I returned home with my newborn twins and discovered that the locks had been changed, my belongings had been thrown out onto the street… and a note was waiting for me inside.
After the birth of my first children, I believed that my husband would eventually choose us over his mother… but that didn’t happen. This time, however, he chose her over me for the last time — and I exposed her for who she really is: a tyrant and a liar.
You’d think coming home with newborn twins would be one of the happiest moments of your life. For me, it started out that way… but within minutes, it turned into a nightmare.
After three days in the hospital to recover from a difficult delivery, I was finally allowed to be discharged. I was ready to go home with our beautiful girls, Ella and Sophie. I had been imagining this scene for months: Derek, my husband, arriving with flowers, his eyes shining, picking up one of the babies with that quiet pride that is impossible to forget.
But instead, at the very last moment, I received a hurried phone call that turned everything upside down…
‘Hello, darling,’ Derek said in a short, tense voice. ‘I’m really sorry, but I won’t be able to come and get you as planned.’
‘What?’ I whispered, adjusting the blanket around Sophie. ‘Derek, I just gave birth to twins. What could be so important that…’
‘It’s my mother,’ he interrupted. ‘She’s not well. She’s having severe chest pains. I need to pick her up and take her to the hospital near her house.’
His words froze me.
‘What? Why didn’t you say anything earlier? Derek, I need you here.’
‘I know,’ he replied, struggling to keep his composure. ‘But it happened suddenly, and it’s serious. I’ll come to you as soon as I can.’
I clenched my teeth, holding back the urge to scream — out of disappointment, exhaustion and hurt.
‘Okay… I’ll take a taxi.’
‘Thanks,’ he muttered and hung up.
His mother lived in another city. To be honest, it was naive to hope that he would return the same day. I knew Derek: when it came to his mother, everything else took a back seat. So I called a taxi.
As soon as the conversation ended, my stomach churned. I tried to convince myself that Derek wasn’t cruel, he just couldn’t cope… a ‘mama’s boy,’ as they say. But the burning feeling of disappointment didn’t go away. And the very same mother-in-law who insisted that we make duplicate keys ‘to help with the children’ had ‘suddenly’ fallen seriously ill at that very moment.
I tried to push these thoughts away. I put the babies in the car seats their father had brought the day before and got into the taxi.
When we turned onto the driveway, I froze.
My suitcases. Diaper bags. Even the mattress from the cot.
Everything was scattered on the lawn and near the door. A hard, painful lump instantly formed in my throat. I paid the driver, got out with the twins, my heart pounding so hard it hurt. Something was wrong. It was obvious.
I approached the door, awkwardly fumbling for my keys. Without even realising it, I called Derek’s name — even though I knew he couldn’t come back.
The key wouldn’t turn.
I tried again. And again. Nothing.
And then I saw it: a folded piece of paper taped to the suitcase.
I tore it off with trembling hands.
‘Get out of here with your parasites! I know everything. — Derek.’
My breath caught in my throat. Literally. It was as if all the oxygen had suddenly disappeared from the world. I reread those words over and over, trying to make sense of them, hoping that my mind was just playing tricks on me.
It was impossible.
Not Derek.
Not the man who held my hand at every appointment. Not the man who cried when he first heard our daughters’ heartbeats.
And then the worst part of the day began.
I called Derek immediately.
Answering machine.
I called again.
Answering machine.
Panic overwhelmed me when Sophie started crying — and Ella soon joined her. I rocked the car seats with one hand, as if it could keep the world from falling apart, and tried to think.
‘Mum…’ I whispered.
My fingers trembled as I dialled her number.
‘Jenna?’ she answered on the first ring. ‘What’s wrong? Are the girls okay?’
It was hard to get the words out. I didn’t want to upset her, especially with her poor health, but… I was on the edge.
‘Derek… he changed the locks. He threw out my things. Mum… he left a terrible note.’
‘WHAT?!’ her voice shot up. ‘Stay there. I’m on my way.’
The minutes dragged on like hours before she arrived. Seeing the chaos, she narrowed her eyes in anger.
‘This doesn’t make sense! Derek would never do this… He loves you, he loves the children!’
‘I thought so too,’ I said, reassuring Ella. ‘But he’s not answering. And… what does “I know everything” mean?’
I handed her the note.
She hugged me tightly.
‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Let’s go to my place. We’ll stay there until we can get in touch with him, okay?’
She helped me load my things, and we drove to her place. For hours, we tried to figure out what was going on, calling Derek over and over again. No answer. I hardly slept that night.
The next morning, I needed the truth, not guesswork. I left the twins with my mother and drove back to the house in her car.
The lawn was empty. My things were gone.
I knocked on the door. Silence.
I walked around the house, looked in the windows… and froze.
Lorraine, my mother-in-law, was sitting calmly at the dining table drinking tea, as if she were at home.
I banged on the door. She looked up, startled, almost spilling her cup… then she recognised me, and a satisfied smile appeared on her lips.
