Web of Lies
The mantelpiece in Dave’s living room was a monument to a life he was quietly suffocating in. Framed photographs from their trip to Tuscany in their thirties, silver wedding anniversary plaques, and Steph’s carefully curated ceramic collections lined it. For forty years, Dave had played the devoted husband, the reliable provider, the man who remembered anniversaries.
It was all a facade. Dave was a man who lived in the shadow of his own reflection, deeply, incurably self-absorbed.
For the past year, he had been living a double life with Elena—a woman twenty years his junior who made him feel, or so he told himself, like a dashing rogue rather than a retired actuary with a bad hip. To Elena, John played the tragic romantic. He spun a meticulous tale: Martha was cold, a roommate, a ghost of the past. He told Elena he didn’t love his wife. He swore, with tears in his pale, practised eyes, that he was going to leave her.
“I’m just figuring out the logistics, darling,” he would whisper into the phone from his home office, while Steph watched Theatre Choice downstairs. “It’s forty years of assets. But I’m coming to you. You’re my real life.”
It was a brilliant piece of bull shit. It kept Elena placated, eager, and waiting in the wings, entirely at his disposal whenever he could sneak away for an afternoon or evening. It fed Dave’s bottomless ego to know two women were supposedly wanting for him—one out of habit, one out of desperate hope.
The truth, however, was far more mundane, and infinitely more deceitful. Dave had no intention of leaving Steph. Not because he loved her, and certainly not out of respect.
He stayed because Dave loved Dave’s comfort above all else.
Leaving Steph meant selling the house. It meant dividing the pensions, explaining a messy divorce to their adult children and lifelong friends, and enduring the exhausting social friction of being the “bad guy.” It meant no more of Steph’s cooking, no more of Steph quietly managing the gardener and the plumber, and, worst of all, it meant facing the stark, unvarnished reality of who he was. With Elena, he had to keep up the mask of the passionate lover 24/7. With Steph, he could just exist, a parasite living off the labour of a woman he emotionally discarded years ago.
One evening, Dave sat at the dining table. Steph had made a roast—his favourite, though he never thanked her. She sat across from him, her silver hair pinned neatly, reading a book between bites.
“Dave, ” she said softly, not looking up. “You’ve been on edge lately. Is something the matter?”
Dave bristled, instantly defensive. His sneaky mind went to work, calculating the safest angle. Had she seen a text? Had she smelled Elena’s perfume on his scarf? No, Steph simply wanted him to be honest with her; to tell her the truth, surely, he owed her that, but no, he couldn’t even do that out of respect for a woman who had been there when they had nothing, brought their children up; Steph had sacrificed a lot over the years; why couldn’t he just be truthful?
“Not at all, my dear,” he said, deploying his warmest, most untrustworthy smile. He reached across the table and patted her hand—a gesture of affection as hollow as a plastic fruit. “Just tired from the golf club. You know how it is.”
Steph looked up. Her eyes, pale blue and lined with the wisdom of four decades, met his. There was no rage in them. There was no blinding heartbreak. Only a quiet, chilling assessment.
“Alright,” Steph said simply, turning back to her book.
She knew. She had known for months. She had found the hotel receipts tucked behind his golf gloves; she had heard the hushed, trembling lies whispered into the phone late at night. And yet, he hadn’t packed his bags. She hadn’t screamed. She simply watched him with the detached curiosity one might afford a stray cat that had tracked mud across a clean floor, a nuisance, but hardly worth disrupting her evening.
Dave pulled his hand back, feeling a sudden, prickling unease. He looked at Steph, then glanced at his phone vibrating silently in his pocket, a text from Elena asking if he’d finally packed his bags.
Dave ignored the text, turned back to his roast, and smiled to himself. He was trapped in a cage of his own lies, eating a meal cooked by a woman he betrayed, texting a woman he was using, and staying simply because he was too cowardly to change. He was a king in a prison of deceit. His own web of lies.
Thank You for Reading
Deborah C. Langley
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