Husband Honeymoons With Ex; Alone in Confinement, I Rage

To celebrate the birth of our baby, my husband didn't just take his paternity leavehe used up his annual leave too.

When we got home from the hospital, I saw that my in-laws had come as well, and I said to my husband, playfully coy:

Your parents really do have a sharp tongue but a soft heart. They swore they'd rather die than help us with the baby, and here they both are, come to look after me during my postpartum recovery.

Right after I said it, my daughter peed all over me.

I naturally handed my daughter to my mother-in-law and got ready to change my clothes.

But my husband stopped me.

"Mom's packing our bags for the Grand Canyon trip."

I froze on the spot.

"I just gave birth. My body probably can't handle it..."

My husband cut me off:

"That's why you'll stay home and rest up. I specially asked Valerie to help you look after my parents, and I'll be in charge of taking scenic photos for you to enjoy."

"Once you're done with your postpartum recovery, we'll be back."

As soon as he finished, his ex-wife, Valerie, unlocked my door with her fingerprint and casually took my mother-in-law's arm.

"Godmother, you rest. I'll help Lloyd pack his bags."

Watching them excitedly gathering their luggage, I felt like I'd been dropped into an ice cellar.

So it turned out he hadn't taken the leave to be with our daughter and me.

If that was the case, then there'd be no need for him to be with me from now on either.

I carried my daughter back to the master bedroom, changed my clothes, and got ready to go to the postpartum recovery center on my own.

Lloyd pulled me back into the room:

"Christine, um... about thatI canceled the recovery center."

My phone buzzed. I got a message:

Miss Harding, the remaining balance from your canceled postpartum recovery booking, after deducting a 20% cancellation fee, will be credited to your account today.

Every single word made my blood boil.

"Lloyd, that's the recovery center I waited three months to get a spot at."

His parents had said they'd worked hard for half their lives and would rather die than help us with the baby.

I understood and respected that, so I'd picked out a recovery center well in advance.

And Lloyd had canceled it on me without a word.

I quickly called the recovery center:

"Can I undo the cancellation?"

Lloyd snatched my phone away and hung up.

"Christine, we just had a baby. We'll have expenses everywhere from now on, so we save wherever we can."

I was so angry a hot rush kept surging out from below me, and my vision went dark.

Even the low growl that came out of me was faint and weak.

"You're taking your ex-wife and your parents on a trip to the Grand Canyon, but you want to strip me of my right to go to a recovery center?"

"I paid for it myself. What right do you have to"

Lloyd cut me off and pulled out his phone to send me three thousand dollars:

"I know you're upset about the cancellation fee, so I'll just give it to you. There, done."

The cancellation fee was six thousand. He sent me three thousand.

And he had the nerve to say:

"You can't work for the next six months anyway, so whatever you save is money earned! You're a powerhouse at work, and I'm sure postpartum recovery won't stump you either."

I caught the smile on Valerie's face as she stood eavesdropping outside the door, and I was so angry I couldn't speak for a long moment.

All I could do was text the recovery center with trembling hands.

Lloyd's face went dark in an instant.

The next second, he smashed my phone against the floor:

"Christine Harding! Throwing money around like thisdo you have any regard for this family of ours at all?"

Valerie rushed in and patted his back to calm him down:

"Lloyd, it's normal for new mothers to be short-tempered. Don't let her get to you."

Then she turned to me, coaxing:

"Christine, I know you have money. Why not give some to Lloyd's parents as a travel fund?"

While Lloyd wasn't paying attention, she lowered her voice and said:

"Going to the Grand Canyon together was the honeymoon Lloyd and I promised each other when we got married."

"If I weren't infertile, we never would have divorced. We'd be out seeing all the beautiful rivers and mountains of this country together."

"I figured you'd rise to the occasion and give him a son. Turns out you're nothing at all."

So this was the real reason the two of them had divorced.

And I'd never known Lloyd favored sons over daughters like this.

When I first got pregnant, I teased him on purpose:

"Your Vance family's only had one son per generation. If I have a daughter, will you stop loving me?"

Caught up in the joy of my pregnancy, he dropped to both knees and swore an oath to the heavens:

"Baby, it's not like we've got a throne to pass down. I love youwhatever you give birth to, I'll love."

