The Forgiveable Journey Of The Cheated

22. Mirror Images of the Wrecks

Broken no longer feels like just hurt, rage and self-denigration. Eve is beginning to truly feel like broken might involve going seriously nutty.

It is unclear how Liam is managing to not fall apart, seeing as he was already cracked. His fragile epileptic condition, being on the short end of the separation deal, his ability to safely parent questioned, his difficulty getting off his ass since the separation, and the seemingly impossible mission of finding love (except possibly through messages exchanged with the girlfriend of his ex-wife’s ex-lover), are weighing heavily in the balance. 

Charlotte, now apparently less welcome in social circles (especially that of girls, particularly those with boyfriends), but welcome in those of single (and horny) or unhappily married (and horny) men, finds her weekends and evenings without Anna or Jake lonely. Lunch hours are particularly awkward and she takes to eating her lunch in front of her computer (a far cry from the Toyota RAV days!). The phone rings or beeps rarely, and invitations are sparse. Boy is she beginning to feel unhappy, a feeling not so unfamiliar to her, but one she has managed to avoid through social and occupational success. 

But Eve’s brokenness truly seems to quite possibly involve going literally crazy, depending on what you think is a crazy reaction to her situation. Please do tell if you know what the norm is because despite her efforts to find a guide indicating what she should do, think and feel, all she could find was a guide for Dan. “How to help your spouse recover from your unfaithfulness” is filled with surprisingly useful truths in Eve’s opinion, and provides her with proof that Dan is likely doing pretty much everything wrong. So how should she react?

She has been trying to be wise and patient when it comes time for Dan to express himself or to reveal truths that could help her understand and process the shards of information, but she must admit that she has been unsuccessfully trying to figure out the passcode for Dan’s phone since the day he admitted having cheated on her. Dan is already long habituated to safeguarding his PIN number, and although he had thoroughly cleaned his phone of any incriminating happy hour and sick day photos, messenger messages, texts, and emails, he continues to fear any blind corners in his data that could be discovered. However, since Eve accidentally saw the message from Charlotte, she started doubling her efforts to learn the passcode. 

One day her efforts pay off. Whether there was a reward to be had is a questionable thing because she indeed finds messages from deep within the phone, and this treasure is a toxic one.

The initial messages she finds took place around the time that Mike Smith stepped into the story. She was actually amused to see the Mike Smith story happening from Charlotte’s and Dan’s perspectives. It started with a message from Liam that Charlotte forwarded to Dan saying that he had been informed by a Mike Smith that she had been cheating on him. He says that he is sad, which for Eve, confirms that he is short-texted but also provides proof that he is not the Mr. Short-tempered guy that Charlotte had made him out to be. Most interestingly, she finds the email Dan had described in which Charlotte expresses her wish that Eve “support” her by lying to Liam if he were to contact her. She also found out it is true that Dan told Charlotte to take responsibility for telling Liam. In one email, Charlotte tells Dan that she thinks that Liam believes her lies, although Liam had told Eve he never did. Overall, everything Eve reads corroborates with what Dan had told her, which leads Eve to conclude that he has been telling the truth (with lots of omissions of course). 

Further investigation reveals two Facebook messages: “Are you coming to meet me?” and one informing Dan that she is upset and wants to talk to him about some bad news she had received. In another email entitled “cheque”, she simply states that she registered him for a social club roller-skating activity and tells him to add it to his agenda (Eve chuckles a little when she reads this because Dan hates roller-skating). Charlotte also sends two messages asking Dan if he still plans on giving her rides to the Doctor’s office. These were sent after Dan had supposedly left her.