3. Hannah
— ? —
Hannah
I drive myself to the Jasper estate because Cameron is coming straight from the office.
That’s what he said when I asked about carpooling this morning, his voice distracted, his eyes already on his laptop.
“I’ve got a thing that might run late. Just meet me there.
” A thing. He couldn’t even tell me what the thing was, couldn’t spare the thirty seconds it would take to explain why we couldn’t arrive at his parents’ house together like a normal married couple.
So I’m alone in my car, pulling into the circular driveway behind a Bentley I don’t recognize, watching the marble fountain catch the last of the evening light. The Jasper estate looks exactly the way it always does: cold, immaculate, and designed to make people like me feel small.
Cameron’s car is already here. He must have made it after all, must have wrapped up his thing in time to beat me by a few minutes.
I find a spot between a Mercedes and a Porsche and sit there for a moment, gathering myself.
The house looms ahead of me, all limestone and columns and windows that gleam like watching eyes.
I check my reflection in the rearview mirror. Smooth down my hair. Take a breath that doesn’t quite fill my lungs.
Thursday dinner with the in-laws. My favorite way to spend an evening, right after root canals and tax audits.
Cameron is waiting on the front steps when I walk up, his hands in his pockets, his tie slightly loosened. He looks tired, I notice. He always looks tired lately.
“Hey,” he says, leaning in to kiss my cheek. “You okay? You look tense.”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure? We can leave early if you want. I’ll make up an excuse.”
“I’m fine, Cameron.”
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out automatically, glances at the screen, and starts typing a response while still talking to me.
“Good, because my mother’s been in rare form lately and I don’t want you to-” He stops mid-sentence, catches himself, and looks up at my face.
Then he shoves the phone back in his pocket with an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. That can wait.”
It’s a small thing. The smallest possible effort. But I file it away anyway, this one moment where he chose me over the screen, because lately those moments feel rare enough to count.
We haven’t really talked since the lunch disaster two days ago, since he took the Tokyo call while I stood there holding takeout like an idiot, since he said walk away from a billion-dollar deal because you want to have lunch and I walked out of his office before I said the thing I’d regret.
He’s tried to apologize. He’s left takeout from my favorite Vietnamese place on the counter and texted me during meetings and come home before midnight two nights in a row, which is apparently his version of grand romantic gestures now.
I’ve accepted the apologies the way I always do, with a tired smile and an it’s fine that we both know isn’t true.
But tonight isn’t about us. Tonight is about surviving his mother.
The front door opens before we can ring the bell, and there she is: Prentiss Jasper, immaculate in cream silk and pearls, her smile sharp enough to cut glass.
“Cameron, darling.” She pulls him into a hug that looks warm but isn’t. “You look tired. Are you sleeping enough?”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“You work too hard. I keep telling your father, Cameron works too hard, but does anyone listen to me?” She releases him and turns to me, her smile dimming by several degrees. “Hannah. What a lovely dress. So brave of you to wear that color.”
“Thank you, Prentiss. You look beautiful as always.”
We air-kiss like civilized people who secretly want to strangle each other, and then she’s ushering us inside, through the foyer with its cathedral ceilings and crystal chandeliers, into the formal living room where Jack Jasper is already seated with a tumbler of scotch.
Jack doesn’t get up when we enter. He barely looks up from his drink, just nods in our general direction and goes back to studying the ice cubes in his glass. Silent as always. I’ve known this man since before the wedding and I could count the words he’s said directly to me on one hand.
The living room is all cream and gold, priceless antiques arranged with museum precision. I perch on the edge of an uncomfortable settee while a server in white gloves offers canapés from a silver tray. Tiny things, architectural and flavorless, food meant to be photographed, not eaten.
“The expansion closed yesterday,” Prentiss announces to no one in particular, settling into her chair with practiced elegance. “Thirty million over what they projected. Your father is very pleased.”
“That’s great,” Cameron says, accepting a scotch from the server.
The conversation drifts to markets, to acquisitions, to a competitor having a bad quarter.
I nod along and smile at appropriate moments and wonder, not for the first time, how I ended up here.
How the girl who used to eat ramen for dinner three nights a week became the woman sitting in a room full of people who spend more on appetizers than she used to make in a month.
Across the table, Prentiss leans toward Jack and murmurs something I can’t quite hear.
He responds with a half-nod and a sound that might be agreement, and she reaches over to adjust his collar with the casual intimacy of decades together.
It’s nothing, really. The smallest gesture.
But I find myself watching them, these two cold people in their cold house, and realizing that this is the only warmth I’ve seen here all evening.
This decades-old shorthand, this silent language between them.
And I’m outside it. Completely outside it.
“So, Hannah.” Prentiss’s voice cuts through my reverie, and I look up to find her watching me with that particular smile she saves for moments like this. “I heard your little charity event had some attendance issues last month.”
Here we go.
“We raised two hundred thousand dollars for disability services,” I say, keeping my voice pleasant. “I’d call that a success.”
“Of course you would.” She sips her martini, the three olives bobbing gently. “It’s sweet that you have your hobbies.”
Hobbies. My foundation work. My teaching. The things I’ve built while her son was too busy to notice. The things that Cameron called different three nights ago, like they don’t really count, like I’m just playing at having a purpose while the real adults handle the serious business.
I glance at Cameron, waiting for him to say something. Anything.
He’s looking at his phone under the table, typing with his thumb while pretending to listen to whatever his mother is saying. He doesn’t even notice the barb. He doesn’t notice me waiting for him to defend me.
So much for that small effort on the front steps.
“The foundation is actually expanding,” I say, turning back to Prentiss since my husband clearly isn’t going to participate. “We’re launching a new literacy program in the fall, partnering with three local schools to provide resources for adults with learning disabilities.”