But from the moment our daughter was born until now, he hadn't held her once.

As if she could sense she wasn't loved, our sleeping daughter suddenly scrunched up her mouth and began to cry.

Lloyd was closer to the crib.

But he only frowned, stood up, and stepped aside so I could come over and pick her up.

I didn't believe anyone could feel nothing for their own flesh and blood, so I deliberately stayed put.

"She probably feels insecure. If you hold her, she'll stop crying."

Hearing that, Lloyd's frown deepened.

But he still picked up his daughter, holding her in an awkward posture.

Ignoring the jealousy and resentment in Valerie's eyes, I stepped forward to show Lloyd how to hold her so she'd be more comfortable.

Instead, he seized the chance to shove our daughter into my arms:

"I'm all thumbs, I can't learn it. You just do it!"

The sliver of hope rising in my heartthat he might not be a good husband, but could still be a good fathershattered completely.

I had just soothed my daughter and was about to lay her down in her crib.

Valerie whispered something in Lloyd's ear, and he rubbed his nose and said to me:

"Christine, my parents have worked hard their whole lives. It's rare for me to have the time to take them on a trip. As their daughter-in-law, you can't help out physically, so why not chip in some money to show your devotion?"

My whole body went stiff. I almost thought I'd heard him wrong.

But he went on:

"I just want to help you win my parents' favor. If they found out you took the money meant for your postpartum recovery and used it for their trip..."

I took a deep breath, just barely keeping the lochia from gushing out.

"I just finished giving birth to your child, and you're abandoning me to go on a trip, and you still have the nerve to ask me for money?"

He looked at his daughter and sighed.

There wasn't a trace of a new father's joy on his face:

"My parents stayed up all night at home, hoping you'd give them a big, healthy grandson. Instead you had a girl. They were so disappointed they couldn't even eat."

"If your belly hadn't let me down, I wouldn't have had to go to all this trouble taking leave to bring them on a trip to lift their spirits."

I was so angry I burst into tears.

While I was in agony, half dead in the delivery room, his parents were up all night watching short dramas in the house I rented for them.

And they were in the habit of sharing the good ones in the group chat.

Later, after I had my daughter, not only did they not come to see her once, they even asked in the group chat when I'd have time to help them renew their memberships.

I got upset with Lloyd over it.

He said he'd used his paternity leave, and his vacation days on top of that.

I thought he'd taken all that leave to make it up to me by staying with me through my postpartum recovery, so I swallowed all my resentment.

After all, everyone says the more time a man spends with his kids, the faster he settles into the role of father.

Who knew that the birth of his daughter didn't awaken any fatherly instinct in him, but instead made him suddenly want to play the devoted son.

Whether he wanted to be a dutiful son, or was just seizing the chance to finally take his ex-wife on that honeymoon trip from back then, I no longer had any desire to dig into it.

The leftover pregnancy hormones made my tears spill out uncontrollably.

Lloyd raised his hand to wipe them away:

"Christine, I'm not blaming you, but I can't just stand by and watch my parents brood over this."

The parents he claimed were brooding were in the living room, figuring out what to eat and which spots to check out at the Grand Canyon.

Listening to their excited laughter, the resentment welling up in me was more than I could hold down.

"Lloyd, do you even know what paternity leave means?"

"Of course I do. Didn't I stay with you while you had the baby?"

In that instant, all the resentment and tears froze.

His "staying with me while I had the baby" was the six hours I spent trembling in pain giving birth to my daughter, during which he fell asleep in the hallway.

Back then, I could comfort myself by thinking he was busy with work during the day, and it was only natural he couldn't stay awake all night.

But now, I couldn't keep lying to myself.

Looking at the man I'd loved for three years, my hand instinctively rose.

But Valerie shoved Lloyd aside and took the slap herself.

I was holding the baby, and had only just given birth, so there was hardly any force behind that slap.

Yet Valerie went toppling backward.

Lloyd instinctively threw himself forward to catch her.

The momentum sent them tumbling down together, their bodies pressed suggestively against each other.

Lloyd's Adam's apple bobbed, and the tips of his ears turned red in an instant.

Seeing him like that, Valerie deliberately covered her face and cried.

Lloyd anxiously moved to check her face.

Valerie took her hand away at just the right moment, and her once fair face was suddenly a flushed red.

