I’m A man ridicules his housewife wife, only to return home one day and find her missing. In her search, she discovers a note that reveals that she intends to divorce him. Will he be able to prevent it and save his marriage?
If It was a bright and cold October morning, and Harry was excited about the presentation of his gaming app, a project he had been into for the past six months.
When the clock struck eight, Harry entered the dining room, worried about his phone, barely greeting his wife, Sara, or their children, Cody and Sonny.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
“Good morning, honey,” Sara greeted.
“Good morning, Dad,” the boys repeated in unison.
Ignoring them, Harry took a toast and hurried back to his room.
“Sara, where’s my white shirt?” Harry’s voice rumbled in the room.
“It’s in the washing machine with the other white ones,” Sara replied.
Harry entered the dining room furiously. “It’s my lucky shirt! I needed it for today.”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
“I didn’t have enough white for a full load until now. You have other white shirts!”
“Today is a great day for me, and you make excuses for me?” Harry replied.
“You’re exaggerating, Harry. What matters is your presentation. It’s just a shirt. So stop complaining, okay?”
“Oh, really? Am I complaining? Do you want to do this now?”
“Do what, Harry? You’re staging a scene for something silly. And no one would care what color your shirt is when all eyes would be fixed on your stupid presentation.”
“My stupid presentation? Come on… Did you just say that? Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked hard for that project day and night?”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
“Watch your tone of voice. You’re screaming in front of the children…”.
“You spend the day sitting at home doing nothing,” Harry said. “Is it too hard to remember a simple thing? The only thing you do is blah, blah, blah and NOTHING at home.”
“Harry, stop now. The children are watching. You’re scaring them.”
“Oh, really? And no one looks at you when you’re on the damn phone gossiping all the time with your friends. Nobody keeps an eye on that, huh, Sara? You can never be a good wife if you are not able to do even a simple thing for me.”
Harry dressed in any shirt and left the house furiously, with his briefcase.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
After a successful presentation and pocketing the promotion, Harry expected an apology call from Sara, something she always did after her fights. But this time there was no call.
Thinking that he would earn his apology anyway, he returned home with white roses, but found the apartment empty. A note from Sara on the table said: “I want a divorce.”
Confused and worried, Harry called Sara’s sister, Zara, who informed him that Sara was in the hospital. Harry ran to the hospital, only to face an angry Zara. “Did you tell him that she wasn’t a good enough wife for you?”
“Look, we’ll talk about this later, okay?”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Harry hurried to meet with the doctor. “Doctor, is my wife okay? Can I see it?”
“It was a mild attack. He’s out of danger. But now he needs to take care of his health. Go ahead, just ten minutes, because you need to rest.”
Harry entered the room trembling, trying to force a smile as he approached Sara.
“Honey, I’m sorry. Please, let me explain it to you. I…”.
“I don’t want to hear anything. I’m done. Divorce is all I want.”
“What? Why… You’re taking it too far, okay?”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
“I had ambitions, plans… I chose you above any opportunity, and that ruined my life,” she said. “It’s too late for you to regret it, Harry.”
“Honey, please. We can solve this together,” he begged.
“No, I can’t go on like this. I can’t keep fooling myself. I’m 32 years old, but I feel like a useless person. And I don’t want to be with you anymore, Harry.”
“And the children, Sara?”
“I’m in a difficult situation to keep them… So they stay with you.”
Harry didn’t speak anymore and left the hospital furiously to pick up his children at Zara’s house.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
At home, he ordered pizza and ice cream for dinner. After putting the children to bed, he called his friend Alex, who suggested that Sara had a temporary crisis and that it would not take long to return home.
The next morning, the children woke Harry up and, as soon as he looked at the clock, he knew he was late. In the morning chaos, Harry burned the French toast and his shirt while juggling the children’s school preparations.
“Oh, no, the toast!” he exclaimed, hurrying to save breakfast.
“Dad… Dad, what’s up?” the children asked in the middle of the chaos.
“It’s just the smoke alarm. Don’t worry,” Harry reassured them, but things only got worse.
He had an important meeting and he was getting late. “I’ll get ready quickly and we’ll eat something delicious on the way to school, okay?”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
He left the children at school and arrived late to the meeting. “I’m sorry. Traffic, you know…”.
When he returned home at night, Harry found more obvious signs of Sara’s absence. His belongings were gone. “Has he really left me?” he asked, overwhelmed.
“Dad, what happened to mom’s photos and things?” the children asked.
Harry, clueless, called Zara.
“Is it a joke, Zara? Your sister came here. He took all his things. Did he abandon me? And the children?”
Zara coldly informed him: “I had told you, didn’t I, Harry? You took my sister for granted.” And then the line went blank.
They spent five months without Sara. Harry struggled to reconcile work and fatherhood, and his work performance decreased.
One day, his boss, Mr. Adams, invited him to a beer. In the bar, the man brought up Harry’s recent work problems.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
“Harry, we have noticed that you have been breaking deadlines and arriving late. And we are a company… You get me,” Mr. Adams said.
Harry, trying to lighten the atmosphere, joked: “So, do you plan to let your best game developer go?”
