I never expected my dog to teach me a hard lesson about love and betrayal, but life’s strange like that. On a sunny Thursday, Max, my five-year-old Golden Retriever, decided to play detective and dug up something in my backyard that turned my world upside down—a mud-covered, slightly rusted wristwatch which wasn’t mine. Panic isn’t usually my first reaction, but this time, it clawed into me instantly, freezing my breath.
My husband, Ben, and I had celebrated our third marriage anniversary the previous week, or so I had thought, blissfully unaware. As I stood there, holding the dirt-smudged timepiece, a storm brewed in my chest. Ben had never worn a wristwatch in all the years I’d known him, citing a quirky aversion to having anything tight around his wrist. Every knot of my stomach tightened as I started piecing potential betrayals, branching out like the tree roots below.
Turning it over, I noticed the engraving on the back which read “Forever, Em.” My name is Liz. The clink of dishes from inside snapped me back to reality, as Ben hummed some tune, ignorant of the storm heading his way. I pocketed the watch. “Hey, babe, coming inside?” he called out, voice ever so cheery.
“Yeah, just a minute,” I called back, voice surprisingly steady. I walked in with a smile plastered on my face, the watch burning a hole in my pocket. As we sat down to dinner, the image of that engraving etched itself onto my brain. ‘Em’? A cold sweat formed on my back as we discussed mundane things. I caught myself studying Ben’s face, looking for signs I’d missed before. Was his smile a little too tight? Were those lines of stress around his eyes deeper than usual?
The tension boiled over when Ben accidentally spilled his wine, and instead of his usual calm, he snapped, “Clumsy me!” His tone sharper, edges rougher. He apologized, brushing it off as stress from work, but the seed of doubt was well-planted. Dinner passed in a blur, and I excused myself early, pleading a sudden headache. In our bedroom, I opened the drawer where Ben kept his things, my hands trembling. If there were more secrets, I was about to dig them all up.
However, before I could start my search, the door opened, and Ben stepped in with a concerned look. “Liz, is everything okay?” he asked, coming closer.
I turned, facing him with the watch in hand. “Whose is this, Ben?”
He froze, his face draining of color. What came next was something I was not prepared for.
The room was silent, thick with tension as Ben stared at the watch. “I can explain,” he said slowly, his voice barely above a whisper. His reaction was doing nothing to ease the pounding in my chest. I braced myself for a confession that might dismantle the life we had built together.
Ben took a deep breath. “That’s not mine, Liz. It’s Conor’s, my brother. He asked me to keep it for him a while back.” Conor had been the family’s black sheep, tangled in numerous failed relationships and shady deals.
“Conor’s?” My voice carried a mix of disbelief and hope. Yet, the named ‘Em’ haunted me. “And who’s Em?”
He sighed, sitting next to me on the bed. “Emma. Conor was engaged to Emma. They broke it off a year ago. He couldn’t bear to keep anything that reminded him of her, asked me to hold onto it until he could face it again.”
The story could be true; Conor had always been impulsive, but something didn’t sit right. Could it simply be a coincidence? I searched Ben’s eyes for any sign of deceit. He continued to look back at me, his gaze steady, imploring me to believe him.
Days turned into weeks, and life seemingly went back to normal, but the seeds of doubt once planted grew their roots deep. Every phone call Ben took a little too far from me, every late return from work added to the mounting pile of suspicion. Meanwhile, Max continued to dig around the yard as if looking for more secrets to unearth.
Two months later, a call from Ben’s mother revealed an unexpected opportunity for us to visit Ben’s family home. A large family gathering, a chance for everyone to reunite. The prospect of watching Ben in that environment, surrounded by his family dynamics, pushed me to agree.
At the gathering, I saw Conor, holding court as usual, the life of the party without a care in the world. Watching him, the discrepancy between the brother’s personalities struck me. If Conor was so carefree, why had Ben claimed he was so heartbroken? Curiosity got the better of me, and finding a moment, I pulled Conor aside.
“Conor, I’ve got to ask you about something.” I brought up the watch casually. “Ben mentioned you were quite torn about Emma breaking things off.”
Conor’s face changed, confusion replacing his usual smirk. “Emma? Who’s Emma?”
My heart sank. There it was; the lie uncovered. If Conor never had an ‘Emma’, then the watch was—
“I never dated an Emma, Liz. I had a thing with a Jamie once but never an Emma.”
Returning to Ben, armed with this knowledge, I was a mess of emotions. Betrayal, hurt, but an overwhelming need for the truth. The confrontation was unavoidable.
That evening, as I confronted Ben, the truth finally came out, not in the way I had expected, but in a manner that shook our very foundations. The reality of ‘Em’, the watch, it was all far different and much closer to home than I had ever anticipated.