“How nice.” Prentiss’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “It must be so fulfilling, having a little project to keep you busy.”
“It’s not a project, it’s a career.”
“Of course it is, dear. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” She waves a hand dismissively. “It’s just that when Cameron and I talk about work, we’re usually discussing things that affect the actual economy. Thousands of jobs. Global markets. But your work is important too, in its own way.”
I feel my cheeks flush with anger. This is what she does, wraps her insults in silk so you can’t object without looking oversensitive.
Cameron’s phone buzzes. He glances at it, types something, glances again.
I squeeze his knee under the table. He squeezes back absently, still typing with his other hand, and the gesture that used to mean I’m here, I’ve got you now just feels like muscle memory. Like he’s not even aware he’s doing it.
“Cameron,” his mother says, “put the phone away. It’s rude.”
“Sorry, it’s just the overnight numbers, there’s a discrepancy-”
“I don’t care if the building is on fire. We’re having family dinner.”
He pockets the phone reluctantly, and for one brief moment I feel a flash of gratitude toward Prentiss. At least someone can make him put the damn thing down.
Then she raises her glass in a toast, and the gratitude evaporates.
“To family,” Prentiss says, her eyes landing on me with undisguised contempt. “To those who marry their own kind, and to those who try their best.”
Jack says nothing, just raises his glass and drinks. And Cameron, my husband, the man who swore to love and protect me, hums agreement to his mother’s toast without even hearing what she said.
He doesn’t know what she said. He doesn’t know I’m drowning three feet away from him.
I put my glass down before my hand can decide anything on its own.
Dinner is served in the formal dining room, which is somehow even more uncomfortable than the living room.
The table seats twenty but there are only four of us, spread out like strangers at a restaurant, and every word echoes off the vaulted ceiling.
Crystal chandeliers cast cold light over the bone china and silver flatware, everything polished to a gleam that feels more like a threat than a welcome.
Everything in this house is like that, beautiful and hostile, meant to be admired rather than lived in.
The first course is a delicate soup, something with truffle oil and gold leaf, and I eat it mechanically while the conversation swirls around me. I try to follow along but it’s like listening to a foreign language, all jargon and acronyms and figures that mean nothing to me.
Not that anyone asks my opinion. Not that anyone acknowledges I’m here at all except to make comments about my “hobbies.”
The fish course arrives. Then the salad. I push food around my plate and watch the candles flicker in their silver holders and wonder how many more of these dinners I can survive. How many more evenings of being talked over and looked through and made to feel like an intruder in my own marriage.
Halfway through the main course, Cameron’s phone buzzes again. He pulls it out, frowns at the screen, and stands up.
“I have to take this,” he says. “It’s Singapore. I’ll just be a minute.”
He walks out of the dining room without looking at me.
I sit there with my fork suspended over my plate, watching him disappear through the doorway, and something in my chest tightens painfully.
His father doesn’t react, just keeps eating his salmon like his son didn’t just abandon the table.
His mother takes a delicate bite and says, “That boy works too hard. Just like his father at that age.”
I wait for him to come back.
Through the rest of the main course, I wait. The server clears the plates and I’m still waiting. The cheese course arrives and I pick at it without tasting anything, my eyes drifting to the doorway every few seconds.
The minutes stretch, ten becoming fifteen.
I can hear the murmur of his voice from somewhere deep in the house, the cadence of a business call, and I realize he’s not coming back. Not for dinner. Not for me. Not for anything except the work that matters more than I do.
When dessert arrives and his chair is still empty, I set down my napkin and stand.
“I should go find Cameron,” I say. “Make sure everything’s all right.”
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Prentiss says, waving a hand. “When he’s on one of those calls, he could be hours. You might as well have dessert.”
I don’t want dessert. I don’t want to sit at this table for another second, being politely insulted while my husband takes calls in another room and leaves me to fend for myself.
“I think I’ll head home, actually. I have an early morning.”
“Suit yourself.” Prentiss doesn’t bother to hide her satisfaction. She’s won and she knows it. “I’ll let Cameron know you left. Drive safe, dear.”
I collect my purse and my coat and walk out of the Jasper estate alone, past the marble fountain and the luxury cars and the life I somehow ended up in that never quite fit. The night air is cool against my flushed cheeks, and I stand there a moment just breathing it in.
The valet brings my car around. I tip him and slide behind the wheel and sit there for a moment in the dark, gripping the steering wheel, trying to decide if I want to cry or scream or go back inside and make a scene.
I don’t do any of it. I just start the car and drive.
The highway is empty this time of night, just me and the streetlights and the radio playing songs I’m not really hearing. The city falls away behind me and the road stretches out ahead, and I should feel free but instead I just feel hollow.
I remember the first time Cameron brought me to one of these dinners, back when we were newly engaged and I still thought I could win his parents over. I wore a dress I couldn’t afford and shoes that pinched my toes and I smiled until my face ached, desperate to make a good impression.
Prentiss had been cool but civil. Jack had been silent but not hostile.
And Cameron had held my hand under the table the entire evening, his thumb tracing circles on my palm, and every time his mother made a comment that landed wrong, he’d been right there with a response.
“Hannah’s foundation work is incredible, actually.
She’s changing lives.” Or: “Her teaching schedule is brutal. She works harder than anyone I know.”
He’d seen every barb before it landed. He’d deflected every one.
When did that stop? When did he go from my defender to another person I had to defend myself against?
I catch myself rehearsing speeches now, practicing what I’d say to Cameron if I had the courage to actually say it. I want you to defend me. I want you to tell your mother that my work matters. I want you to be present. I want you to choose me.
Practicing how to ask my own husband for his attention, his time, his defense.
I don’t recognize the woman doing it.
When did I become someone who begs for scraps from a man who swore I’d never want for anything?