Chapter 2

2 Mrs. Hawthorne arranged my marriage with Jason.

She set us up on a blind date after I graduated college, telling him that I was the only one who could be a Hawthorne wife.

He threw a fit, but eventually caved.

When Jason and I got married, I thought I had a safe harbor, and I was excited for the future.

I tried to be the perfect wife. I put him first, and made sure all his needs were met.

If my colleagues asked me to go to dinner with them, I'd always go home to make sure he wasn't eating by himself.

After a while, they stopped asking me to go out.

I focused on him, and lost touch with the outside world.

I thought that my sincerity would be reciprocated.

I was wrong. Not long after the wedding, Jason started staying out all night.

I thought he was just working late, so I brought him homemade meals.

One day, I attended a banquet with him. A woman approached, smiling. “Mrs. Hawthorne, I heard you were an orphan, and you have such good cooking skills, you must have been a cook before?"

That's when I found out that the meals I’d been slaving over were being fed to another woman.

I snapped for the first time that night.

Or, more accurately, I went off on him.

He remained calm.

After I finished yelling, he calmly said, "Sarah, don't you think self-pity is a terrible thing?"

His simple statement hit me hard.

He didn't care at all about how I felt. He was just a bystander, unemotionally watching my efforts and then remarking on my "self-pity."

It was ridiculous.

I didn't know how to face him, or our future.

So I retreated, deliberately ignoring him.

Later, I was constantly seeing photos of him with other women.

Yesterday he watched a fashion show with a young model, today he had dinner with a flight attendant, and tomorrow he went to a hotel with his business partner.

I was devastated. I wanted a divorce.

Mrs. Hawthorne said, "He's just doing it for show. He likes you, he just doesn't show it. For my sake, try to stick it out with him."

Ever since I was five years old, Mrs. Hawthorne had been my benefactor.

Thanks to her, I hadn't suffered any hardships in the orphanage.

I tolerated Jason for her sake.

After that, I went from heartache to numbness.

Until last year, when Mrs. Hawthorne found out that I had to take sleeping pills to fall asleep, she relented. "Have a baby for Jason. Boy or girl, I promise you can get a divorce."

To get a divorce, I braced myself, took my medication, and did what I had to do.

But he refused to touch me, preferring to stay at work.

So I took matters into my own hands and got a test tube baby.

Luckily, I succeeded.

I was pregnant, and I gave birth to a child.

I was finally going to be free.