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For my 31st birthday, my mother-in-law gifted me divorce papers.
“From all of us,” she announced at the restaurant, like she was presenting a dessert tray.
I thanked her, signed them immediately, and walked out.
She had no idea what I’d already done.
Three days before my birthday, I caught Margaret at our kitchen table with legal documents spread in front of her. When she saw me, she quickly gathered the papers and slipped them into a birthday envelope.
“Just some family paperwork,” she said with a strange smile.
I assumed it was maybe property documents or insurance papers David needed to sign. The decorated envelope looked so festive and innocent.
That morning, I’d come downstairs early to make coffee before my shift at Romano’s restaurant. The house was quiet, and I expected to find the kitchen empty. Instead, Margaret sat hunched over official-looking papers, reading glasses perched on her nose as she examined each page carefully. Her concentration was intense—almost predatory—as she made notes in the margins with a red pen.
The sound of my footsteps on the hardwood floor made her look up sharply. For a split second, her face showed something I’d never seen before. Not just disapproval or disappointment, but actual satisfaction.
She moved with surprising speed for a woman in her sixties, gathering the documents into a neat pile and sliding them into what looked like a regular birthday card envelope.
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