Margaret didn’t respond for several days.
When she finally did, she didn’t apologize.
She wrote that she had made mistakes, but that she had acted out of love.
Roy didn’t argue.
“Love doesn’t give someone permission to hurt the people I love,” he said.
We kept our distance after that.
Eventually, we arranged for a professional caregiver to visit Margaret and help with the things she struggled to manage. Roy still checked on her, but he no longer rushed to answer every demand or allowed guilt to dictate our decisions.
Tessa stopped contacting us.
As for the baby, Roy had no connection to the child, and we made it clear that he would not be drawn into a false claim of paternity.
Months later, Margaret finally sent Roy a handwritten letter.
He read it alone before showing it to me.
She admitted that she had felt replaced after our wedding. She had watched her son build a life that no longer revolved around her, and instead of learning how to be part of that life, she had tried to pull him back into the one she remembered.
