An Ordinary Woman – Donna Hill

Getting into my car I hope the drive home will ease my mind. All day at work I thought about last night. I thought about how I felt when Lisa told me what she’d done. I know this may sound stupid, or petty, but I feel emasculated. I feel useless, less than the man I know myself to be. All my adult life, I’ve prided myself on my sense of values and responsibility, the knowledge that I could be depended upon.

I’ve always looked after the women in my life. Maybe too much and too hard. But that’s the way I am. I want to give all of me. And that’s why it’s so difficult, even painful to realize that the core of who you are, isn’t needed. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt stripped, exposed, but this time is the worst. This time it isn’t a girlfriend, a maybe, as Michelle had been.

This is my wife. Michelle. Damn. Where did that come from? I’ve fought not to think of her. But she still slips in from time to time. Ten years later, and the memories are still raw. 1 suppose you could say that Michelle was my first love, or at least my first adult love. We’d met during our second year at M.I.T. We were in the same design class. Since I’d had to drop out of college for a couple of years after my father died so that I could work and take care of my mother and Karen, and then Karen after Mom passed, I was a few years older than the rest of the students in the graduate class.

But that only made me work harder, to prove to them and to myself that I had what it took to compete with the rest. I pretty much stuck to myself, preferring my own company to the college-boy preppy crowd, who were always on the prowl for women between classes.

AN ORDINARY WOMAN. Copyright © 2002 by Donna Hill. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.

10010. www.stmartins.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hill, Donna (Donna O.) An ordinary woman / Donna Hill.—1st ed. p. cm ISBN 0-312-28191-9 (hc) ISBN 0-312-30729-2 (pbk) 1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Married people —Fiction. 4. Adultery—Fiction. I. Title PS3558.I3864O73 2003 813’.54—dc21 2003046936 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 1kitap1.com/en How do we begin to covet?

Do we seek out things to covet? We begin by coveting what we see every day. —from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS 1kitap1.com/en ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to take this opportunity to thank my agent, Pattie Steele-Perkins, for making this project possible for me. To my editor, Monique Patterson, who helped me shape my story, and to Eliani Torres, a truly great copy editor. Robert, so much love and thanks to you, you continue to make me believe I can fly.

Thanks to my children, Nichole, Dawne, and Matthew, and my grandson, Mahlik, for always loving me and allowing me to love you all back. Mom, I love you, and thanks for being there—always. Thanks to my sister, Lisa, and my brother, David, for always being in my corner—my personal cheering squad! To my sisterfriends, Antoinette, Val, Gwynne, Linda, LaToya, Francis, and Jessica, for being real in good times and bad, and for listening to all my stones, even when you didn’t feel like it.

Thank you so much to my readers old and new who have supported me these past twelve years. 1 hope that 1 can continue to entertain you for many years to come. Most of all, to God, who continues to bless and amaze me with the doors that He opens, the paths that He sets, and the choices that He offers me each and every day.

1kitap1.com/en ASHA You’ll find out soon enough.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 328d0d67758ce7f6
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,084,989 bytes (1.988 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 0312281919, 0312307292
• Pages: 274
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 435.36 minutes
• Total Words: 87,072
• Total Characters: 460,638
• Average Words per Page: 317.78
• Average Characters per Page: 1681.16

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