursday lunches at a restaurant she'd suggested they try together. The geometry of betrayal, rendered in blue location pins.

The cat meowed, demanding dinner. Maria had forgotten again. She'd been too busy being someone she never thought she'd become: a woman who tracked her husband's whereabouts like a suspicious corporation monitoring employees.

Her phone buzzed. Richard's name. "Running late at the office, babe. Don't wait up."

The office. His code for the same lie he'd been feeding her for months. She'd googled his office address once, just to see if she was being paranoid. The building had been demolished two years ago.

Maria's fingers hovered over the call button. She could end it now, confront him with the screenshots she'd been saving like digital ammunition. But something stopped her—maybe the same instinct that made her hesitate before checking his phone in the first place. The moment you looked, you couldn't unlook.

The cat wound through her legs, purring. At least one being in this apartment was honest about its needs.

She set the iPhone on the nightstand and watched the HBO show they'd been streaming together. An HDMI cable connected the laptop to the TV—Richard's handiwork. He was good with cables and connectors. He'd connected everything in their life: the entertainment system, the smart home devices, the shared streaming accounts. All these digital threads binding them together, even as he unraveled something real.

"Bullshit," she whispered to the empty room.

She wasn't waiting up. She wasn't making dinner. She wasn't being the wife who pretended not to notice.

Maria picked up the phone again. This time, she opened the messages app and started drafting the text that would end everything. The cat jumped onto the bed, curled into the space Richard would occupy tonight, and closed its eyes.

Some endings, Maria realized, were simpler than others.