Mr. Adams was also a friend of Harry, and he would never have prepared for what happened next.
“I’m afraid so,” he replied seriously. “It’s not in my hands. I’ll give you good recommendations.”
“What? Please, don’t do it! I need this job for my children.”
Mr. Adams remained silent, which made Harry come out furious and frustrated. As he walked away, his phone rang. It was Sara.
“Sara?” said Harry, surprised.
“Harry, can we meet for a quick chat at five? In the cafeteria where we met for the first time?” Sara asked.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pixabay
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pixabay
In a cafe, Sara met with Harry to talk about his children. He revealed that he had gone to therapy and that now he wanted custody.
“The custody? How dare you? After abandoning us?” Harry got angry.
“Harry, I’m his mother. I have rights,” Sara insisted.
“You abandoned them and now you want to take them? They have already gotten used to me,” Harry argued.
Sara was determined. “I deserve to be with them. I’ll see you in court.”
Days later, Harry, who had improved in household chores and in combining a new job as a freelancer, prepared breakfast for his children.
“Dad loves them,” he said goodbye to them with a kiss and left them at school before going to the custody trial.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
“Mr. Wills, could you tell us about the care you paid to your family while living with my client, Mrs. Sara?” Sara’s lawyer asked Harry.
“Well, I did everything I could to support my family. I worked many hours. Sometimes, overtime. I kept busy because I wanted to make sure they had everything they needed,” Harry said.
“That’s what family men do more responsible, right? And what about your wife’s ambitions? Did he want to build his own career?”
“Before having our children… Yes, she wanted to work. But then, he stayed at home taking care of the children and the house.”
“Well, taking care of the children… of the family… cooking, cleaning. So, basically, your wife has been your cook. Your children’s nanny. Your caregiver. And you insulted her by saying she didn’t do anything at home?”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
“Yes, I did. Yes, it was an outburst. I was late for the office and…”
“Mr. Wills, were you fired from your job? Why exactly was he fired?”
“I Protest, Your Honor. This is totally irrelevant and immaterial to the case,” Harry’s lawyer stood up.
“Thank you, Honor!” added Sara’s lawyer. “Mr. Wills, why were you fired from your job?”
After a momentous pause, Harry looked into Sara’s tearful eyes and opened up. “Because I couldn’t reconcile my work with my duties as a father. I tried, but it was too much. But I didn’t give up. I would never give up on my children. I love them.”
“Mr. Wills, how do you manage now? How do you plan to support your children… without work?”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
“I have work. I can keep them well.”
“Be specific, Mr. Wills. What job and what is the salary?”
“It’s… It is a part-time self-employed job. I’m a video editor.”
“Mr. Wills, I admire your confidence despite having descended in the professional ladder! I’m sure he doesn’t earn anything like what you earned in your previous job, right?” the lawyer added ironically. “A self-employed job. A low salary. And raising two children in the current recession. Well… That’s all, Your Honor.”
Then they called Sara to the stable while Harry’s heart began to beat hard.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
“Mrs. Sara, could you tell us about your life with your husband… I mean, with the one who will soon be your ex-husband?” Harry’s lawyer asked. “Have you ever refused to give you money or take care of you in any way?”
“No… Not at all. He was always generous with our finances. We never had money problems.”
“Has Mr. Wills ever raised his hand to you or the children? Did he ever arrive drunk and misbeheaven at home?”
“No, he never put his hand on us. Mr. Wills has never come home drunk.”
“Your husband has taken care of you. Even you agree with that. He has never put his hand on him. So why did he leave him and the children?”
“I had a nervous breakdown. I was always busy. She got home and sat down with her laptop, without hardly asking me if she was sick… happy… or sad. I tried to cope with it. But the day he insulted me I couldn’t take it anymore and I left. I didn’t want my children to work with me, since at that time I wasn’t emotionally stable.”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Getty Images
Harry began to break slowly inside, and those words hit him like a sack of bricks.
“Mrs. Sara, where have you been these six months? What was he doing and how is he going to take care of the children?”
“I was in Chicago, at a friend’s house. I wanted to get away from everything and everyone for a while. Then I went back to Boston… I got a job as an interior designer.”
“What guarantee is there that he will not have another nervous breakdown and will not abandon the children again?” the lawyer broke Sara’s silence.
“I Protest, Your Honor. This is unfounded and…., Sara’s lawyer intervened. “My client, Mrs. Sara, has come for custody of the children. Why would I abandon them again?”
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
“I won’t do it again. My children are my world. I’ll be by his side and I won’t let something like this happen again.”
And two hours later, the verdict was announced, and Sara obtained custody of the children.
“…. Mr. Wills, you will have the right to visit your children and take them two days a week. You must pay $860 per month for child support. This case is closed.”
Soon the day came when the children would go with Sara. She arrived, sad to separate the children from their father but happy to have them back. When she was leaving with her two children, the eldest stopped her.
“You’re separating us,” Cody said as he let go of Sara’s hand and ran towards Harry.
“We want mom and dad!” Sonny added.
It was time. Sara couldn’t hold back anymore. He ran to them and hugged them.
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
Image for illustrative purposes | Photo: Pexels
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