‘What are you doing here?!’ I shouted.
Lorraine stood up with offensive calmness and opened the door slightly.
‘Jenna. You’re not welcome here. Didn’t you see the note?’
‘Where’s Derek?!’ I growled. ‘Why is he…’
‘He’s in the hospital in my town,’ she said softly. ‘Taking care of his poor sick mother.’
I stared at her, stunned.
‘Sick? You’re standing right in front of me, alive and well!’
She shrugged, a cruel smile playing on her lips.
‘Perhaps I’m feeling better. Miracles do happen.’
My blood boiled.
‘You lied to your son. You pretended to be sick!’
Her smile widened.
‘So what?’
I clenched my fists so tightly it hurt.
‘Why? Why did you do that?’
She crossed her arms over her chest, pleased with herself.
‘I told Derek from the beginning that our family needed a boy to carry on the family name. And you? You gave us two girls. Useless girls.’
I felt as if all the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I was too shocked to respond. Lorraine took my silence as an invitation to continue.
“I knew you would ruin my son’s life, so I took matters into my own hands. The note may have been a little… harsh, but I needed you to believe it was from him. And I made sure he couldn’t call you: I took his phone out of his pocket when he wasn’t looking. You were supposed to take your things and disappear from our lives. But here you are.
I was trembling.
She had planned everything: the lies, the imaginary ‘danger,’ the hospital, the stolen phone, the locked door… all because she despised our daughters.
‘You kicked us out of the house because of this?’
‘Of course,’ she replied without a hint of embarrassment. ‘I even paid the nurse to keep him there. And it worked, didn’t it?’
I felt sick.
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Call it what you want,’ she hissed. ‘I call it protecting my family. And Derek is always on my side. He’ll see it the same way I do. Like always.’
Her words echoed in my head all the way to the hospital, where Derek was still. With every kilometre, my anger grew. How could he possibly justify such cruelty?
When I arrived, I saw him pacing the waiting room with a worried look on his face.
‘Jenna!’ he exclaimed, running up to me. ‘Where have you been? I don’t have a phone, and I don’t even know your number by heart… I couldn’t call you!’
‘Your mother took your phone,’ I interrupted. ‘She pretended to be sick and kicked me out of the house!’
He stopped abruptly. His face changed from confusion to anger.
‘What? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘She set me up. She wrote a fake note in your name to get me kicked out.’ She paid the nurse to lie to you,‘ my voice trembled. ’Lorraine is in the house right now. Sitting there. Drinking tea like she owns the place!
‘Wait… what? Why…?’
‘Because our daughters aren’t boys,’ I said bitterly.
Shock gave way to cold fury. Without another word, Derek grabbed his keys and stormed out. I followed him.
When we returned, Lorraine was exactly where I had left her — calm and indifferent. But her composed expression faltered as soon as she met Derek’s gaze.
‘Mum,’ he said in a harsh voice. ‘What have you done? I thought you were in hospital.’
She opened her mouth to lie. Derek stopped her.
‘Don’t bother. I know everything.’
‘Derek, darling… I just wanted to…’
‘You’ve done enough!’ he exploded. ‘You made me leave my wife and daughters because of a false emergency! Then you kicked out Jenna, who had just given birth, and two newborns! You even prevented us from contacting each other by stealing my phone!’
‘Derek, my love… I wanted to protect you.’ I didn’t think it would go this far,” she pleaded.
“Protect me from my wife and daughters? Who told you I wanted a son? And why do you think my children are worth less just because they’re girls? That’s your problem, not mine. And if you want boys so badly… have them yourself!
I stood there with my mouth open. I had never seen Derek like this before. And I won’t lie: part of me… was proud. For the first time, he was defending me. Defending our daughters. And in that moment, I loved him more than ever before.
‘Pack your things and leave,’ he ordered.
She looked at him with tears in her eyes.
‘You can’t be serious. I’m your mother!’
‘And Jenna is my wife. And they are my daughters. If you can’t respect them, you have no place in our lives.’
For the first time, Lorraine had no response. She went upstairs to pack her things, slamming the doors behind her. Derek turned to me, his eyes full of remorse.
‘I’m sorry, my love. I didn’t know.’
I took a deep breath, still trembling, feeling the tension slowly ease.
‘I just want us to move on.’
Lorraine left that same evening. Derek apologised a thousand times and kept his word: he changed the locks, blocked his mother’s number and even reported the nurse who had accepted the bribe.
It wasn’t easy. For months, we rebuilt our lives. And one evening, as I was rocking Ella and Sophie to sleep, I realised something: Lorraine had tried to destroy us… but she had achieved the opposite. She had made us stronger and more united.
Unfortunately, Jenna is not the only daughter-in-law who has had to deal with an unbearable mother-in-law. In the next story, Michelle’s mother-in-law catches her son and his wife with a DNA test for their child, confident that she will finally be able to separate them. But things did not go at all as she had imagined.
