The following morning, I checked the wooden box in our bedroom dresser. His wedding ring was still inside, exactly where it had been for years. My suspicions grew when our daughter Sophie mentioned that Mark hadn’t sent his usual fishing photographs. I searched through pictures his friends had posted online and discovered that Mark appeared in only two of them. In both photographs, his left hand was carefully hidden. Then I noticed a picture taken outside a marina restaurant on Saturday morning. His three friends were sitting together, but Mark was missing, even though an untouched fourth breakfast sat on the table.
Unable to ignore the strange details, I called the restaurant and spoke to a woman named Carol. When I mentioned Mark’s name, she suddenly became quiet and asked whether I was his wife. Frightened by her reaction, I ended the call without learning more. That evening, Mark behaved as though nothing was wrong, complimenting dinner and kissing my forehead before bed. But after he fell asleep, I searched his duffel bag and discovered a motel key card and a receipt from a jewelry store located two towns away from the lake. There was nothing to explain why he had visited a jeweler during a fishing trip.
The next morning, after Mark left for work, I opened his laptop. His usual password no longer worked, but when I entered the name of the lake, the computer unlocked. On the nearly empty desktop, I noticed an unfamiliar folder marked with a tiny ring icon. My heart raced as I clicked it. Within seconds, I realized that whatever Mark had been doing during those three days had nothing to do with fishing. Yet the discovery inside the folder was only the beginning. According to the story, something even worse happened exactly one hour later, leaving me facing a truth I had never imagined.
