Something felt, but I couldn’t put my finger on him.
Every time my father-in-law, Denise, Babysat Leo, he looked different-more, more downloaded. At first I wing it when I missed when I was at work. But then the nightmares started. The screams woke up and held up to me, his little body shakes. Only when he begged me not to leave him alone, I realized that something was very bad.
As a nurse Zoe, she often depended on her father -in -law, Denise to guard her four -year -old son Leo. But when she noticed that Leo was increasingly disturbing in the presence of his grandmother, she knew she had to dig deeper. What she revealed revealed that Denise had a hidden agenda.
I have always found that my father -in -law, Denise, is a bit excessive, but I never imagined anything to hurt my son, her only grandson Leo.
Denise was not openly cruel, but she had talent for people to feel small without looking. Yet only two streets lived away and I always eager to watch Leo whenever I had a shift in the hospital. He worked with my husband, Andrew, in his law firm unpredictable hours, Denise often entered.
“That’s what grandmothers are for, right?” She said with a smile.
But then, last week, just before I left for a night shift, Leo kept and sobbed.
“I don’t want my grandmother to stay with me!” He cried and clogged my shrubs with a surprising force.
His wide, terrible eyes rushed to the door, as if expecting to appear.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” I asked gently.
“Grandma … She behaves strange,” he whispered.
Before I could ask more, Denise came.
“Where is my Grandbaby?” She called.
“He ran into his room to play,” I replied quickly. “Andrew is two days outside the city and meets the client.”
She nodded and without trouble.
That night at work I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly spoiled. And when I returned home in the morning, my fears were confirmed. Instead of being his usual playful self, Leo sat quietly, his red, inflated eyes by proof that he was crying.
“Lion?” I asked quietly. “Did you sleep at all?”
“No, Mom,” he murmured and gripped his teddy bear. “I stayed.”
“Why, sweetheart?” My heart pounded when I prepared for his answer.
“Because my grandmother scares me,” he whispered.
A wave of anxiety came across me.
“Does he scare you? What did my grandmother do?”
Leo hesitated before talking.
“He’s still trying to put something in his mouth,” he finally said. “He’s chasing me with it and I don’t like it.”
My breath grabbed my throat.
“What was it, Leo?” I asked and forced myself to stay calm.
He stood up and murmured, “Cotton swabs. Like you with whom you clean my ears. He says she needs my spitting for something. I don’t want it to take it.”
My stomach twisted in horror.
“Where is my grandmother now?”
“In the guest room,” he said quietly.
I furiously attacked the guest room and shook Denis Awake.
“Wake up. We have to talk,” I asked.
Her eyes spread, and for a moment she looked as if she could deny everything.
Then she sat down with a sigh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to scare Leo … I was curious about something.”
That night Denise called Andrew and told him everything – she triggered a story in a way that had been doubted in his mind.
A few days later Andrew hesitated me.
“I think we should do a DNA test,” he said quietly, avoiding my point of view.
I stared at him, stunned.
“Do you really think that is necessary?” I asked and my voice was injured. “Do you believe what your mother suggests?”
“It’s not that I believe it,” he admitted. “But if we perform a test, it will solve it all. No more doubts. No more charges. What if … what if Leo has been changed at birth?”
I exhaled sharply and shook my head.
“I gave birth to at home, Andrew. You would remember if you were there in court.”
But after a while I sighed.
“Okay. I’ll do a test. But in one condition.”
“What condition?” He asked carefully.
“If I have to prove that our son is yours, you have to prove that your father is really your father. Let’s see how Denise feels when the tables turn around.”
A few days later the test results came.
As expected, Leo was Andrew’s son. But then something unexpected happened.
Andrew’s test results revealed that a man whom he had called his father all his life … in fact he was not his biological father.
“What the hell, zoe?” Murmured, stunned.
I met his gaze tightly.
“It’s an interview for you and your mother,” I said simply.
It turned out that Denise had an affair in her youth and Andrew was the result of this secret.
“It always suspected,” Andrew told me later. “But she never dared to test DNA while my father was alive. All my life I believed was my dad … But it wasn’t. No. No. I really can’t forgive her, zoe.”
My heart hurt for him.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
Exhaled slowly.
“We’ll take a step back from our mother. We focus on our son. It’s the one who betrayed this family. Not us.”
I nodded, ready to leave the past behind and focus on what really matters – our family.
Conclusion
When I kept close to that evening, I realized how fragile trust could be – how easily it could be breaking doubts, fraud and hidden secrets. Andrew was betrayed by the only person he had always trusted, and although I couldn’t take away his pain, I could stand with him when he worked it out.
Denise tried to put uncertainty in our family, but eventually exhibited only her own fraud. Andrew and I knew where our priorities were lying: with our son, with each other and with the truth.
Some wounds require time to heal and some relationships will never recover. But when I looked into Leo’s innocent eyes, I certainly knew one thing – we would never allow the mistakes of the past to define the future of our family.