“Did you look my nine-year-old son in the face and tell him he wasn’t really our child, Gretchen?” I asked, turning the full force of my fury on my mother-in-law.

Gretchen’s face hardened to stone at once, and she lifted her chin in haughty indignation as she straightened the baby blanket.

“I told him the biological truth, that he’s adopted, Claire, which is a talk you two should have had with him five years ago instead of playing make-believe,” she said coldly.

“You didn’t share some gentle truth to help him understand who he is, Gretchen, you used his adoption as a weapon to convince him he was disposable,” I shot back fiercely.

“He was never supposed to hear that conversation between Peter and me, so you can’t blame me for his wild imagination getting away from him,” she argued dismissively.