Daughter Died in Childbirth, In-Laws Demanded Full Dowry Back

My daughter died when her amniotic fluid embolized, and both families held the funeral together.

At the funeral, Cary Gilbert suddenly pulled out a sheet of paper.

Where I'm from, the custom is to evaluate the bride even after the wedding.

If she fails the evaluation, the full engagement gift has to be returned.

They stood in front of my daughter's funeral portrait, passing the evaluation sheet around, talking it over.

"Lazy and a glutton. Points off."

"Barren. Points off."

"No financial value after marriage. Points off."

In the end, my daughter was rated an "unfit wife."

Cary announced in front of everyone that I was to return the full engagement gift.

"Dad, I know you've treated me like your own son all these years, so I won't ask you for extra."

"Eighty-eight thousand in engagement money, plus interest for all these years."

"A hundred thousand total, and we'll call it even."

I looked at my daughter, barely cold in her coffin, and felt the blood run backward through my body.

Return the engagement money. Fine.

Then let's see exactly how these accounts get settled!

1.

I threw the evaluation sheet in Cary's face and shouted.

"Cary Gilbert, are you even human?"

"My daughter died giving birth, and you're at her funeral demanding the engagement money back?"

Torn paper scattered through the air and drifted down in front of my daughter's portrait.

Cary glanced down and simply stepped on one of the pieces.

"Tearing it up won't do anything. This is the evaluation the whole family agreed on. You can't wriggle out of it."

I was shaking with rage. Through tears I pointed at my daughter's portrait.

"Look at Yuna Acevedo's picture and say that again!"

Cary curled his lip, unbothered.

"Fine, I'll say it. What's there to be afraid of?"

"An amniotic fluid embolism means her own body wasn't up to it. You can't pin that on me."

"Everybody else gives birth just fine. Why couldn't she?"

"The baby didn't make it, and neither did she."

"Calling her barren, is that wrong?"

"You"

I was trembling, and Isabel Gilbert threw an arm around her son to shield him.

"He's right, you know!"

"The dead don't come back. Just because she's gone, our family's losses don't count?"

Cary straightened up again and took a fresh stack of bills out of his bag.

Slap. He tossed them onto the offering table.

The white paper spread out and covered my daughter's black-and-white photo.

"You didn't believe me when I said she was lazy and a glutton."

"Take a good look at how much she spent in the years after the wedding."

Cary pointed at the first one.

"One mattress. Nineteen hundred."

"One pair of shoes. Three-twenty."

The last one he slammed down hard on my daughter's photo.

"Deposit for the postpartum care center. Five thousand!"

"She had no income after the wedding, but she never blinked when she bought things."

"A woman like that, who can afford to marry her?"

Isabel pulled out a calculator on the spot.

The clacking of the keys wouldn't stop echoing through the memorial hall.

"There's also the fruit and supplements she ate during the pregnancy. Every last item should be counted in."

Cary's relatives crowded around, pointing at the bills, talking over each other.

I looked at their small, grasping faces and my teeth were chattering with rage.

"Every one of these things, I paid for!"

The room went silent in an instant.

But my eyes went red with the ache of it.

"Yuna's back hurt so much she couldn't sleep all night, so all I could do was buy her a new mattress."

"And the postpartum center, that was because your mother said she had no time to care for her afterward, so I stepped in and booked it!"

"And these shoes! Seven months pregnant, her feet so swollen she couldn't even get slippers on. She looked at them for a whole month before she let herself buy them!"

"Cary Gilbert, you keep saying she failed. What did you, her husband, ever do for her?"

Cary's eyes flicked away.

"They're all expenses after the marriage anyway. Who paid for them, what difference does that make?"

"Of course it makes a difference!"

I shoved Cary all the way to my daughter's portrait.

"Back then your family had nothing, and my daughter felt sorry for you."

"Other families ask a hundred and eighty-eight thousand in engagement money. She would only take eighty-eight thousand!"

