Tom, Layla’s husband, has an annual tradition of a family vacation to which she is not invited. After years of being excluded, Layla finally asks why she is not allowed to participate, only for Tom to lie and blame his mother. But when Layla investigates on her own, she and her mother-in-law discover a family secret that separates the family.
My husband, Tom, has been going on vacation to the island with his family since we got married. That’s twelve years of family trips without me.
Every year, he would pack his bags and leave our two children and me behind.
“My mother doesn’t want her in-laws on the trip, Layla,” he said. ”You know that. Every year it’s the same story. But still, you keep asking about it.”
My husband rolled his eyes and sat down on the sofa, his hands clenched around the phone.
“Why don’t you cancel this one and we’ll take the kids on vacation?“ I asked, as I prepared a salad to go with dinner.
“Why would I do that?” he replied. “The kids are too young and it would be chaos. When they’re older, we can start talking about vacations with them.”
“What about me?“ I asked. ‘Are you sure your mom will mind?’
“She doesn’t want you there, Layla,” Tom said. “And if you go with her, you’ll only embarrass yourself.”
I swallowed that excuse for twelve long years, trying not to let it get to me. There were a limited number of battles I wanted to fight, and this was not one of them.
But then, a few days before Tom left on his trip, I was sitting on the sofa looking at social media.
And that’s when something broke in me.
There, on social media, for all to see, was a carousel of photos from last year’s vacation. There was Tom, smiling broadly next to his brother and sister-in-law. There were also other photos of his sister and her husband.
But I was told that Tom’s mother didn’t want any in-laws on the trip…
“She clearly didn’t want you there,” I told myself.
I needed to find out more information before I lashed out at my mother-in-law. As much as Denise seemed to have a problem with me, I knew that if I asked her directly, she would give me an answer.
So I decided to call Sadie, Tom’s brother’s wife. She was fairly new to the family, as they had only been married for a year.
“Hi, Layla,“ she said, answering the phone immediately.
“Hi,” I replied, trying to regain my composure so she wouldn’t immediately think something was wrong or that I was trying to attack her.
“What’s wrong?“ she asked.
“I was looking at social media,” I said slowly. “And I saw your photos from last year’s vacation. Everything looked amazing.”
Sadie chuckled.
“Thank you,” she said. “I was living my island life. I’m still so sad that you couldn’t come because you had no one to take care of the kids.”
So that was what they thought. That I had been unable to go on my trip because of my children.
“Listen, Layla,” she said. ”I have to go, I have another call. I’ll call you this afternoon.”
She hung up immediately.
I knew my next step would be to go to my mother-in-law. If anyone was behind this lie, it would be Denise.
“Why don’t you let Tom take us on vacation? Don’t you consider us your family?“ I asked as my mother-in-law opened the door and let me in.
“Darling, what are you talking about?” my mother-in-law asked, genuinely perplexed. “My husband and my children go on vacation every year, but they have never taken me with them. Roger said that none of the women go on those trips. Only the boys go.
“Wait, what?“ I asked, stunned.
“Tell me what you know,” she said, pouring me a glass of juice.
Shocked, I let it all out. The photos, Tom’s lies, the years of being abandoned with and without my children.
In his honor, my mother-in-law sat and listened in stunned silence.
“Let’s face them together,“ she said in a tone I had never heard her use before.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She nodded.
Two days after the men left, we found ourselves on a plane, heading for the same resort. My mother-in-law had seen her husband’s ticket, so we knew where to go.
My children were safe with my sister, and Denise and I had a mission. Although we had never been close, this shared experience forged an unexpected bond between us.
“I’m so sorry you thought it was my fault,” my mother-in-law said to me. ”I would never ask Tom not to take you somewhere, Layla. You are my first daughter-in-law. Why would I do that to you?”
I smiled back at her.
We arrived at the vacation spot with a mixture of anger and nerves. It was different being here for real, instead of seething from our spots on the sofa at home.
When the sun went down, we headed for the house they had rented. The receptionists were very friendly when we told them we were the wives.
Through the open windows we could hear music at full blast, and the garden was full of people swimming and lounging around.
“Come on,” said my mother-in-law, covering her eyes with a big hat. We went in, mingling with the crowd. The party atmosphere worked in our favor because no one paid any attention to us.
We went from one room to another, searching.
In one of the rooms downstairs, we found my father-in-law, with his lips locked with a woman I didn’t recognize. The look of astonishment on his face when he saw his wife was almost comical and straight out of a movie.
My mother-in-law didn’t say a word. She just stood there, radiating fury.
“Where’s Tom?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” my father-in-law stammered, clearly upset by our presence.
My mother-in-law stayed with him, her silent rage filling the room, while I continued searching upstairs. I found Tom in one of the bedrooms, with his arm around another woman, both of them laughing at something on her phone.
The sound of my exclamation made them both turn around.
“Layla, what are you doing here?“ he stammered, struggling to get up.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here, Tom?” I asked, in a surprisingly firm voice. “You’ve been lying to me for twelve years!”
The woman by his side slipped out of the room, sensing the storm that was about to break. But I didn’t care about her.
“We’re finished,” I said. ‘I’m taking the kids and leaving. You can explain it to your mother.”
I turned and left.
The flight home was a blur.
“I can’t believe it,’ said Denise, sitting next to me. ”I can’t believe this is how our marriages end. Really, Layla? How are you both capable of something like this?”
I looked at her in silence for a moment. It was as if this quick trip had aged my mother-in-law more than anything else.
None of it made sense, and I couldn’t understand how we had all been living a lie for so long.
“I don’t know when or how this happened,” I admitted to Denise, waiting for the stewardess to bring out the drinks trolley.
“But I’m telling you now,” I continued, ‘this has to stop. We can’t go on doing it. We can’t be with them. They’re not good for us now, and they certainly won’t be in the future.”
“I agree with you,’ my mother-in-law admitted. ”There’s nothing left for me in my marriage. Roger didn’t care about me at all. And Tom didn’t care about you or the kids all this time.”
“I’ve already told him I want a divorce,“ I said.
When we got back home, Denise packed up all her belongings and moved into my house, and in turn, I packed up all Tom’s things and left them in boxes at her house.
“He and his father can decide what they want to do,” she said bitterly.
The consequences were immense. My mother-in-law cut off ties with her children, furious that the truth had been kept from her. Strangely, our shared pain brought us closer together.
And more than that, she became a constant presence in my life, always wanting to be by my side and helping me whenever she could, and insisting on being an active grandmother to my children.
“I never imagined it would come to this,“ she said to me one afternoon as we sat together in the living room.
“Me neither,” I replied. “But at least now we know the truth.”
What would you have done?
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