“Since Michael and Sarah are coming back here for a hometown childbirth, please leave.”
My mother-in-law’s voice was so cold it didn’t sound like it belonged in the warm kitchen of our New Jersey condo, where the late-afternoon sun spilled in through the window that overlooked the commuter rail tracks into Manhattan.
She repeated it, as if I hadn’t heard the first time.
“Since Michael and Sarah are returning for a hometown childbirth, please leave. My eldest son and his wife will be here in three days.”
“Me? Leave?” I asked, confused and stunned.
“Yes.” She didn’t even blink.
“We don’t need another mother figure anymore.
You’ve been redundant for a while now. Michael and his family will be living here, so make sure you’re out by tomorrow.”
The words landed heavier than any suitcase I’d ever packed.
I had known, deep down, that I’d never been truly accepted into this family from the day I married into it.
I’d been treated as if I were only filling a vacant role—someone to cook, clean, and pay bills—never really a wife, never really a mother. Still, I never imagined they’d stand in the middle of our comfortable American condo, just a ten-minute walk from the train station, and tell me to get out.
“You barren failure,” my mother-in-law added quietly, almost conversationally, as if she were commenting on the weather.
“You were allowed to experience raising a child.
Be grateful. We have no obligation to support you anymore. It seems like Simon is tired of you too.
Maybe you should think about that.”
“Simon too?” I whispered.
I, Anna Thompson, swallowed hard, my throat burning like I’d tried to gulp down gravel.
If this wasn’t some strange conspiracy between my mother-in-law and Michael, then there was no reason for me to keep pretending my marriage was untouched. If they were foolish enough to try to drive me out, then whatever happened to this home afterward would no longer concern me.
They could finally face the reality they’d ignored for years—without me cushioning anything.
Personally, I’m Anna Thompson, forty-five years old, and until that afternoon, I lived with my husband and my mother-in-law in a popular commuter neighborhood in northern New Jersey, close to the station where people in tailored coats and coffee cups streamed into trains headed for the city every morning.
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