Working as a nurse, Zoe frequently relied on her mother-in-law, Denise, to care for her son, Leo. But when the small boy is visibly shaken by his grandmother’s presence, Zoe must probe the elderly woman’s actions, only to realize that Denise has a hidden goal.
I had always thought that my mother-in-law, Denise, was a little overbearing, but I must protect my son, her only grandson, Leo.
Denise wasn’t necessarily cruel, but she had a way of making you feel small without even trying. Nonetheless, she lived two roads away and was always willing to babysit Leo whenever I had a shift at the hospital, and with Andrew’s irregular hours at the law business, Denise had to step in frequently.
“It’s what grandmothers are for, right, Zoe?” she said.
But then, last week, right before I was about to leave for a night shift, he started crying.
“I don’t want Grandma to stay with me!” he blurted.
Big, fat tears rolled down his cheeks, and he clutched my scrub with a grip that seemed stronger than a grown man’s.
My son’s eyes darted to the doorway as if expecting her to walk in at any moment.
“Because… Grandma acts strange,” he said, his eyes wide.
“What’s going on?”
“Where’s my grandbaby?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “He ran to his room to play with his toys. Andrew is away for the next two days. He’s meeting with a client and running through a case.”
Denise nodded.
What did that even mean to a four-year-old?
When I got home the next morning, instead playing and watching TV, his eyes were red and puffy, like he had been crying all night.
“Leo?” I said slowly. “Did you sleep at all?”
“No, Mommy,” he said. “I stayed up. I didn’t want to sleep.”
“Why not?” I asked, even though I could already feel my heart sinking.
“Because Grandma scares me,” he said, his hands clutching his teddy bear tightly.
I felt a wave of panic wash over me.
“Scares you? What happened, honey? What did Grandma say or do?”
“She keeps trying to put something into my mouth,” he said. “She chases me with it, and it’s scary.”
“What is she trying to put into your mouth, sweetheart?” I asked, my voice tight as I strained to show my emotions.
Leo hesitated.
“Cotton buds,” he said. “You know, what you clean my ears with? She said that she wants to put my spit in the tube. I don’t like it. I don’t want it.”
“Where’s Grandma?” I asked Leo.
“In the guest room,” he said.
I marched to the guest room and found Denise sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the screaming match that was about to come. Without hesitation, I shook her awake.
“Wake up, we need to talk,” I said.
Her eyes widened, and for a moment, she looked like she was going to deny it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting up. “I didn’t mean to frighten Leo. I’ve just been wondering about something…”
Over the next week, things were tense between Andrew and me. While she drove home on the day of the confrontation, she had phoned Andrew and told him everything, firmly securing some seeds of doubt.
“I think we should do the test,” he quietly said one day, not meeting my eyes.
I stared at him, hurt.
“You really think that’s necessary? You believe what your mother is implying?”
“It’s not that I believe it,” he said. “But if we do the test, we can put this all to rest. No more doubts, no more accusations. What if Leo was switched at birth?”
“I had a home birth!” I exclaimed. “You would have remembered if you were here and not in court.”
I sighed.
“Alright,” I said after a moment. “I’ll do the test for Leo, but on one condition.”
“What condition?” he asked.
“If I’m going to do this to prove our son is yours, then you’re going to do a test too. To prove that your father is really your father. Denise needs to know what this feels like.”
A few days later, the test results came back. As expected, the test confirmed that Leo was indeed Andrew’s son.
However, another unexpected revelation occurred.
It turned out that the test results for Andrew showed that his biological father wasn’t the man he had called Dad his entire life.
“What the hell, Zoe?” he said out loud.
“This is a conversation for you and your mother,” I said.
It turned out that she had another man in her youth, resulting in Andrew.
“She said that she had always suspected it, but she didn’t dare do a DNA test while my father was alive. Just imagine, I’ve gone my entire life thinking that my father was just that, my father. But he wasn’t, not biologically. I can’t forgive her, Zoe.”
My heart broke for him.
“So, what does this mean?” I asked.
“It means that we take our time and space away from my mother. And we focus on our son. She’s the one who betrayed our family. Not us,” he said.
I nodded, prepared to move on and concentrate on our family.