When my mother-in-law convinced my husband I was having an affair with our neighbor, he divorced me and took everything. Eight years later, they walked into my bakery on Mother’s Day, smirking and asking if I was still playing house with my little hobby.
They had no idea I discovered her $300,000 theft from my inheritance, or that the police detective standing behind them was my father.
I still remember the exact moment my marriage ended. Not the day David served me papers, but three weeks earlier, when I walked into our kitchen and found my mother-in-law, Margaret, sitting at my table with her laptop open and that smile on her face.
You know the smile I mean—the one that says she knows something you don’t.
“Rachel, sweetheart,” she said, not looking up from her screen.
“We need to talk about your friendship with Connor next door.”
Connor Martinez was our neighbor, a divorced dad with a 10-year-old son who played with our kids sometimes.
We’d had maybe a dozen conversations in two years, mostly about trash pickup schedules and whose turn it was to mow the shared strip between our driveways.
“What about him?”
I was pulling groceries from reusable bags, my mind on getting dinner started before Emma’s soccer practice.
Margaret turned her laptop around.
My stomach dropped.
The screen showed photos of me and Connor standing in his driveway, getting into his car, walking out of a hotel, laughing together at what looked like a restaurant.
Except I’d never been to that hotel, never eaten at that restaurant with him.
The car photo was from the one time he’d given me a ride when my Honda was in the shop—and I’d mentioned it to David that same night.
“Where did you get these?”
My hands had gone numb.
“A mother protects her son,” Margaret said, closing the laptop with a soft click. “I hired a private investigator three months ago.
I had a feeling about you, Rachel.”
“These are fake. I’ve never—”
“David is on his way home attaching.
I thought it would be better coming from family first.”
She stood, smoothing her straight-knit suit.
“You can either admit it now and perhaps we can discuss terms, or you can lie and make this much worse for yourself and the children.”
The thing about Margaret Morrison was that she’d been undermining me since before David and I got married.
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