A man named Phil sends a series of text messages to a woman that he has done business with in the past. He is texting her from his new second phone, and suggests that they get dinner together next time he is in San Francisco. Phil is wealthy and successful, a venture capitalist in Chicago, and his wife, Liz, is a private school English teacher who renovates their home and collects art in her spare time. Liz finds this second phone stuffed haphazardly in Phil’s pants pocket while she is doing laundry. She wonders why Phil would have a cheap burner phone, and decides to look and see what could be on it. She sees the text conversation between Phil and the woman, a contractor named HW, and Liz immediately thinks back to the previous year when Phil’s secret relationship with HW almost ruined their marriage. She debates what to do with the phone, and is nervous that if she does anything with it he will realize that she has seen it. She slips it into the pocket of one of his jackets and hopes that he doesn’t notice. Liz thinks about how she promised Phil that she would never spy on him again after her snooping through his texts was what caused them to almost divorce. Liz is devastated, as she had really believed that they had gotten back to having a happy marriage, and now she is worried all over again. Liz notices that Phil seems worried when he cannot find the phone, but significantly relaxes when he does. She also realizes that he has resumed doing many of the things that he used to do back when he was interested in HW, like working out more and going on a diet. Liz does not say anything to Phil, but continues looking through his text messages in secret. She sees him telling HW the same stories that he used to tell her when they started dating, and notes that HW often responds with veiled disinterest. Liz assumes that HW is really only humoring Phil because she wants him to hire her on more contracting jobsLiz also notices that Phil says demeaning things about her to HW. She regrets having spent so much time trying to fix their marriage only for Phil to go behind her back again. Liz compares her husband’s actions to the entitled ways of the Greek gods, and thinks about how Phil’s Achilles heel is his need to remain interesting and impressive to women. As she continues reading Phil and HW’s texts, Liz reminisces about their once-perfect relationship. She also thinks about how HW was likely using Phil’s attempts to seduce her as a bargaining chip to negotiate a better contract during the fallout of the #metoo movement. She reads a text exchange between HW and Phil where HW talks about her own husband and suggests that their continuing texts may be inappropriate. Phil tells HW that he is leaving Liz. Liz is in shock, but does not bring it up to Phil. As time passes, Phil and Liz return to couples therapy, and Phil becomes more agitated as HW responds less frequently to his texts. Finally, Phil has to make a trip to San Francisco for business, and HW agrees to meet him for dinner. Phil has no idea that Liz knows everything he has been hiding, but she again says nothing as he leaves the house. That winter, Liz is out walking the dog in the cold, and thinks about how much space the neighbors are giving her now that she is a widow. Phil was murdered in his hotel room in San Francisco, and that his killer was never caught. Liz takes a call from an “art dealer” to whom she owes a very large sum of money. She reveals that she has her own burner phone, one which she had been using all this time to text her husband, pretending to be HW. HW had never really been texting Phil, and had been happily having dinner with her own husband on the night they were supposed to meet. Liz thinks about how she had done what she needed to do, throws the phone into the river, and walks home.