Lloyd's eyes instantly rimmed with tears of concern, and he lifted his head to glare at me viciously:

"Christine Harding! Apologize!"

But Valerie hooked her arm around his neck and said:

"Lloyd, let it go. It's only natural your wife is upset about us taking your parents on a trip. Why don't you stay home with her through her postpartum recovery, and I'll take your godparents out for a change of scenery?"

Lloyd's hold on her stalled:

"No way! How could you manage two elderly people on your own?"

My chest felt like it was pressed under a wad of wet cotton, and I couldn't breathe.

It wasn't that he trusted me, a first-time mother, to handle the baby alone. It was that my daughter and I simply didn't matter to him.

Then I would cut him out of our lives too.

Valerie got the answer she wanted, and she didn't bother to hide how pleased she was.

She even made a show of handing me a tissue.

"Crying during your postpartum recovery is bad for your eyes."

Her kindness and grace only moved Lloyd more.

He took the tissue and threw it at me.

Then he shielded Valerie behind him and said flatly to me:

"If it weren't for your health, the job of looking after Mom and Dad the whole trip would have fallen to you. Instead of thanking Valerie, you hit her. Have you thought about how you're going to apologize to her?"

But Valerie grabbed his arm and said softly:

"Lloyd, I'm really fine. Just please don't let your godparents know she has a problem with us taking the two of them out on a trip, or you'll be the one caught in the middle again."

Her voice was neither loud nor soft, pitched just right for his parents in the living room to hear.

The two of them charged to the bedroom door at once like a pair of demons and coldly demanded:

"You can't even give us a son, so what right do you have to complain about our trip?"

I stared, unable to believe a human being could say such a thing.

"Get out."

"Who are you telling to get out?"

My mother-in-law stormed into the room, hands on her hips, and started cursing me out.

Valerie deliberately lifted her chin so my mother-in-law could see the face she'd pinched red herself.

"Godmother, don't provoke her. You're getting on in yearsif she slapped you, I'm afraid you couldn't take it..."

My mother-in-law's eyes blazed and she flew into a rage, rushing over to shove me.

"Christine, don't think you can walk on air just because you had a kid! She's nothing but a money-losing burden. You really think a child raises your standing around here?"

"Let me tell you, Valerie's body is all healed up now, and the moment she's willing, she can give me a big, healthy grandson!"

"Mom, what are you talking about!"

Lloyd went red in the face and told her to shut up.

"So this trip to the Grand Canyon is your baby-making trip."

"It's not like that, Christine, don't listen to my mom's nonsense..."

"What nonsense? If she can't give us a son herself, then of course we find someone who can!"

"Mom! If you keep this up, I'm canceling the trip!"

That only made my mother-in-law angrier at me, and she shoved me so hard I staggered.

By the time Lloyd tried to pull me over, my lower back had already slammed into the nightstand.

My mother-in-law shoved him away and roughly hauled me up off the floor.

"You just had a babywhat's with all this acting so fragile?"

Her fingers dug hard into my arm. The pain broke me out in a cold sweat all over, and on instinct I grabbed the water glass beside me and smashed it down on her head.

My mother-in-law touched her foreheadno blood. So she just sat down on the floor and started wailing at the top of her lungs.

"What a curse! Lloyd, look at the shrew you married! She's trying to murder your own mother!"

The noise frightened my daughter into howling.

My father-in-law immediately screamed at her:

"Cry, cry, cry! You've cried away all the good luck in this family!"

"Nothing but bad luck, just like your mother!"

Being yelled at, my daughter's crying suddenly stopped.

Her mouth was clearly open in a cry, but no sound came out.

My heart lurched, and I quickly shouted at Lloyd:

"Bring the baby to me!"

Instead he picked up my phone that he'd thrown to the floor, unlocked it, and opened the messaging app.

"Christine, you shouldn't have hit my mother!"

Then he used my account to wire twenty thousand dollars to my mother-in-law, with the note:

Apology

I had no strength to stop him; all I wanted was to see what was wrong with my daughter.

But I hurt too much to move.

All I could do was weakly beg Lloyd:

"Go check on our daughter, something's wrong with her!"

Only then did Lloyd put down his phone.

When he saw that our daughter's face had turned purple, he panicked.

