sound of laughter reached me before I even opened the door. Taking a deep breath, I turned my key in the lock and stepped inside.

There they were. Kelly and a silver-haired man I’d never seen before, sitting at my dining table.

Two half-empty wine glasses between them.

And not a baby monitor in sight.

“Where’s Lily?” I demanded, making them both jump.

Kelly’s face drained of color. “Lauren! What are you doing here?”

The man shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Uh, I should go—”

“No,” I said firmly. “You should stay. Because I’d love to know why my mother-in-law is inviting strangers into my house and drinking with them while she’s supposed to be babysitting.”

A heavy silence filled the room.

I could hear Lily fussing in the other room — probably had been for a while.

Kelly recovered first, her shock morphing into indignation.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic! It’s just a little company! Greg is a very nice man from my church group.”

“I don’t care if he’s the Pope,” I snapped.

“You’re still ignoring my daughter for the sake of your date!”

“She’s in her crib, perfectly safe,” Kelly huffed.

“Safe, maybe, but I can hear her fussing from here,” I snapped, already heading toward the nursery.

Lily’s face was scrunched up when I entered the nursery. I checked her diaper — it was soaked.

“Oh no! I wasn’t ignoring her,” Kelly called from the doorway.

I was already changing Lily and held up her soaked diaper like it was evidence in a criminal case.

“Really, Kelly?

Look at this… you know she needs to be changed immediately so her rash can heal.” I turned to face her then. “You won’t be babysitting her anymore.”

That afternoon, I sat Jordan down and told him everything. Jordan’s face darkened with each detail.

I’d rarely seen him angry, but by the time I finished, he was seething. He called Kelly and put it on speaker.

“Mom, what were you thinking?” he demanded the moment she answered. “Lauren told me everything.”

“Oh, I see,” Kelly replied.

“She’s turning you against me now.”

“I heard the recording myself,” Jordan said. “You brought a stranger into our home while you were supposed to be watching Lily. After I told you not to.”

“I was lonely!” Kelly protested, her voice rising.

“Greg is just a friend!”

“You left Lily in her crib with a soaked diaper while you were having wine with some man we’ve never met.”

“You’re overreacting! Lily’s rash is practically healed because of me; because I take such good care of her! If your wife was at home, caring for your child like she’s supposed to—”

“Don’t,” Jordan warned.

“I’m sorry, Mom, but we can’t trust you anymore.

We’ll find other childcare arrangements.”

“You can’t mean that!” Kelly cried. “She’s my granddaughter!”

“And she’s our daughter,” Jordan replied.

He ended the call then and immediately called a locksmith.

“Just to be safe,” he said as the man changed all our locks.

“Do you think we did the right thing?” I asked softly as we lay in bed that night.

Jordan was quiet for a long moment.

“Yes,” he finally said. “My mom crossed a line.

If she thought she could treat our house like a social club and our daughter as an afterthought, she was dead wrong.”

I reached for his hand in the darkness, squeezing it tightly.

We’d have to figure out childcare all over again. But as I drifted off to sleep, one thing was certain: no amount of free babysitting was worth the cost of our daughter’s wellbeing, or our peace of mind.

Source: amomama