"The day the money came, we didn't keep a single cent. We added to it ourselves to make two hundred thousand and gave it to you for the renovations!"

I will never forget it.

That day Cary held the bank card and knelt down in front of every relative there and called me Dad.

He said he would treat me like his own father from then on, care for me as a son would.

And in the years after the wedding, I treated him like my own son too.

When his business failed, I dug into my retirement savings to plug the hole.

When he was sick in the hospital, I sat by the bed carrying him water and his meals.

But now, at my daughter's funeral, he was here to collect a debt from me!

I hurt so much I couldn't get the words out.

Cary only shook his head, contemptuous.

"I never asked you to be good to me."

"You gave that money of your own free will. You can't put it on me."

"But the engagement money belongs to my family, and now the marriage is over, so of course it should come back."

"And the hundred thousand has to be in my account before the funeral's over, or don't blame me for taking you to court."

My footing gave, and my lower back struck the offering table hard.

My daughter's portrait swayed with it.

I threw out my hands to catch it, and my eyes stung all at once.

"Fine. You want to settle accounts."

"Then today I'll settle them with you!"

I was just about to tell my people to bring in the transaction records from all those years too.

Cary suddenly snatched the phone out of my hand.

"What does that prove? Did any of those transfer notes say 'loan'? If it wasn't written down, then you gave it freely!"

Isabel jumped in at once.

"The renovation was for your daughter to live in."

"The startup money, you handed that over willingly too."

"As for the mortgage and the car loan, what married couple doesn't pay those together?"

She bent down, picked up the hundred-thousand engagement gift bill, and slapped it hard against my chest.

"This is the only money the Gilbert family actually laid out, cash on the table!"

"And today you're paying it back!"

Then, as if something had just come to her, she turned her head toward the corner of the memorial hall.

"Fine. If you can't come up with a hundred thousand, you can settle it another way."

"Don't you still have a daughter? Let her marry my nephew. That'll clear the debt."

Mia Abbott flinched, clutching her sister's things and backing away a few steps.

The rage inside me boiled over.

"She's only eighteen!"

Isabel let out a scoffing laugh.

"So what if she's eighteen? I've got no problem with it."

"As long as she can wash clothes, cook, and have babies, that's enough."

She waved toward the crowd.

A man in his thirties immediately shoved his way out.

Isabel pointed at Mia.

"See her? Your aunt found you a wife. A full hundred thousand in engagement money!"

The man's eyes lit up in an instant, drool sliding down his cheek.

"Wife!"

He lunged at her, and Mia startled backward.

He grabbed her wrist anyway and yanked her hard against him.

Isabel didn't stop him. She clapped and cheered.

"She won't listen now, but once she's in the door, a good beating will straighten her out."

"Our Dwight Adams may be a little slow in the head, but he's got plenty of strength. He'll get plenty of sons out of her!"

Cary's relatives roared with laughter.

Some of them even pulled out their phones to take pictures.

"Inspect the goods first. Don't end up with another one who can't breed!"

"The sister couldn't have a kid. Maybe the younger one's got the same problem!"

Mia was crying so hard her whole body shook.

I grabbed the metal frame beside the funeral wreath and swung it hard at the man's arm.

"Let go of my daughter!"

The man yelped and let go.

Isabel rushed at me, clawing and tearing in a fury.

"You owe money and won't pay, and you think you're in the right?"

Several of Cary's relatives quickly closed in around us.

The whole crowd shoved and jostled us.

In the chaos, someone yanked Mia's clothes open.

White buttons burst off and scattered, landing in front of Yuna's portrait.

The man's eyes lit up at once, and he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her toward the side room behind the memorial hall.

Mia was terrified.

All ten fingers clawed into the door frame as she screamed until her voice broke, "Dad!"

Something in my chest clenched hard.

Ignoring the pain in my own body, I snapped my head up.

"Cary, make them stop. Now."

"Or I swear I will make you regret this!"

My words made everyone freeze.

