It started with a loose floorboard. Just a tiny creak, a persistent little whisper every time I crossed the living room near the old fireplace. My partner had promised to fix it for weeks, but life, as it always does, got in the way. So, one quiet Saturday, with them out running errands, I decided to tackle it myself. A simple enough task, I thought. Just pry it up, put some glue, nail it back down.What I found wasn’t a loose nail.Beneath the board, nestled in a dusty cavity, was a small, sleek device. Black, nondescript, with a tiny, almost invisible LED that blinked a faint, dull red. It was plugged into an outlet I didn’t even know existed, hidden behind a heavy, antique cabinet that hadn’t moved in years. My breath hitched. What in the world is this?
It wasn’t a phone charger. It wasn’t a smart home hub. It wasn’t anything I recognized from our shared collection of gadgets. Our lives were open books, or so I thought. We had no secrets. No hidden devices. I carefully unplugged it, the tiny red light immediately winking out. It felt heavy in my hand, far too substantial for its size. My fingers traced a small symbol on its casing. My stomach began to churn.
Garry Kief and Barry Manilow attend the Pre-GRAMMY Gala at The Beverly Hilton in California, on February 14, 2016 | Source: Getty Images
A quick search on my phone, the symbol typed into the search bar, confirmed my growing dread. My blood ran cold. It was a professional-grade audio surveillance device. A listening bug. The kind you see in movies, but impossibly small, designed to blend in. My hand started to tremble. No. This can’t be right.
My mind raced. Who would put this here? And why? The only logical answer, the only answer that made a cruel kind of sense, slammed into me like a physical blow. It had to be them. My partner. The person I loved, the one I shared my life with, the one I trusted implicitly. They were listening to me. Spying on me.
A wave of nausea washed over me. Every casual conversation, every quiet moment, every whispered confession, every private phone call – had it all been recorded? Had I been living under a microscope, performing for an audience of one? The thought made my skin crawl. My chest tightened, a vice grip squeezing the air from my lungs.
Garry Kief speaks onstage during the 34th Annual Palm Springs International Film Awards at Palm Springs Convention Center on January 5, 2023 in Palm Springs, California | Source: Getty Images
I wanted to throw it against the wall. I wanted to scream. I wanted to confront them the moment they walked through the door, device in hand, my accusations a burning fury. But a colder, more rational thought cut through the haze of betrayal. I need to know what it heard. I needed proof. Actual proof, beyond the device itself, beyond the crushing weight of suspicion.
I found a small port on the side, a memory card slot. My fingers, still shaking, fumbled with it, extracting the tiny card. My computer whirred to life, a digital gateway to my shattered reality. I inserted the card. The folder was labeled with just a date, months ago. A date that predated the loose floorboard. A date that predated many things.
Garry Kief and Barry Manilow attend the Pre-GRAMMY Gala at The Beverly Hilton in California, on February 14, 2016 | Source: Getty Images
I clicked the first file. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of terror and rage. I braced myself to hear my own voice, my own private moments, laid bare. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed play.
The first sound was static. Then, a man’s voice. Not mine. Not my partner’s either. A voice I didn’t recognize. Then, another voice. A woman’s. Familiar, but not quite right. A little softer, a little higher pitched than I was used to hearing.
I opened my eyes, leaning closer to the speakers, trying to decipher the muffled conversation. They were talking about mundane things at first. Groceries. A school report. A dentist appointment. My confusion grew. This isn’t my life. This isn’t my home.
Then, a clear sentence cut through the haze. “Don’t forget to pick up our daughter from practice.”
arry Kief and Barry Manilow attend the Pre-GRAMMY Gala at The Beverly Hilton in California, on February 14, 2016 | Source: Getty Images
My blood ran cold. Daughter? My partner and I didn’t have a daughter. We’d always talked about it, dreamed about it, but it hadn’t happened yet.
I fast-forwarded through recordings, skipping days, weeks. The voices remained. The topics shifted. Family dinners. Arguments about finances. Discussions about “the other house” – our house. The house they were apparently maintaining a completely separate life from.
Then I heard it. Clear as day. My partner’s voice. That familiar cadence, the way they chuckled when they were trying to smooth things over. Only, they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to the woman, the “wife.” Discussing her day. Discussing their children. Their shared life. A life that had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with me.
Barry Manilow with Kirsten, seated at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards Governors Ball, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 2006 | Source: Getty Images
The device wasn’t for spying on me. It was for them. To keep track of their other life, the one they left behind every morning, the one they returned to when they said they were “working late” or “visiting family.” It was their tether, their connection to their real family, to their other partner, to the children I didn’t even know existed.
They weren’t spying on me; they were living a double life. And this tiny, insidious device was how they managed it. How they listened in on their other home, their other family, keeping track of every detail, every conversation, so they could seamlessly slip back into that role when they weren’t with me.
Barry Manilow performs onstage during the “Manilow: The Last Seattle Concert” at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington on July 12, 2025 | Source: Getty Images
The realization hit me with the force of a tidal wave. ALL THE TIMES THEY WERE DISTANT. ALL THE EXCUSES. ALL THE SMALL LIES. IT WASN’T ABOUT ME, IT WAS ABOUT THEM JUGGLING TWO ENTIRE WORLDS.
I didn’t confront them when they came home. I just stared at them, a stranger in my living room, my heart utterly pulverized. The device lay on the table between us, a silent, damning witness. What I found plugged into my house wasn’t a threat to my privacy; it was the key that unlocked a parallel universe, a life my partner was living, secretly, parallel to mine. And what it taught me? It taught me that the person sleeping next to me, the one I thought I knew inside and out, was a phantom. A magnificent, heartbreaking lie. My whole world, built on love and trust, had been a stage for a performance I didn’t even know I was in.