He hurriedly scooped her up and shoved her at me like a hot potato.

"Hurry up and calm her down."

Then he briskly pulled his mother back to her feet.

"Dad, Mom, Christine knows she was wrong. Don't make it worse."

His parents realized something was off too, and with the money now in their account, they hurried out of the bedroom to pack their bags.

On his way out, he didn't forget to grab Valerie's hand.

"Valerie, stay away from her, don't let her bad luck rub off on you."

Valerie saw the blood already staining the leg of my pants and tried to pull Lloyd away too.

Like a child who'd done something wrong, Lloyd stood off to the side and asked me hesitantly:

"Should we call an ambulance?"

I nodded, at a loss.

Before Lloyd could press the call button, Valerie deliberately shouted toward the doorway:

"Oh, so we have to call an ambulance just because she can't cry it out?"

Hearing the word ambulance, Cora clutched her head and started wailing in the living room.

"Ohh, did she crack something in my head? It hurts so much, and I feel sick, like I'm going to throw up!"

She faked a few gags, and Finn panicked too.

"Lloyd, hurry up and take your mother in for a checkup first. What if your wife really did her some harm?"

Lloyd caught the increasingly heavy smell of blood in the air, and inexplicably felt uneasy.

"Then call two ambulances!"

But Cora wouldn't have it.

"Why waste that money? I can get myself to the hospital, but if we drag this out any longer, I don't know if I'll hold up..."

Valerie urged him on too:

"Lloyd, why don't you take Mom and Dad to the hospital first? I'll stay with Christine and the baby and wait for the ambulance."

Lloyd hesitated, but Valerie had already dialed 911.

So he grabbed the keys and left with his parents.

I knew Valerie would never help us out of kindness, and instinctively I screamed at Lloyd:

"Don't go!"

His steps hitched, but he didn't turn his head.

"Valerie's here, don't be scared."

With a bitter smile, I dialed 911 myself.

But Valerie snatched the phone away and pulled out a divorce agreement.

"Lloyd had this ready the very day you two got your marriage license."

"If you don't want something to happen to your child, sign it."

Lloyd had already signed, and the date really was three years ago.

The terms were fair enough: all property after the marriage belonged to each of us separately.

If it was a daughter, the child would go to me.

If it was a son, the child would go to him.

I picked up the pen and signed my name.

Only then did Valerie call an ambulance for us, and right in front of me she deleted my fingerprint from the door lock.

I didn't stop her. I only prayed my daughter would be okay.

Thank God, after the resuscitation, my daughter could finally cry normally again.

Her color slowly came back.

Valerie filmed a video of the baby back to normal and sent it to Lloyd.

"Lloyd, see, I told you it was nothing. How's Mom doing?"

He saw the video and breathed a sigh of relief.

"My mom's fine too. Maybe we should hold off on the Grand Canyon trip. I'm still not easy about Christine and the baby..."

But Valerie forwarded him the photos of the new postpartum recovery center I'd booked, and turned on the speakerphone in front of me:

"Don't you worry. She'd never shortchange herself. This postpartum recovery center is more than ten thousand pricier than the one she'd booked before."

That thread of worry in Lloyd's heart vanished in an instant.

"Then let's leave as planned!"

Valerie hung up and gloated:

"You know, even if you'd given Lloyd a son, you still couldn't beat me."

"Back then I chose to divorce and walk away empty-handed because I couldn't have children. Lloyd's family will remember that kindness for the rest of their lives."

So from beginning to end, I was nothing but the Vance family's tool for producing a child.

I ignored Valerie and got straight into the postpartum recovery center's van.

Once I was settled in, Lloyd sent me a photo of a plane wing:

Actually, I'd changed my mind and wanted to stay home with you and our daughter, but it seems like you don't need me.

But that's okay. I'll still share the beautiful sights with you, and I'll bring back souvenirs for you and our girl.

When we get back, we'll throw a one-month party for our girl.

The wounded tone made it sound like I was the one who'd abandoned him.

I didn't reply. Instead I handed the divorce agreement over to a lawyer to finalize the divorce.

Then I took care of three big things.

Thirty days later, Lloyd and the others came back all smiles.

Only to break down crying, every one of them, right there at the front door.

"How could this be?"