“Cancel Your Wedding!” My Grandma Told Me In A Dream The Night Before My Big Day. “Wake Up Early And Go To Your Mother-In-Law’s House. You’ll See Everything.” I Drove There At Dawn, Pulse Racing. When I Stepped Inside… I Stopped Cold. What I Saw Shifted Everything.

“I did not marry for love, Mary. I married because it looked good. Because back then, a woman without a husband was frowned upon.

“But do not worry. You are not like me.”

“What do you mean?”

“That you have something I never had. A property in your name, a stable career, control over your life.

“Robert needs a woman like that. “You balance him.”

Mary swallowed. The conversation was a strange mix of praise and manipulation.

Every word seemed to have another hidden behind it. “And what do you think of Robert?” she asked. Theresa looked at her for an instant.

Her smile vanished. “He is my son, and that is not what I asked you. “I know him better than anyone.

I know what he is capable of, and also what he needs. “Robert has flaws, like everyone. But he also has a big heart.”

Does that woman who left through the back door think so, too?

The question was direct, a shot in the middle of the living room. Theresa tensed. “What are you talking about?”

“That I saw her, Theresa.

I saw a woman leaving out the back when I rang the doorbell. Blonde, young. She seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Oh, it must have been someone from the neighborhood.

Sometimes I come to look after the son of a neighbor who works nearby… and that neighbor leaves without her son.”

Theresa held her gaze for a few seconds. Then she sighed, got up, and went toward a wooden cupboard. She opened one of the drawers, took out a photo album, and dropped it onto the table in front of Mary.

“You want to know who it was? “Then look.”

The tone had changed. Harsher, less motherly.

Mary opened the album. At first, everything seemed normal. Old photos of Robert as a child, birthdays, trips to the beach, Christmases.

But when she reached the most recent pages, her breath hitched. There was Robert next to a slender blonde woman with a wide smile and a red dress. He was hugging her around the waist.

Both were in front of a house she did not recognize. The date written with a marker in a corner. June of last year.

One year. Only one year. Mary turned the page.

More photos of them together at a restaurant, on a patio, at what looked like a wedding. A wedding. In the image, Robert was wearing a dark suit, and the blonde woman was dressed in white.

It was more informal than a traditional wedding, but the image left no room for doubt. “What is this?” Mary asked, her voice cracking. “A phase that has passed,” Theresa replied without batting an eye.

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