Chapter 2

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.