Chapter 1 The Price of Her Tears
A few days ago, my husband Everett Gordon's mistress burst into tears once more because of me.
This time, his punishment was to send me straight to the pet hospital so I could donate blood for the injured vicious dog that belonged to his mistress, Zaria Clayton.
He did not care about the scratches covering my body. He did not care about the chunks of flesh torn away by bites. He did not even care that the dog had ripped open my lower abdomen, leaving a bloody wound and causing me to lose our child.
He simply launched into another lecture.
"Men keeping women on the side is the most ordinary thing in the world. Loving you and staying faithful to only you for a lifetime are two completely separate matters. When exactly will you learn to be sensible? You injured the dog so badly that it lost too much blood, and you made Zaria cry again. This blood donation counts as your apology to her."
After I woke from the shock of the blood donation, Everett brought both the woman and the dog back home and once again tossed my luggage outside.
"Zaria has not recovered these past few days. I will stay with her for a while. She gets scared whenever you are around."
This time, I did not cry or make a scene. I calmly picked up my luggage and handed him a divorce agreement.
He took it with a scoff and signed his name without a second thought.
"Alyssa, next time, come up with a new trick. I am tired of this fake-divorce-papers game."
It was true that in the past I had tried dozens of times to win back his heart by suggesting divorce, but he had always seen through the bluffs.
Yet today he failed to notice that this document was real.
"After the thirty-day cooling-off period, we will meet at the civil affairs bureau."
Everett's hand paused briefly over the signature, but he never lifted his gaze. His face was full of weariness.
"Alyssa, I will let you throw one last tantrum. If you still cannot accept that I keep women on the side, then go right now to your mother's grave and ask her how she managed to endure it all those years."
I had heard those words a thousand times. Every time another woman clung to his arm, and I cried quietly in protest, he would tell me to learn from my mother how a wife should tolerate her husband keeping mistresses.
At first, I had been shocked. I had argued fiercely. I had even slapped him hard across the face. But now I felt calm to the point of being frightening.
Since he believed with all his heart that men keeping women on the side was perfectly natural, there was no longer any reason for me to keep hurting myself.
After I took back the signed divorce agreement, I did not look at him once. I simply turned and walked away.
For the first time ever, Everett did not watch me leave with his usual mocking smile. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me from behind.
"Alyssa, can you wait three days for me? Zaria is innocent and simple. Three days is all I need to cheer her up."
He gently stroked the wound on my lower abdomen and continued, "Then we will have another child. You always wanted most to give me a baby, right? Do not dwell on this one. Just think about how the next one will come."
His words made my fingertips dig deep into my palms. My heart felt as if it were being twisted by an invisible hand.
I realized that losing the child meant almost nothing to him. It was as though the baby we had once longed for with all our hearts had never existed at all.
I wanted to turn around and demand an answer. I wanted to cry out every ounce of pain and humiliation I had suffered.
But when my eyes fell on the bracelet around his wrist, woven from the dog's own fur, my tightly clenched heart slowly sank, and the final spark of light in my eyes faded away.
He hated animal fur more than anything. Once, when I had fed a stray cat outside, and a single hair clung to my clothes, he had made me strip naked and disinfect my whole body before I was allowed back inside the house.
