She always boils extra eggs. Always. Without fail, every time she comes over, the fridge ends up stocked with a dozen perfectly peeled, perfectly white, ready-to-eat hard-boiled eggs. “Saves time, dear,” she’d say, her smile tight but unwavering. Like I’m too lazy to boil my own eggs. It started innocently enough, a quirky habit. But after four days, I’d look at them, gleaming cold and solitary on the middle shelf, and a quiet unease would settle in. How long do eggs last in the fridge anyway? I always worried. A silent, nagging question, like a pebble in my shoe.
I’d bring it up to my husband sometimes. “Don’t you think there are too many eggs, honey? We haven’t even touched the ones from last week.” He’d just shrug, absorbed in his phone. “Mom’s just being mom. She means well.” His easy dismissal always grated on me. She means well, he’d say, as if my concern was trivial, irrational. But it wasn’t just the eggs. It was everything. Her hovering, her “helpful” suggestions about how I arranged the spices, how I folded the laundry. The eggs were just another manifestation of her pervasive presence, an unspoken judgment, perhaps.
The eggs became a barometer of my sanity. Sometimes, I’d deliberately not eat them, just to see if they’d eventually get thrown out. They never did. They just… disappeared. Slowly, steadily. Not all at once, which would suggest my husband had suddenly developed an insatiable craving. Just a few here, a few there. Always enough new ones to replace the old, creating an endless, baffling cycle. It was like a silent, culinary conveyor belt of boiled eggs.
A determined woman | Source: Midjourney
I tried to ignore it. Really, I did. It’s just eggs, I’d tell myself. Don’t be dramatic. But the feeling persisted, a prickle under my skin. My mother-in-law, bless her heart, was a creature of habit. Obsessively so. Her routines were sacred, her little eccentricities carved into stone. And this egg ritual was one of them. “Good for protein,” she’d chirp, whenever I happened to glance at the burgeoning egg population.
One evening, I couldn’t sleep. The thought of those eggs, sitting there, mocking me, was just too much. I crept to the kitchen, glass of water in hand, and stood before the open fridge. Seven eggs remained. I took a permanent marker, a black Sharpie, and drew a tiny, almost invisible asterisk on the shell of each one. A silent, secret experiment. Just to know.
The next morning, two were gone. I said nothing. The following day, three more vanished. My husband had toast for breakfast. He didn’t touch an egg. He never did. He said the smell turned his stomach. I saw my mother-in-law later that day, dropping by unannounced, as she often did. She left with a plastic bag, saying she was taking some old magazines. I watched her go, a knot tightening in my stomach. When I checked the fridge, the remaining two asterisked eggs were gone.
This wasn’t about saving time. This wasn’t about her “meaning well.” This was about something else entirely. My heart hammered against my ribs. Who was eating these eggs? Where were they going?
I started paying closer attention. The back door, a side entrance to the house that was rarely used, often had a faint scuff mark, as if someone had pushed through it. Sometimes, I’d hear a faint creak when I thought I was alone. A shadow flickering in the periphery. My imagination, I’d dismissed it as, too many late nights, too much caffeine. But now, with the vanishing eggs, it all connected.
One afternoon, my mother-in-law called, her voice bright. “I’m just popping over to drop off some fresh bread! Be there in ten.” My husband was out. This was my chance. I waited until I heard her car pull into the driveway, then I moved. Not to the front door, but to the back, to the overgrown path that led to the seldom-used side entrance. I pressed myself against the wall, hidden by the dense azalea bush she always praised.
I heard the door creak open. Footsteps, lighter than hers. A soft murmur. Then her voice, hushed, but clear. “Here you go, sweetheart. Fresh eggs.” My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t see anything, not yet. But I heard the distinct rustle of a plastic bag, the familiar clinking sound of the eggs.
I waited until she was fully inside, the door slightly ajar. Then, I pushed through the bushes, my heart thundering, every nerve screaming at me to stop. I peered through the narrow gap.
And then I saw it.
Not a cupboard. Not a storage space. Not an empty room.
It was a small, sparsely furnished room, tucked away, hidden from the rest of the house. A cot, a small table, a single lamp. And sitting on the cot, clutching one of the boiled eggs, was a child. A little girl, perhaps six or seven. Her eyes wide, startled, reflecting the faint light from the crack in the door.
My mother-in-law stood over her, a doting, gentle smile on her face. A smile I rarely saw directed at me. “Eat up, sweetie,” she whispered. “You need your strength.”
I gasped. Not loudly, but a choked, tearing sound that seemed to rip through the silence. My mother-in-law’s head snapped up, her eyes wide with fear, then pure, unadulterated fury. The child’s gaze met mine, innocent, bewildered.
A CHILD. Hidden. Right here, in this house. All this time. The back door. The sounds. The disappearing food. The eggs. They weren’t for us. They were for HER.
My legs felt like lead. My mind raced, trying to piece together this impossible puzzle. Who was she? Why was she hidden? Why the secrecy? And then, her eyes met mine again, the same shape as my husband’s, the same exact shade of hazel. A mirror image of the man I loved, the man I married.
A cold, sickening dread washed over me, colder than any boiled egg. It was a realization that hit me like a physical blow, knocking the wind from my lungs. The way my husband sometimes froze when my mother-in-law spoke of his “past.” The evasive answers about his younger years. The way she protected him, always.
This wasn’t just a hidden child. This was HIS child. A secret child, kept from me. MY HUSBAND HAS A DAUGHTER I NEVER KNEW ABOUT. My mother-in-law wasn’t just boiling extra eggs to save time. She was boiling them to feed a secret life. A life she helped him hide from me. EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING WAS A LIE.
The eggs. Oh, God, the eggs. They weren’t just a concern about food safety. They were a symbol. A symbol of the rot, the deception, the unbearable, crushing weight of a secret kept hidden in plain sight, slowly poisoning my entire existence. My entire marriage. My entire life.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to shatter. I wanted to run, to burn this house down. But all I could do was stand there, frozen, staring at the little girl who looked so much like the man I loved, her small hands clutching a hard-boiled egg. An egg that tasted, to me, of pure, bitter, agonizing betrayal.
