After three years of forgotten birthdays and empty promises, my husband finally surprised me with my dream Christmas gift. I was overjoyed until I woke up on Christmas morning and saw my gift in his daughter’s hands. What I did at that moment still haunts me.
Did I go too far? Let me tell you something about my husband, Jim. The man could navigate a big rig across three states in a snowstorm, but ask him to pick out a birthday card?
Forget it. We had been together for three years, and in that time, I received exactly nothing for my birthday. Nothing for our anniversary.
NOTHING. Celebrations came and went without so much as a gas station bouquet. But Mother’s Day?
That was the one that finally broke something inside me. I had spent the morning making Jim’s favorite breakfast. My son Evan, 11 years old and from my first marriage, had used his allowance to buy me a card with a wonky handmade frame.
It was the only acknowledgment I got that day. When Jim came downstairs, I waited. Maybe he had something planned. But he just sat down, ate his breakfast, and kissed my forehead like it was any other Sunday. “It’s Mother’s Day,” I finally said, hating how small my voice sounded.
He looked up from his plate, confused. “Yeah?”
“I just thought maybe we could do something today. Something nice, you know?
Just the three of us. Shopping, maybe.”
Jim set down his fork and gave me this look. “Rebecca, you’re not my mother!
I don’t have to celebrate Mother’s Day with you!”
Those words haunted me. I nodded slowly, my chest feeling heavier. “You’re right.
I’m not.”
I didn’t cry or yell. I just cleared the table around him while he went back to his eggs, completely oblivious to the fact that he’d just changed everything between us. Something inside me shifted that day, something I couldn’t quite put back in place no matter how hard I tried.
Father’s Day rolled around about a month later, and I made sure I was nowhere to be found. Normally, I would’ve been up at dawn making a feast, then driving 45 minutes to pick up Chloe, Jim’s 16-year-old daughter from his first marriage, from her mother’s house so she could spend the day with her dad. But not that day.
I was at the mall when my phone rang around two in the afternoon. Jim’s name flashed across the screen. “Where are you?” He sounded annoyed already.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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