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dresser in his huge walk-in closet, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t think he would take a chance of it being too far away, so I took my own phone out of the pocket of my robe and dialed his number. When the call connected, I heard a faint buzzing sounding in the closet. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from before his voice mail picked up, so I hung up and called again as I walked around the closet, pushing back the hundreds of shirts, jackets, and suits hanging along the walls. The buzzing was getting louder, so I knew I was close. As I made my way to the very back of his walk-in closet, the noise seemed to come from the ground. Pushing my way through a wall of heavy suits and pushing aside rows of pristine size-sixteen sneakers, I found the phone stuffed into the toe of one of his Nikes. The cord to the charger snaked out of the side of the phone and plugged into an outlet on the bottom of the wall. He must have just had that installed, as I didn’t remember there being outlets in the back of t he closet.
    Shaking and fearful of what I might find, I began my search. His phone was locked, so I tried a bunch of codes: his birthday, Damon’s birthday, my birthday, and our wedding anniversary. On the last try before the phone locked, I input his team number twice: 2323—after all, life had been all about him for quite some time. The phone unlocked.
    I scrolled through his text messages and saw that most of his correspondence with his teammates, Kareem, and family members was fine. A number I didn’t recognize appeared in his phone log and text screen, but the messages were deleted. With no way to retrieve the deleted messages, I decided I had no choice but to call the number. I pushed the button to dial the unfamiliar number and held my breath as I put the phone to my ear. It rang twice, and then a woman’s husky voice answered. The voice was low and sexy, and I doubted it was because she had been sleeping; this was probably how she sounded every time my husband c alled her.
    “Hey, baby. Did you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about me?”
    I could barely catch my breath as I clutched the phone to my ear.
    “Baby, are you there?” she asked. “Marcus, you woke me up, so I hope you’re going to at least give me some hot phone sex to hold me over unt il Miami.”
    I clutched my stomach, which was suddenly tied in knots. Hot tears streamed down my face. Marcus was scheduled to leave for a game against Miami the next day.
    “Bitch, who is this?” I screamed into the phone. “Who are you? Are you fucking my husband?”
    The woman laughed and then hung up the phone. Blind with rage, I punched desperately at the buttons and redialed the number. This time her voice mail picked up, and I continued to scream into the receiver.
    “You fucking bitch! You stay away from my family!” My screams must have awakened Marcus, because just as I was redialing the number, he ran into the closet and grabbed the phone from me. The panic on his face let me know immediately that he knew he w as caught.
    The next six months of our marriage were a nightmare. We went to counseling, and we talked to our pastor. Marcus swore he would stop seeing other women, and I spiraled downward into a deep depression. From the outside, we looked like the happy NBA couple. I continued my duties as president of the National Basketball Association wives organization, and Marcus continued to play the best season of his career. The only people I confided in were Nia and another NBA wife I had grown close to, Jacqueline Herman. I could tell Nia wanted me to leave Marcus, because she said just that at the end of all our calls, but Jacqueline encouraged me to stay. Married for ten years to Michael Herman, Marcus’s closest teammate, Jacqueline was far more pragmatic. She shared her own stories of betrayal and how she and Michael somehow made it work. One such story left me breathless. A famous Hollywood actress that I loved in all her