I’m so sorry.”

I invited her in, and she pulled out her phone. “When I realized I couldn’t stop her, I realized there was something else I could do to help you. Here — this will make my mom pay for everything.”

She held out her phone.

What I saw on the screen made me sick.

There was Janet, squeezed into my dress, laughing as she posed in front of her mirror. The fabric strained across her body, the zipper clearly struggling to close.

“She needs to pay for what she did,” Rachel said. “And these pictures are the key.”

I listened closely as Rachel outlined exactly how I could use the pictures to teach Janet a lesson.

Armed with Rachel’s photos, I confronted Janet again and told her I’d share the photos if she didn’t pay the $3000 she owed me for ruining my dress.

“You wouldn’t dare share those,” she said, examining her manicure.

“Think about what it would do to the family.”

I looked at her perfect makeup, her expensive clothes, her carefully cultivated image of the doting mother-in-law. “Try me.”

That night, I created the Facebook post with shaking hands.

I uploaded Rachel’s photos along with pictures of my ruined dress. I wrote about how my future mother-in-law had tried on my wedding dress without permission and destroyed it.

How she’d refused to take responsibility or replace it.

“A wedding dress represents so much more than just a piece of clothing,” I wrote. “It represents dreams, hopes, and trust. All of which have been destroyed along with my dress.”

The next morning, Janet burst into our apartment without knocking, her face red with fury.

“Take it down!” she screamed, waving her phone in my face.

“Do you have any idea what people are saying about me? I’m being humiliated! My friends, my church group, everyone’s seen it!”

“You humiliated yourself when you decided to try on my dress without permission.”

“Mark!” she turned to her son.

“Tell her to take it down!”

Mark looked between us, his face pale. “Mom, maybe if you just offered to replace the dress —”

“Replace it? After what she’s done?” Janet’s voice reached a pitch that probably only dogs could hear.

“Never!”

I looked at Mark, really looked at him. At the way he shrunk from conflict, the way he’d let his mother walk all over both of us, the way he’d betrayed my trust without a second thought.

“You’re right, Janet,” I said quietly. “The dress doesn’t need to be replaced.”

I slipped my engagement ring off my finger and placed it on the coffee table.

“Because there won’t be a wedding. I deserve better than a man who won’t stand up for me, and better than a mother-in-law who has no respect for boundaries.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Janet’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.

Mark started to speak, but I walked to the door and held it open.

“Please leave. Both of you.”

As I watched them go, I felt lighter than I had in months.

Source: amomama