Chapter 2

Eleanor, her face a storm of fury and dawning horror, grabbed her phone. She dialed Ethan, her knuckles white. I could hear the tinny ringing, then a polite, professional voice. "Mr. Caldwell's office, Chloe speaking." Chloe. The Hamptons. The gala blunder. Eleanor didn't hold back. "Put my son on the phone this instant, Chloe, or so help me God, I will personally see to it that you are never employed in this city again!" Her voice, usually so controlled, was raw. A pause, then Chloe' s hesitant reply, "He's in a very important meeting, Mrs. Caldwell." But in the background, I could hear it, faint but unmistakable: music, laughter, the clinking of glasses. Not a meeting. Another party. Eleanor exploded. "A meeting? I'll give him a meeting! You tell Ethan if he is not at this hospital in one hour, he can consider himself disowned. He has a son, damn him! A son he nearly cost his mother!" She slammed the phone down, her chest heaving. She looked at me, tears welling in her eyes. "I am so sorry, Sarah. So, so sorry."

The present horror made the past even sharper. I remembered when Eleanor first came into my life, or rather, when her influence did. She had anonymously sponsored me through a foster youth foundation, something I only learned much later. After I graduated college with a degree in graphic design, full of hope and naive dreams, she' d approached me. She was elegant, kind, and she spoke of family, of stability, things I' d craved my entire life. Then she proposed the marriage to Ethan. I' d seen his pictures, the golden boy heir. I didn't know about the 52 affairs then. I didn' t know about the hollowness inside him.

I had tried. God, how I had tried. I yearned for a loving marriage, a real family. I meticulously cared for Ethan, learned his favorite meals, organized his chaotic social life, tried to anticipate his needs. I gave up a promising graphic design internship because he said he needed me to host a dinner for potential investors. I spent weeks planning it. He never showed. He took another woman to a different, more exciting event, leaving me with a table set for twelve and a heart full of ashes. When I confronted him, tears streaming down my face, he' d looked at me with pure disdain. "Your little self-sacrificing act is pathetic, Sarah. Did you really think that would make me want you?" That was the first time I truly understood the depth of his cruelty. He hadn't just been unfaithful; he actively despised my attempts to love him.

His affairs became more frequent, more public. He didn' t even try to hide them. Society pages whispered, then shouted. I became a fixture of pitying glances and hushed gossip. The shame was a constant companion. My carefully constructed hopes crumbled. The anxiety started then, a tight knot in my stomach that never fully unwound. Insomnia followed. I remember Eleanor finding me one morning, pale and shaking, after a particularly humiliating article about Ethan' s latest conquest. She saw the prescription bottles on my nightstand. That' s when she proposed the deal. "Give me an heir, Sarah," she' d said, her voice surprisingly gentle. "Give the Caldwell name a future, and I will personally ensure you get your divorce. You' ll be free." Desperate for an escape, any escape, I agreed. Ethan, of course, refused any intimacy with me. He found me repulsive, he' d made that clear. So, we went the clinical route: IVF, using his sperm and my egg. The procedure was cold, impersonal, another humiliation in a long line of them. But it worked. Leo was conceived not in love, or even lust, but as a contractual obligation. A means to an end. My freedom.