The man gripping my hair loosened his hold without thinking.

But Cary suddenly laughed out loud.

"You're actually scared of him?"

"I looked into him a long time ago. He's just a widower with no sons, no line to carry on."

"His own daughter's funeral, and not a single relative shows up to pay respects."

"Who's he going to make regret anything?"

The Gilbert relatives burst into laughter.

"Turns out he's just an old man with nobody behind him, and still playing at being somebody important!"

A staff member tried to call the police and was immediately shoved out by two of the Gilbert relatives.

The doors of the memorial hall slammed shut.

Cary snapped my SIM card in half in front of everyone.

"Let's see who you can call now."

"Dad!"

Mia was yanked by the hair again.

Isabel drove her heel into my shoulder.

My face hit the floor hard, and blood soaked through the white chrysanthemums in an instant.

In the chaos, Cary dropped his voice.

"Mom, tell Dwight to hurry."

"Yuna's family only gave me one day. Eighty-eight thousand for the gift money, and we're still short the last ten."

Isabel didn't seem to care. "What's the rush?"

"Renee's already two months pregnant. Where's she going to run to?"

"You two were sneaking around for three years. She waited through all of that, didn't she?"

My whole body went rigid.

Three years. Cary had been cheating on my daughter for three years.

No wonder that ever since she got pregnant, he was always working late, never once going with her to a single prenatal checkup.

Isabel gave a couple of laughs.

"Once Dwight and that girl have gone all the way, you think she'd still dare refuse to marry him?"

"The old man's got no son. This one daughter is all he has left."

"After that, his house, his savings, his pension, it all goes to Dwight."

"We get the ten thousand, and we get to live off him for the rest of his life!"

Cary laughed. "You always think of everything, Mom."

I stared at Cary, wishing I could burn a bleeding hole straight through him with my eyes.

"Who is Renee Henson? Have you been betraying my daughter all along?"

Cary turned his head, and there wasn't the slightest guilt in his eyes.

"You heard all of it? Then I won't hide it from you."

"Renee is the woman I love most. She's been with me for three years."

"She's carrying my child now. I have to give her a proper place."

I shook my head, unable to believe it.

"My daughter died giving you a child. Her body isn't even cold yet."

"And you want to use her gift money to marry your mistress? Cary, are you even human?"

Cary frowned.

"Renee isn't like that poor girl of yours. She's beautiful, she's healthy, and she's the goddaughter of the Henson Group chairman."

"What do you people have to compare with her?"

Isabel stamped her heel down on my daughter's funeral portrait and sneered.

"A woman who couldn't even hold on to her own baby, and she wanted to waste my son's whole life?"

"She died right on time. Cleared the way for Renee nicely."

The goddaughter of the Henson Group chairman?

Since when did Finn have a goddaughter?

I stood frozen, unable to make sense of it for a moment.

Just then, Cary's phone rang.

He glanced at me, then put it on speaker right in front of me.

A woman's sugary voice carried across the memorial hall.

"Babe, the baby and I are still waiting for you at the bridal shop. Did you get the gift money together?"

Cary looked at me, and deliberately cradled the phone and kissed it.

"Almost, baby."

"Once I've dealt with this dead old man, I'll come straight over and try on wedding dresses with you."

A soft laugh came from the other end.

"That plain old drudge really died at the perfect time. Saved us a lot of trouble."

Hearing them tear my daughter down, my heart felt like it was being cut to pieces.

I couldn't take it anymore and lunged at him.

Cary didn't hesitate to drive his heel into my chest.

My forehead struck the offering table, and my daughter's funeral portrait crashed to the floor.

Cary stepped on the photo and spoke coldly.

"Dwight, what are you standing around for? When you're done, take the gift box too."

"All the money in it goes toward buying Renee a diamond ring!"

Behind me came Mia's screaming and sobbing again, raw and desperate.

I crawled toward her, my face covered in blood.

My fingertips had just touched her shoe.

The man wrenched hard and dragged her into the side room.