Chapter 3 Meeting The In-Laws Of The Past

As Alfred drove us to his late wife Marlene's family home, he took on the tone of a seasoned professional, easing me into the situation. Being a bank executive, he must have honed his skills in persuasion over years of workplace pep talks.

He spoke with practiced calm, and I found myself relaxing under his steady cadence.

"This is my duty as their former son-in-law," he explained earnestly. "They say even the shortest marriage leaves lasting ties of affection. Marlene gave her life giving me a son, and now that I'm remarried, it's only right to visit her family and let them meet my new wife."

By the time we pulled up to a rural courtyard, I was no longer as tense as before.

"I gave them a heads-up about this visit two weeks ago. We're good to go," he reassured me as we stepped out of the car.

The moment we entered, a harsh, grating voice rang out from behind a wall. An older woman with a sallow complexion and rotting teeth was unleashing a barrage of insults at someone in the neighboring house. Her voice was as sharp as a rusty knife, her words laced with an endless string of expletives I couldn't fully understand. Her demeanor was ferocious-relentless, like a machine gun firing off rounds. As I watched her rant, I couldn't help but wonder how someone like Marlene could be related to her.

"If the mother is like this, could the daughter be any different? Was Marlene also this kind of foul-mouthed shrew?" I couldn't help but wonder.

Much later, I learned the truth-Marlene was, in fact, just like her mother.

When the older woman spotted Alfred, she initially shouted obscenities at him as well. But as she noticed the pile of gifts he was carrying, her tone immediately shifted to one of sycophantic flattery.

Her gaze then fell on me, standing timidly behind Alfred. In an instant, her expression turned menacing, her eyes burning with a fiery hostility that made my skin crawl.

The visit ended quickly and uncomfortably.

As we were leaving, we crossed paths with a young man swaggering toward the house. He had a sly, shifty air about him, with slicked-back hair and a black leather jacket. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing a scorpion tattoo on his wrist.

Though he was decent-looking, his demeanor was unsettling, exuding an air of petty delinquency that made me instinctively dislike him. I tugged on Alfred's sleeve, urging him to hurry.

But Alfred paused and muttered, "That's my former brother-in-law-Marlene's younger brother, Jake."

"Are you kidding me?" I thought, suppressing an internal groan. The whole family seemed to be straight out of a bad melodrama.

Thankfully, Marlene's father had passed away long ago. Otherwise, I might have had to endure meeting yet another dubious character.

Even Alfred didn't seem to like his ex-brother-in-law. He averted his gaze and made a move to walk past him.

Unfortunately, Jake noticed Alfred and shouted to stop him.

Like a dog chasing a bone, he darted over, blocking our path. He looked Alfred up and down, noting how much he had changed. After tossing out a few insincere compliments, his sharp eyes shifted to me, roaming over me in a way that felt invasive and predatory.

The leering look in his eyes made me shudder. I clutched Alfred's arm tightly, desperate to leave.

After a brief conversation, Alfred handed him $500. Only then did he grudgingly step aside, grumbling, "That's all? Not even enough for a night at the poker table."

Still, he accepted the cash with a smirk, fanning himself with the bills as he strutted away.

When Jake walked through the door, his mother-the sharp-tongued old woman, Karen-vented her worries to her son. "People say men forget their old loves when they find new ones. What if Alfred forgets about your sister and our family?" she said bitterly.

She followed up with venom in her voice. "When you have time, you'd better teach his new wife a lesson!"

Her son, ever the obedient child, gave a sly smile and replied, "Don't worry, Mom. We've still got the two kids on our side. The older one listens to me. I'll find a chance to have a talk with her."

...

On the drive home, still reeling from my visit to Marlene's family, I resolved never to deal with them again.

But life had a way of being cruelly ironic. The more you tried to avoid something, the more likely it was to chase you down.

The wedding went ahead as planned, and for a brief while after, Alfred and I enjoyed a passionate honeymoon phase. But the bliss didn't last long, soon giving way to the daily grind of family drama.

His eldest daughter, Leah, was my biggest tormentor. Day after day, she caused chaos, hurled insults at me, and tried every trick in the book to drive me out of the house.

In contrast, his younger daughter, Luna, was still young and impressionable. With my patient care and attention, she warmed up to me over time. Within six months, she had started calling me "Mom."

But being a stepmother was no easy feat.

When Leah overheard her little sister sweetly calling me "Mom," her resentment toward me deepened.

Every day was a battlefield. At mealtimes, she would stage her antics without fail-declaring my cooking inedible, refusing to eat, or worse, picking through her food and scattering it across the table and floor.

Alfred would come home to the mess and punish her, often resorting to harsh scolding or even a spanking. She'd behave for a day or two, only to revert to her old ways. Her misbehavior was so predictable, it came in waves-quiet for a moment, only to rise and crash again with full force.

This little troublemaker was relentless. Just the dining room drama alone was enough to drive me to tears on more than one occasion. I found myself contemplating leaving the family more times than I could count. But every time, I reminded myself why I was here-the money-and forced myself to stay.

Leah's vendetta against me didn't stop at the dinner table. She began targeting my belongings, deliberately damaging or destroying them. My wallet, clothes, jewelry, makeup-none of it was safe from her wrath.

Her antics were infuriating, testing the limits of my patience. Yet I chose to swallow my anger, convincing myself to turn the other cheek in the name of peace.

But instead of backing down, she escalated her attacks. One day, she refused to go to school, throwing a tantrum and demanding Alfred kick me out of the house before she would agree to attend.

After hours of coaxing, stern lectures, and bribing her with gifts, Alfred managed to get her to drop the idea and go back to school. But her hostility toward me never waned, and her personal war against me continued.

Two incidents stood out vividly in my memory. The first involved a handful of dead cockroaches she somehow procured. One afternoon, she slipped them under the blanket on my bed. When I climbed into bed that night, I felt something hard beneath me. Thinking it was just a misplaced object, I reached under the covers. What I pulled out made my blood run cold. Under the glow of the bedside lamp, I saw them-dead cockroaches. I screamed.