After five years of saving every penny, Louis and I finally bought a house with a white picket fence and a big backyard. Shortly after moving in, we met our elderly neighbor, Ruth. She seemed like a sweet, silver-haired grandmother, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was sizing me up.
Soon, Louis was spending all his free time at Ruth’s, claiming he was helping the “lonely widow” with repairs—fixing a faucet, mending a fence, or planting flowers. I tried to be supportive, but the frequency of these “emergencies” began to feel strange.
One Saturday, Louis headed to Ruth’s garden with flower seedlings. Something about his behavior felt off, so I grabbed my binoculars and watched from a small hill behind our yard. I expected to see him working; instead, I saw a beautiful young woman in her twenties, Liza, join him.
To my horror, Liza put her arms around Louis and kissed him passionately. Then, Ruth appeared on the porch with lemonade for the both of them, smiling like she was watching a romantic movie. Ruth wasn’t just a neighbor; she was a matchmaker for her own granddaughter, and she was doing it right in front of me.
I marched over and caught them in the act. When I confronted them, Liza was shocked—she claimed Louis told her he was divorced. Louis stammered and couldn’t look me in the eye. But the real shock was Ruth. Her “sweet old lady” persona vanished instantly. She screamed at me for “trespassing” and told me, “Maybe if you’d been a better wife, he wouldn’t have been looking elsewhere.”
I didn’t argue. I told Louis not to come home, went back to our “dream house,” and packed his things into garbage bags. I filed for divorce three weeks later. We sold the house and split the money, and I moved on with my life.
Louis didn’t end up with Liza. In fact, word got back to me that Ruth later showed up at Louis’s mother’s house, absolutely furious because the “perfect man” she had found for her granddaughter turned out to be a broke, lying cheat who couldn’t even keep a house.
