It feels like a lifetime ago, the day I found out. That little line on the stick, clear as day. I cried, silent tears of pure, unadulterated joy. After so long, after so much trying, it was finally happening. We were going to be parents. My partner’s reaction was everything I dreamed of – a choked sob, a crushing hug, a promise of forever.
Then came telling his mother. My MIL.
I thought she’d be ecstatic. Her first grandchild. Instead, her smile was… off. Too wide, too fixed. Her eyes, usually so warm, had a sharp, almost dissecting quality as she looked at me, then at my partner, then back to my burgeoning belly. A flicker of something I couldn’t quite name, a cold current beneath the surface. She clapped her hands together, a little too loudly. “Wonderful, darling. Truly wonderful.” The words were right, but the feeling behind them was profoundly wrong.
Stairs leading up to the front door of a home | Source: Pexels
From that day on, she became omnipresent. She’d show up unannounced, bringing strange herbal teas she swore would “strengthen the womb,” or elaborate, suspiciously bland meals that I suddenly had to eat. She questioned every appointment, every craving, every twinge. “Are you sure that’s normal?” she’d ask, her gaze intense, always lingering on my stomach. She started making comments about genetics, about how important it was to know “where the baby comes from.” It was unnerving. This isn’t maternal love, I remember thinking; it’s something else entirely.
I’d find her in the nursery, not lovingly arranging crib sheets, but sifting through our baby name books, muttering to herself. She’d pick up a tiny onesie, then put it down with a sigh, as if disappointed by its color or fabric. My partner just shrugged it off. “She’s excited, honey. Over the moon.” But I saw the way her lips thinned when I mentioned my family’s blue eyes, or his grandfather’s dimples. She’d interrupt, redirecting the conversation back to “general health” or “good genes.”
One afternoon, I came home unexpectedly. I’d forgotten my prenatal vitamins and my doctor had stressed their importance. The front door was ajar, which was odd. As I stepped inside, a hushed sound led me to the nursery. I paused, my hand on the doorframe.
She was there. Not tidying. Not admiring.
A messy living space | Source: Pexels
She was hunched over a stack of documents on the changing table, a thick, worn leather binder open beside them. Scattered around were my partner’s childhood baby photos and medical records, pages dog-eared and highlighted. Her face was contorted in a grimace of concentration, a frantic, desperate energy radiating from her. As I watched, she snatched up one of the baby photos – a picture of him, tiny and smiling – and then, with a rip that tore through the quiet, she began TEARING PAGES OUT OF HIS OWN BABY BOOK. Not just any pages, but pages filled with dates, names, and what looked like handwritten notes.
My blood ran cold. WHAT WAS SHE DOING?
I finally found my voice, a strangled gasp. “What… what are you doing?”
She froze, dropping the torn pages, her head snapping up. Her eyes, wide with pure, unadulterated terror, met mine. The binder clattered to the floor, spilling its contents: old hospital records, adoption papers, and a single, faded photo of a woman I’d never seen before, holding a newborn.
She fell to her knees, sobbing, incoherent whispers escaping her lips. “I had to… I had to protect him… protect us…”
I knelt too, trembling, picking up the scattered papers. The words blurred at first, but then one phrase pierced through the fog: “FINALIZED ADOPTION – (PARTNER’S NAME) – BORN (DATE) – BIRTH MOTHER UNKNOWN.”
My world imploded.
A mother baking with her daughter | Source: Pexels
I looked at her, then back at the papers, then at the baby photo of the unknown woman. It wasn’t just jealousy. It wasn’t about me, or even my baby. MY PARTNER ISN’T HER SON. HE’S ADOPTED. She never told him. She never told anyone. She’d kept it a secret his entire life.
Her “jealousy” of my pregnancy, her obsession with genetics, her frantic tearing of his baby book… it all clicked into place. She was terrified. Terrified that our baby, my partner’s biological child, would be born with some distinguishing feature, some genetic marker, some illness that would betray HER LIE. She was trying to scrub away any evidence, to make sure his past stayed buried.
I held those papers, looking at the woman who had pretended to be my partner’s mother for decades. The woman who had just shattered his entire identity. My mind raced, envisioning the conversation I would have to have with the man I loved, the father of my child. Our baby, our precious, innocent baby, had unwittingly become the catalyst for the most devastating family secret imaginable. And I was the one who had unearthed it. I still haven’t told him. And I don’t know if I ever can.
