My cousin Diane works at the DMV. Not in some official investigator capacity, just a regular county job she’s had for twelve years. I texted her Saturday morning and asked if she could run a plate for me, told her it was a long story.

She called me back in twenty minutes. I remember I was folding laundry when the phone rang. I remember that specifically because I had one of Gary’s work shirts in my hands when she said the name.

“It’s registered to a Dennis Vaughn,” she said.

Dennis Vaughn is my husband’s name.

I put the shirt down very carefully, like it was fragile. I asked her to read it again. She did. Same name, same middle initial, same address. Our address. Gary had a second car registered in his name that I had never seen, never signed anything for, and had no idea existed.

I didn’t confront him. I know some people would have walked straight into the living room and said something, but I needed to understand what I was actually dealing with first. I needed to see it. So I waited three more days, which honestly felt like three months, and on Saturday I followed him.

He told me he was going to his buddy Rob’s to watch the game. He says that a lot on Saturdays and I’d never had any reason to question it. I let him leave, waited about four minutes, then pulled out and followed. He didn’t go to Rob’s. He drove seven miles across town to a row of townhouses on Birchwood Lane, not far from that apartment complex, and he parallel parked the silver Honda on the street. I hadn’t even known he’d taken the Honda. He must have kept it somewhere near work during the week. I pulled over about half a block back.

A woman came to the door before he even knocked. She was maybe my age, maybe a little younger. I don’t know. I wasn’t really processing details the way you normally would. She smiled at him. He stepped up and she kissed him, not a peck, a real kiss, the kind that means they’ve done it ten thousand times. And then a little girl came running out from behind her.

She couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

She ran straight at Gary with her arms out and he caught her and swung her up and she was laughing. And she said “Daddy!” I heard it clearly through my car window. I had my window down because I’d been pressing that stupid panic button the week before and I guess I never rolled it back up all the way. So I heard every bit of it.

“Daddy.”