The sound of my husband’s voice filled the dining room, telling another woman how incredible she was, right as his boss was making a toast to our marriage.
He told me I was crazy. He said I was just insecure.
He bought me the smart speaker as a gift, something to make my life “easier” while he was working late nights. He didn’t know it was listening to everything.
He didn’t know his little helper kept a record of all his secrets.
He thought that little speaker was his ticket to a perfect double life, but it ended up buying me this house and turning my story into something that paid better than his job ever did.
The Hum of Suspicion: A Gift for “Us”
The box was sitting on the kitchen island when I got back from the grocery store, sleek and white and minimalist. It looked like it belonged in a museum of the near future. Mark was leaning against the counter, smiling that smile he used for closing deals and placating flight attendants.
“What’s this?” I asked, setting the heavy bags down. The paper handles crinkled, the only sound in the room.
“It’s for us,” he said, his voice smooth as bourbon. He slid the box toward me. “It’s an Aura. The new smart speaker. It can do everything. Order groceries, play music, answer any question you can think of. I figured, since you’re home so much with your design work, it could be like… a little helper.”
I stared at the box. On the side, a smiling, ethnically ambiguous family was asking their Aura to turn down the lights. It felt less like a gift and more like an indictment of my life. I’m a freelance graphic designer. Yes, I work from home. Our daughter, Chloe, is away at her first year of college, and the house is quiet. Too quiet. But I didn’t need a “helper.” I needed my husband back from the late nights he’d been putting in, from the new, unreadable distance in his eyes.
“Wow, Mark. It’s… a lot.” I forced a smile. “Thank you.”
He wrapped his arms around me from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder. He smelled faintly of expensive soap and something else. Something floral and unfamiliar. “I just want to make your life easier, Sarah. You deserve it.”
I leaned back into him, my body stiff. The cold, smooth cardboard of the box was pressed against my fingers. I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that this wasn’t about making my life easier. It was about making his easier.
Late Nights, Cold Shoulders
The late nights were becoming the rule, not the exception. It was always a last-minute client dinner, a quarterly report that had to be perfect, a team that needed wrangling. The excuses were always plausible, delivered with just the right amount of weary frustration that made questioning them feel like an accusation. Tonight was no different.
He walked in just after eleven, loosening his tie. I was in the kitchen, wiping down counters that were already clean, the motion a familiar outlet for the anxious energy thrumming under my skin.
“Hey,” he murmured, dropping his briefcase by the door. “Long one.”
“You didn’t answer my text,” I said, my voice flat. I kept my back to him, focusing on a non-existent smudge on the granite.
“Sorry, my phone died. We were at that steakhouse downtown with the guys from the Denver office. Daniel insisted.” He came up behind me, and that scent was there again, stronger this time. Not his soap. Not my perfume. Something sweet and cloying.
I turned around slowly, my hand gripping the edge of the counter. “Your phone died?”
“Yeah. Just plugged it in.” He avoided my eyes, busying himself with getting a glass of water from the fridge. His movements were just a little too deliberate. A little too casual.
“That’s funny,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet. “Because I saw the little ‘read’ notification under my message at nine-fifteen.”
He froze, his back still to me. The silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the refrigerator. He turned, and for a second, the charming mask slipped. I saw a flash of panic, of pure, cornered-animal fear. Then it was gone, replaced by practiced exasperation.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sarah. Are we doing this again? I must have seen it and gotten pulled away before I could reply. My mind is fried. I’m working my ass off for us, for this family, and I come home to an interrogation.” He made it my fault. He was a master at that. He could twist reality until I was the one left apologizing. But not tonight. I just stared at him, the chill from the granite seeping into my fingers.
The Aura in the Room
Mark set up the Aura on the kitchen counter, right between the coffee maker and my antique recipe box. It was a stark white cylinder, its single blue light pulsing gently like a slow, sleeping breath. It didn’t fit. My kitchen was warm woods and colorful tile, a space I’d curated with flea market finds and Chloe’s childhood art. The Aura was an alien artifact, cold and sterile.
“Aura, play some jazz,” Mark commanded. Smooth, instrumental jazz immediately filled the room. Mark beamed. “See? Easy.”
For the next few days, it became a strange third party in our house. Mark loved showing it off, asking it for the weather, for stock prices, for sports scores. His voice, when he spoke to it, was confident and clear. My voice felt hesitant.
“Aura,” I’d start, then pause. “Set a timer for twenty minutes.”
“Setting a timer for twenty minutes,” it would reply in its calm, feminine, vaguely robotic voice. It was always listening. I was a designer; I understood the principles of user experience. The device was designed to be seamless, to integrate, to disappear into the background of a life. But I could feel its presence constantly. It was a silent witness in the corner of my eye while I worked on logos at my laptop, its blue light occasionally swirling for no reason.
It was an unwelcome observer to the stilted conversations Mark and I now had over dinner. It heard the long silences, the careful, polite questions that were landmines of unspoken accusations. The house, which had once been my sanctuary, now felt like a surveillance state of my own making. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore; it was the sound of a device waiting for a command.
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