I looked at the current odometer on the dashboard.

My brain genuinely stopped working for a second. I sat there in the driveway, staring at the numbers.

In one year, the car had traveled 47,000 miles.

I did the math in my head. Mark’s commute to the shop was exactly six miles each way.

That is twelve miles a day. Even with weekend errands and trips to the grocery store, he shouldn’t have been putting more than 6,000 miles on that car in a year. Where did the other 41,000 miles come from?

When he came home that night, I asked him about it. I tried to keep my voice casual. I held up the receipt. “Hey, is this mileage right? Firestone has you down for almost fifty thousand miles since last spring. Did they make a typo?”

Mark didn’t blink. He took the paper from my hand, glanced at it, and tossed it on the kitchen counter. “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. The shop had me running parts down to the distributor in Akron three times a week. They pay me back for gas, so I didn’t think it was a big deal to mention it.”

His voice was perfectly calm. He was smiling. He reached into the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of sweet tea. But I noticed something. His hand was trembling slightly. The glass pitcher clinked against the shelf. It was a tiny thing, but it stayed in my head.

Over the next few weeks, the Akron story started to curdle in my stomach. Akron was only forty minutes away. Even three times a week, the math didn’t add up to 47,000 miles. I tried to shake the feeling. I told myself I was being paranoid. But the doubt was like a cold draft under a closed door. You can’t ignore it once you feel it.

I went online and bought a small, black magnetic GPS tracker. It was about the size of a matchbox. I felt sick to my stomach when I ordered it. I felt like a criminal. When it arrived in a plain brown bubble mailer, I hid it in my dresser under my winter sweaters.

On a rainy Monday night, while Mark was asleep, I took my flashlight and went out to the driveway. The air was cold and smelled of wet pavement. I opened the passenger door of the Equinox. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the tracker. I reached under the seat, found a flat metal bar on the frame, and let the magnet click into place.