Secret Keeper

This is late mostly because I had to finish it up while on the plane to San Francisco, and I've been without internet until just now. ~Ben
I sat in the den, staring at the words on the computer screen.
Coming over to the in-laws always meant that I had to help them with their computer. I worked for a software company as a marketer, and had made the classic mistake of saying that I was a computer guy. The combination of those two things meant that I was constantly being asked for help with the hundreds of small problems that crop up when technically inept people attempt to access the internet. I wasn't particularly good at it, nor was it really in my wheelhouse, but once you've fixed a single problem with someone's computer, you start getting held in higher regard, and that causes a ripple of recommendations and stories about your prowess that never really stop.
In this case, my mother-in-law Maude had been having problems connecting to her e-mail. She ran a small business selling dried-apple dolls over the internet, and so was quite frantic to get it working again - this was, in fact, nearly the entire reason we'd made the one hour drive to their house for dinner. It worked out well for me though, because fixing a computer problem was preferable to spending several hours talking to the in-laws. They were decent enough, but not people I would ever have chosen to spend more than a handful of minutes with if I weren't married to their daughter.
The fix was simple enough; Maude's Outlook settings were screwed up, and just needed to be set back to the defaults. It was the kind of problem that was utterly mystifying to me, because those settings don't just change themselves, but every time something like that happened I got adamant denials of wrongdoing from whoever's settings I had put right. It annoyed me to no end. After I fixed her e-mail, and saw it reconnect to the servers, and then my lack of morals get the better of me.
I've never been a particularly moral person. Most people think that I am, but that's just because I'm a low-risk kind of guy. I wouldn't ever steal one of the laptops my employer keeps in an unsecured cabinet, because if I got caught I would lose far more than the value of a laptop. I would never cheat on my wife for the pretty receptionist who makes conversation with me every day, because if I did my wife would divorce me. It's not a matter of being compelled not to do things, it's a matter of properly weighing the choices available to me and coming to the conclusion that being good is the correct strategy given the fundamentals. The problem was when I was presented with situations where the fundamentals dictated that I behave badly. If there is no chance of getting caught, and the immoral choice pays out better than the moral one, then I took the immoral choice. In this case, that meant snooping.
I'm an unrepentant snooper, mostly because no one has ever caught me at it. I love to look through things that I'm not supposed to see. My wife doesn't know it, but I have the password to her webmail account, and I check it at least once a week to see what she's been saying and to who. It's always totally innocuous, and if she'd given me ready access it would be boring, but there's a certain thrill that comes from reading something private, and for me that was reason enough to do it. Of course, I initially began snooping because of my deep-seated belief that everyone else is roughly as immoral as I am, which has created some trust issues in what I'm self-aware enough to recognize is a classic case of projection. But I've read her e-mails; either my wife is very good at hiding her tracks, and far smarter than me, or she really is just a much better person.
I had expected the same to be true of my mother-in-law. Maude was a boring person to talk to, and a boring person to be around. Her dried-apple doll business was what I would consider the pinnacle of things that are mildly interesting on the surface and then intensely boring as they get expanded on. I thought perhaps I would find some back and forths about bad reviews, or some details on how poorly the "business" was doing. I felt sure it was a money-sink funded by my father-in-law, but didn't want to be rude by asking outright. What I found instead were dozens of graphic e-mails to and from a secret lover.
It would be nice to be able to say that they were just sitting in the inbox, that they assaulted my eyes when I fixed things, but that would be a lie. Instead, I did my usual snooping method, which was to search through the archives looking for salacious words. I got a hit on my first try, which was "sex", found in the sentence "I wish I had my lips on your sex right now."
From there, I searched for the e-mail address of the sender, and was rewarded with a treasure-trove of correspondence  I read a few of them - incredibly graphic in detail, full of incriminating information - then quickly downloaded them all, e-mailed a copy to myself, and erased any trace that I'd done so. My heart was beating rapidly, and I nearly jumped when my wife called to see if I was ready for dinner.
Dinner would have been a nightmare if I were a more outgoing person, because then I would have had to keep up appearances. Instead, I stayed mostly quiet while my wife talked to her parents, save for a brief sit-rep that I gave on the computer problem. I watched with perked up ears while trying not to seem at all interested, but the air wasn't thick with double entendres or hidden meanings that would previously have escaped notice.
We got in our car and left soon after dinner was over, and I tried to roll my muscles and relax. While I listened to my wife talk about family news I'd missed while playing computer medic, a different part of me was running scenarios.
I like having secrets, especially secrets that I'm not supposed to have. However, I'm not a terribly good liar. It wouldn't be hard to pretend that I didn't know if no one ever brought it up, but the nightmare scenario went something like this: Maude gets found out, my wife's parents get a divorce, and she would ask me, "Can you believe that my mother would be cheat on my father?" And then I would have to pretend that I hadn't known. My wife would see right through me, and she would ask why I wasn't actually surprised, and then I would be faced with either escalating the lie and depending on my non-existent skill as an actor, or telling her that I had known about the affair for years.
"I think your mother is having an affair," I said softly, in order to save myself the possibility of hurting my marriage some years down the line.
"Oh?" asked my wife impassively, "What makes you think that?" I glanced away from the road and looked at her face, but it betrayed no emotion. I silently cursed myself for offering to drive, which meant that I couldn't study her closely.
"After I fixed her e-mail, I saw a message that sort of hinted at it," I could feel my hands sweating. As I've said, I'm not good at lying, so it was important to stick as close to the truth as possible. "It was asking when she would be alone again for a weekend."
My wife said nothing for a long time, so long that I wanted to fill the silence. I resisted - this was a well-known interrogation technique. Finally she let out a sigh and slammed her head back against the head rest.
"It's true," she said, speaking more to the air than to me. "He's a middle school teacher. It started a couple years back when dad was recovering from his surgery. She thinks she's being sneaky about it, but dad knows. He just doesn't say anything." I glanced over at my wife and saw a single tear racing down her cheek. "You must think I'm awful," she said.
"Why?" I asked, not having to fake my surprise.
"I've known for more than a year, and I kept it from you. I guess I just thought that if I didn't talk about it, then maybe it would't be happening. And I didn't want you to hate my mom like I do." I heard a sad sniffle from her. "I'm sorry, I should have said, should have talked about it with you."
"I know how you hate secrets," she said.
I drove on, trying not to laugh.