Only a few words.
Milk.
Bread.
Love you.
For some reason, those simple words unsettled me more than any grand declaration could have.
Because milk and bread destroyed the convenient story I had built.
His nameless wife suddenly became a real person.
A woman waiting for her husband to come home.
A woman who would pour milk into a cup in the morning.
Slice bread.
Write, “Love you.”
And wait for him to answer.
For a long time, I found it very convenient to see myself as the wounded one.
I can admit that now.
It was extremely convenient.
I was young, single, and in love.
He was an unhappy married man trapped by circumstances.
She was a cold, dull woman who had stopped understanding him long ago.
In that triangle, I automatically became the better woman.
The livelier one.
The more desirable one.
The only person who was truly real.
The only person who knew about Daniel was my friend Sophie.
I confessed everything to her during the first month.
“Sophie, he’s married.”
She looked at me.
“Wonderful. And what happens now?”
“He says there’s nothing between him and his wife anymore. They just live together like roommates.”
Sophie sighed.
“They all say that.”
“But he isn’t like the others.”
“Of course he isn’t. None of them are.”
She never called me a bad person.
She did not lecture me.
She did not make a scene.
She simply did not approve.
And sometimes silent disapproval hurts far more than direct condemnation.
After that, we barely discussed Daniel for almost three years.
We still met.
We drank coffee.
We went to the movies.
We talked about work and life.
But it felt as though a transparent glass wall had appeared between us.
Daniel was standing on the other side of it.
I did not tell her about him.
She did not ask.
In three years, I never saw Daniel’s wife.
I did not know her name.
I did not know how old she was.
I did not know what she did.
I did not know what her hair looked like.
I did not know whether she was tall or short.
Thin or heavy.
Daniel never told me.
And I deliberately never asked.
It was as if we had an unspoken rule:
she did not exist.
There was only us.
Of course, I imagined her.
Especially at night, after he left.
I would lie beside the pillow that was still warm and create a woman in my mind—a woman wearing an old robe and slippers.
Tired.
Colorless.
With dull eyes.
A permanently dissatisfied expression.
A woman who had stopped being interesting a long time ago.
A woman who had become, to her husband, no more than another piece of furniture.
I needed her to be that way.
Otherwise, my entire story began to look different.
If Daniel’s wife was beautiful, kind, funny, and full of life, then what was I?
Not the woman he had “chosen.”
Just the woman a married man visited twice a week for a little pleasure before going home.
I could not allow myself to think that.
Then, in March, I saw her.
It happened by accident.
I had not followed him.
I had not investigated anything.
It was an ordinary Saturday.
A shopping mall.
An escalator.
I was riding upward while people moved down on the escalator beside me.
Then I saw Daniel.
At first, I saw only him.
His children were with him.
The boy from the photograph, only noticeably older now—around twelve, wearing headphones.
A little girl, perhaps nine, was holding her father’s hand.
And beside them walked a woman.
His wife.
I recognized her not because I had seen her in a picture before.
I had never seen her at all.
I understood who she was because of Daniel’s hand.
He had placed his palm on her shoulder.
Lightly.
Naturally.
Almost without thinking.
It was the kind of gesture no one could convincingly perform on purpose.
That was how you touched someone who had been beside you for years.
Someone who belonged to you.
Someone so familiar that you no longer even noticed your own hand reaching for them.
Daniel never put his hand on my shoulder.
For me, it was always my waist.
Always.
And suddenly that tiny difference seemed enormous.
Me—by the waist.
Her—by the shoulder.
Like a mistress.
Like a wife.
The escalators were carrying us in opposite directions.
I had only a few seconds.
But I saw enough.
She was not gray at all.
She did not look unhappy.
She was an ordinary, attractive woman.
Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail.
She wore jeans.
Comfortable sneakers.
A jacket.
Almost no noticeable makeup.
Her face was alive.
She leaned toward her daughter, said something to her, and adjusted the girl’s scarf.
The child laughed.
Her mother laughed too.
Then I saw Daniel’s face.
He looked at his daughter.
At his wife.
And smiled.
It was not the smile a man gives when he is trying to impress a woman.
Not a polished smile from a date.
It was a domestic smile.
Warm.
A little tired.
Real.
He did not see me.
The escalator carried them downward.
Mine carried me up.
I stepped off and stopped beside a shoe store.
I could not take another step.
In three seconds, I had seen the truth I had spent three years avoiding.
Daniel did not look unhappy.
He was not a stranger inside his own family.