The Secret Behind the Video Call

For three years, a woman has believed her long-distance boyfriend Shiven Smith is devoted: every night he video calls her and stays on until she falls asleep. Then she finds an online post by a woman boasting about sleeping with a man while he is on a video call with his long-distance girlfriend. The attached photo shows a red mole identical to Shiven's, and on his nightstand sits a picture of her.

Testing the video, she notices the curtain moves in an identical loop every fifteen minutes, and the blogger's updates track her every move. The blogger's profile holds half a year of photos: a beach resort during Shiven's supposed closed training, lingerie he gave her, all funded by the woman's own credit card. A gift of black lace lingerie in the wrong size arrives with a mocking card.

She takes leave, flies to his city, and watches him leave his apartment with the blogger, then follows them to a restaurant. There she overhears Shiven call her a trophy wife and a walking ATM, and say he will never dump her.