I arrived at the hospital near the venue to visit a sick relative, but I stumbled into a crisis in the hallway. A woman was weeping. “My husband told me to abandon our newborn triplets in the hospital the moment he saw them,” she cried. She explained that her husband, Jack, had been supportive until he spoke to his mother. “He glanced at the babies and said, ‘We MUST leave them here at the hospital! I’m NOT taking them home. My mom told me that they…'”.
“That they what?” I asked gently.
“That they aren’t his,” she sobbed. “She told him triplets are a curse in our family and proof of infidelity.”
I recognized the pattern immediately. It was just like the story of Martha, the mother-in-law who told a bride, “You were never supposed to be here” and tried to force her son back to his cheating ex. It was the same manipulation used by the woman who dumped her daughter Harriet because she didn’t fit with her “perfect son”.
I couldn’t stand by. I channeled the “village.” I marched into the room where Jack was standing, pale and terrified.
“Your mother is lying to control you,” I said firmly. “Just like the scammer Jenna who told her partner, ‘If you love me, you’ll invest in us,’ only to steal his inheritance, your mother is stealing your family”.
We called for a paternity test right there. The “village”—doctors, nurses, and me—rallied around them. When the results came back confirming he was the father, Jack broke down. He realized his mother had almost destroyed his life, just as Jennifer called off [a] wedding out of nowhere to destroy another.
Jack took his babies home that day.
As I left the hospital, I looked up at the sky. In memory and dream I am returned to you, returned home. I knew Edward would have been proud. I realized that in the memory of my heart, our forever continues.
