“Mom, Starting Next Month, We’ll Transfer All Your Money To My Account.” My Son Said That, And I Just Smiled. That Night, As Always, He Came With His Wife For A Free Dinner.

I paid for the utilities. Five years in which Lawrence saved every single cent of his salary because he didn’t have to pay for anything. When he finally left, it wasn’t to rent an apartment.

It was to buy a house, a $200,000 house that he was able to pay for in cash because he had saved all his money during those 5 years of living for free at my house. I was proud. I told him I was proud.

And I was. I thought I had done the right thing by helping him. I thought that now that he had his own house, maybe he could help me.

Maybe I could work less. Maybe I could rest a little. But that never happened.

Lawrence got married two years after he moved out. His wife was an elegant woman, one of those who always dresses well, who always has perfect nails, who always speaks with that tone of voice that sounds polite but hides disdain. From the beginning, I noticed that she looked at me differently, as if I were something inferior, as if she didn’t understand why Lawrence came from where he came from.

At the wedding, which cost $30,000, I sat at a table in the back, not at the main table with the family. Lawrence explained that it was because there were a lot of important people, clients from his job, and that they needed those tables for them. I said I understood.

I smiled in the pictures. I danced when they asked me to. And I went home alone that night, feeling strangely empty.

After the wedding, Lawrence’s visits became less frequent. Before, he would come to see me two or three times a week. After he got married, he came once every 2 weeks, then once a month, always in a hurry, always looking at his phone, always with some excuse to leave early.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be the annoying mother, the mother who complains, the mother who doesn’t understand that her son has his own life now. But then they started coming on Friday nights, always at dinner time, always without notice, always expecting me to have food ready.

At first, I was happy. I thought that Lawrence finally wanted to spend time with me, that he finally missed me, so I would cook his favorite dishes. I would set the table nicely.

I would buy dessert. But I noticed something. I noticed that Lawrence never came alone.

He always brought his wife. And I noticed that they never came to talk. They came to eat.

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