It was a warm afternoon, and a neighbor had invited me over for a casual barbecue. My husband was out of the country for work, so I figured it would be nice to get out and enjoy the day. The backyard was lively, filled with laughter and the smell of grilled food. The garden was beautiful, with a large fountain at its center, so I decided to take a quick picture to send to my husband—just a small way to share the moment with him while he was away.

But his response came back almost immediately, and it wasn’t what I expected.

“Where are you?” he wrote, his message unusually cold.

“At the barbecue, remember?” I replied, a bit taken aback. “One of our neighbors invited me.”

There was a pause before he responded, and when he did, his words were blunt and cutting.

“That’s not our neighborhood. That’s his house, isn’t it?”