My hands know the silent language of secrets. Years working behind the scenes at this hotel, specifically in housekeeping, will do that to you. I’ve seen it all, or so I thought. The pristine rooms of the honeymooners, full of hope and a scattered trail of petals. The lonely, single business travelers, their room service trays a monument to solitude. And then, there were the others. The ones who came here to forget, or to be forgotten, or to build a temporary, illicit world.
I’ve always prided myself on my discretion. We are the ghosts, you see. We clean up the evidence, reset the stage, prepare for the next act, without ever truly seeing the actors. We learn to read between the lines of crumpled sheets and forgotten items. A specific brand of lipstick on a coffee cup tells one story. A discarded receipt for two, from a restaurant miles away, tells another. I learned to compartmentalize. What happened in the rooms stayed in the rooms. It had to, to survive this job.
Our financial situation had been tight, tighter than I ever admitted. My spouse worked tirelessly, long hours, always saying they were trying to get ahead. “Just a little longer, just a few more sacrifices,” they’d say, and I’d believe them, because what else was there? This job, for me, was supposed to be a temporary cushion, a way to keep things afloat until their big break. I took solace in the routine, the physical labor, the quiet anonymity of it all. It was a stark contrast to the loving, if often tired, life I shared with my spouse and our dreams for a family we hadn’t quite had yet.
Pieces of a shattered glass vase | Source: Midjourney
There was one suite, 304, that always stood out. Not because it was particularly messy, but because of its consistent, almost clinical, order. It was booked almost every Tuesday and Thursday, always by the same name: a Mr. Davies. He never caused trouble, never made a fuss. But the rooms… they always spoke volumes. There was always the faint, expensive scent of a man’s cologne, mingled with a distinct, sweet floral perfume. Always two coffee cups used, meticulously rinsed and placed in the sink. Always a receipt for a high-end dinner for two, never left in the open, but tucked discreetly under a remote control or inside a magazine.
It was an affair. An obvious, long-standing, passionate affair. I’d seen hundreds like it. This one was just… regular. Predictable. I often wondered about Mr. Davies’s unsuspecting partner back home. Did she have any idea? Did he feel guilty? Sometimes, I’d find myself making up stories in my head, imagining the lives of these people. A silly pastime, I know, but it broke the monotony. I felt a detached pity for the victims, a quiet judgment for the perpetrators. How could someone betray the person they supposedly loved like that? It was a moral line I believed I would never cross. My spouse and I had built our lives on honesty, on trust.
Last Tuesday was like any other Tuesday. Mr. Davies had checked out. Suite 304 was on my list. The usual faint scent, the two coffee cups, the hidden receipt. Everything was exactly as expected. I moved through the motions, stripping the bed, wiping down surfaces, vacuuming the plush carpet. Under the edge of the bed frame, near the nightstand, something glinted. A dark rectangle.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, I thought. Someone forgot their wallet again. It happened sometimes. I reached down, my fingers closing around the worn leather. It felt substantial. I pulled it out, intending to take it straight to Lost and Found. It was a good quality, dark leather wallet, the kind that cost more than I’d ever spend on such an item.
A leftover smashed birthday cake in a fridge | Source: Midjourney
I flipped it open, just enough to glimpse the ID. Standard procedure. We needed to know who it belonged to, expedite the return. My breath hitched. The world tilted. The air left my lungs in a sudden, violent gasp.
It wasn’t Mr. Davies’s photo looking back at me.
It was MY SPOUSE.
The photo on the driver’s license, the familiar, handsome face smiling up at me. The same ID card I’d seen a thousand times. The same wallet I’d bought for their birthday two years ago.
NO. IT COULDN’T BE.
My hands started to tremble, the wallet suddenly heavy, scorching my fingers. I fumbled it open further, a sickening dread coiling in my gut. There, tucked neatly behind the ID, was not money, but another photo. A small, intimate portrait. Of the same woman who was always pictured in the discreet dinner receipts for Mr. Davies. A beautiful woman, laughing. And underneath that photo, a tiny, handwritten inscription. Not a name, but a term of endearment, a private nickname I’d never heard, followed by a date. A recent date. The date of our anniversary.
EVERYTHING. EVERY SINGLE THING I THOUGHT I KNEW. It was a lie.
The long hours. The late nights. The “sacrifices.” All of it. Not for our future, not for us. But for this. For these Tuesdays and Thursdays, for this illicit passion. My spouse, MY SPOUSE, was Mr. Davies. And the woman… the woman was just a face in a photo, but she had stolen my life, my trust, everything.
Candy wrappers and other dirt in a garden | Source: Midjourney
I stood there, frozen in the sterile, air-conditioned silence of Suite 304, the evidence of my shattered world clutched in my shaking hands. The smell of that sweet floral perfume suddenly choked me, not just a scent, but a suffocating cloud of betrayal. And the irony. Oh, the CRUEL, mocking irony. All this time, I had been diligently cleaning up after their affair. I was the ghost silently wiping away the proof of my own destruction. I had been an unwitting accomplice to my own undoing, meticulously sanitizing the stage for the next act of my spouse’s deception. And I had no idea how I would ever clean up this mess.
