Chapter 2

Ann Bristol waited behind the car she had hit. Her hand had slipped off of the steering wheel and her bumper had made contact with the car. Although the damage was minor, she was not the type to leave without letting the person that owned the car get her insurance information. She had been in a hurry to pick up a few things at Walgreen's before she got home and her mind had been on the changes that were about to happen at work.

She lived alone since her daughter had gotten married. Her daughter, Jessica, had married a computer science major and he had a job waiting for him in California after graduation. They had gotten married the weekend after they graduated and left for California the next day. Her daughter called about once every 2 weeks and she seemed to be doing well in California. She had a job as a teacher and she said that she really enjoyed working with kids. She added, as long as they're someone else's, at the end of the sentence.

Things had been strained between the two of them since her divorce. Jessica knew that her father had been wrong, but she felt than Ann had to have been at least partly to blame. Ann never discussed the reasons for the breakup with her daughter. Her husband had told Jessica that he found someone else and that he and Ann had just grown apart. Jessica became belligerent with Ann at times and argued at the drop of a hat. Just before they left for Californian, they had argued and Jessica told her mother that she was becoming a bitter old woman. That hurt her, but Ann knew that there was a bit of truth to it.

Ann and Ray had met in college. Both of them were engineering students and she fell for Ray immediately. He was the life of the party. He was always the one to host the fraternity parties or to take an impromptu trip on the weekends. They started living together off campus in their senior year. Ray proposed to her at their graduation. They both got jobs in their hometown and got married a couple of months after graduation. Ann worked for the two years before Jessica was born. Ray insisted that she stay home and raise their child. She made a good home for her family. She was frugal with their money and they lived fairly well on Ray's salary.

She thought that they had an excellent life together. Their sex life was good and they did many things as a family until the night Ray told her that he had been unhappy for years and that he wanted a divorce. She found out later that he was leaving her for a much younger woman at work that he had been having an affair with for over a year. She had suspected him of having an affair before, but he always denied it and she could never prove that he did. She knew now that she should have seen it coming. The business trips became much more frequent, he never wanted to go anywhere with her, the meetings were usually at night and lasted until midnight, his bonuses were not as large as they had been, and he was often rude to her and they seemed to argue about everything.

The divorce became an ugly affair. Ray had asked that everything be divided equally. She had asked for the house and for child support for Jessica. She also asked that Ray be required to pay for Jessica's college tuition. The judge ordered Ray to give her what she had asked for and also ordered that Ray leave her their old car so that she could find a job. Ray had to replace the money he had cleaned out of their bank account. Ann never dated after the divorce, which happened 8 years ago.

She started looking for a job as soon as he left the house. She was having no luck finding a job and rarely even had an interview. A headhunter told her that she couldn't help her since she hadn't held a job in over 20 years. Her uncle found out that she was looking for a job and offered her a position in his factory as an engineering assistant.