They Changed The Locks On My Own House. My Daughter-In-Law Looked At Me And Said: “It’s Ours Now.” She Expected Me To Cry. Instead, I Smiled, Pulled Out My Phone, And Prepared To SET THINGS STRAIGHT.

“Yes, we live with my mother-in-law, but it’s temporary while we save for our own house.”

Temporary. That word started appearing more frequently in her conversations. “It’s temporary,” she would tell her mother on the phone when she thought I wasn’t listening.

“It’s temporary,” she would explain to Robert when he suggested changing something in the decor. “It’s temporary,” she repeated to herself when she thought no one was watching her look at decoration magazines and sigh. Then came the accidents.

My favorite vase, the one my mother had given me, showed up broken in the trash. “Oh, Martha, it slipped while I was cleaning. I’m sorry.”

My favorite armchair where I sat every afternoon to knit suddenly had a coffee stain that was impossible to remove.

“I don’t know how it happened, Martha. It just appeared this morning.”

The changes in decoration began without my consent. My family photographs mysteriously disappeared, replaced by modern frames with pictures of her and Robert.

My plants, which I had cared for for years, began to dry up because I forgot to water them very frequently. “Robert,” I would say to my son when we were alone, “I feel like Emily isn’t very comfortable living with me. Maybe it would be better if you looked for your own place.”

“Don’t say that, Mom.” He would always reply.

“She adores you. She’s just adjusting. Give her time.”

Time.

I gave her three years of time. Three years of watching the sweet woman I met gradually transform into someone who looked at me as if I were an obstacle in my own home. Emily’s true transformation began on the day we marked 2 years of living together.

That morning, I woke up and found the living room completely rearranged. My furniture was piled up in a corner as if it were trash, and in its place was new, modern furniture that I had never seen before. “Good morning, mother-in-law,” Emily said when she saw me standing at the entrance to the living room with my mouth open.

She was eating breakfast calmly as if nothing had happened. “Do you like how it turned out? Robert and I decided to freshen up the space a bit.”

“You decided?” I asked, trying to stay calm, even though my blood was boiling.

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