Chapter 2

The four of them froze.

From the expressions on their faces, I could see their disbelief.

They probably couldn’t believe I had dared to raise my voice at them like that.

At that moment, Lily stepped forward. Her tone was commanding as she said, “Can you stop shouting? I’m tired. Go run the bath for me and help me wash up. I want to sleep!”

Hearing my daughter’s cold, detached voice, memories of her birth flashed through my mind.

I carried her for ten long months, my belly growing heavier as the days dragged on. By the 43rd week, I felt like I couldn’t go on.

The doctors had already suggested inducing labor at 41 weeks. They told me it was unsafe to wait any longer.

But Robert and Margaret insisted that the baby had to come naturally. They claimed induction drugs would harm the baby.

So, I endured. I held out until the 43rd week.

As if that weren’t enough, when the time finally came, they refused to allow me to have a C-section, even though the baby was unusually large. They said natural birth was the only way, and I had no say in it.

The delivery was brutal. I lost so much blood that I practically died on the delivery table.

When I woke up later, the doctor told me I was incredibly lucky. My heart had stopped for ten minutes, and yet, somehow, I had come back.

After giving birth to Lily, my body was weak, depleted from the blood loss. The doctor advised against breastfeeding for the time being, saying I needed to recover first.

But Margaret and Robert wouldn’t hear of it. They claimed formula was bad for a newborn and insisted I breastfeed her immediately.

During my confinement period, they offered no help at all.

James, conveniently, was always “busy.” He was either working late or traveling for business. Every night, he’d collapse into bed without so much as a word.

That left everything to me. I fed Lily, changed her diapers, bathed her, stayed up through the night—completely on my own.

I barely slept. Not once did they cook me a proper postpartum meal. Not once.

If Lily cried, Robert and Margaret would blame me. They’d berate me, saying I was a failure as a mother, that I couldn’t even keep my child from crying.

Lily was a high-demand baby. She refused to sleep unless she was nursing.

From the start of my confinement, my nipples were in constant pain. They never healed.

On top of that, my postpartum hormones were all over the place. I spiraled into depression during those weeks.

I begged James to take me to see a therapist. But they all mocked me, calling me dramatic and self-indulgent. “This is what motherhood is,” they said.

They even insisted that I breastfeed Lily until she was three years old.

For Lily’s sake, I endured. I endured it all.

But the moment she weaned, she stopped calling me “Mom.”

She started ordering me around, just like her grandparents did.

They had ingrained it in her from the start—that I existed to serve.

I had once thought Lily was the greatest gift life had given me.

Her demands didn’t bother me; I was willing to do anything for her. She was my everything.

But the sight of them earlier, their cozy little family scene, made me question everything.

I looked at her with a cold, hard expression. “Are you disabled? You’re nine years old, and you still need me to help you bathe?

And another thing—I’m your mother, not your maid. Before you tell me to do something for you, have you forgotten how to say ‘Mom’?”