“Get out of here!” her mother-in-law screamed in my own home. What she never imagined was that, in the end, she would be the first one shown the door.
Emily was folding tiny baby sleepers when a key scraped inside the lock. Her heart stumbled. Daniel was still at work, and the spare key had been left with his mother “for emergencies.” The problem was that Margaret considered every ordinary weekday an emergency.
“Emily! Where are you?”
Emily stepped into the hallway, tugging at the sweater stretched tight over her belly. Margaret stood there loaded down with bags from a home improvement store, already shrugging off her coat as if she owned the place.
“Good afternoon, Margaret.”
“Afternoon? It’s practically evening,” she grumbled, pushing past her into the living room. Her eyes swept over the apartment with the expression of an inspector arriving unannounced. “Sitting at home all day again? In my day, women worked right up until the very last minute.”
After three years, Emily had learned that agreement was safer than argument. They lived separately, after all. Why should Margaret’s opinion matter?
“I brought paint,” Margaret announced, dumping several cans onto the couch. “Blue. A proper color. Not that ridiculous yellow nonsense you two picked.”
Emily stared at the cans. She and Daniel had spent two whole weeks choosing the shade for the nursery, imagining the room, planning every small detail together.
“But we already painted it…”
“So you’ll paint it again,” Margaret snapped, already marching toward the baby’s room. “A boy needs a boy’s color, not this unclear, wishy-washy mess.”
Inside the nursery, she stopped with her arms folded across her chest, like a chief examiner preparing to fail everything in sight.
“Awful. The crib cannot be near the window! And these curtains with bunnies on them… what is this supposed to be, a room for a baby or a petting zoo?”
“We like it,” Emily said quietly.
“Well, I don’t. And neither will my grandson.” Margaret pinched the curtain between two fingers, her face twisting with disgust. “Tomorrow we’re changing all of this.”
Emily said nothing. As usual. The baby nudged her from the inside, as though protesting the stranger who had come to make decisions about his room.
Daniel got home late. Emily was waiting in the kitchen, where the paint cans sat on display like trophies from a battle she had never agreed to fight.
“Your mother was here,” she said.
He glanced at the cans. “What did she do?”
“She brought paint. She wants to repaint the nursery.”
Daniel rubbed the bridge of his nose—a sure sign that any conversation involving his mother was already wearing him down.
“Maybe blue really would be better…”
Emily looked at him. “But we chose the yellow together.”