My mother-in-law said that the child that woman was carrying belonged to my husband.

I stared at my husband in disbelief, waiting for him to deny it.

What disappointed me was that he dodged my gaze.

“Mom, why did you bring her here? My wife and I are not getting divorced!” he said.

He never denied it.

In that moment, I laughed, a bitter, hollow laugh.

My mind slipped back to our college days, to our love story.

Back then, I was the campus beauty of our department. There were countless men chasing after me, but I fell head over heels for a gentle-looking guy from the countryside at first sight.

That man is now my husband.

He was brilliant, always at the top of the class, and I used every excuse I could think of to ask him study questions just so I could get close to him.

He blushed so easily. Every time I leaned in, his face would turn red, and I found it adorable.

Later, he confessed his feelings to me.

I was about to tease him for how old-fashioned his confession was, but when I saw the sincerity in his eyes, something in my heart softened.

So I said yes.

News of our relationship spread quickly across campus.

My roommates all warned me to just have some fun and not take him seriously.

I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to be with him.

My family was average—living in a small county town, we were never rich, but I’d never gone hungry or cold. I didn’t have that desperate urge some girls had to marry into money.

Compared to those rich second-generation heirs chasing me, I liked his ambition so much more.

He didn’t just study hard; he also worked part-time every day. The money he earned was enough to cover his own expenses, and he still often bought me little gifts to make me happy.

Whenever we went on dates, he would talk to me about our future, painting the life we would have together.

In those college years, I thought the luckiest thing that ever happened to me was meeting him.

But now, he’s actually cheated on me.

And my mother-in-law has known all along.

I’m the only one who’s been kept in the dark.

“My wife can’t have children anymore. She brought this on herself. Do you really want your mother to watch you die without an heir?”

My mother-in-law exploded when she heard my husband still didn’t want a divorce.

“Mom! Even if that’s how you feel, you can’t force us like this!” My husband knew the moment she brought that woman over, our marriage probably wouldn’t survive it.

“Force you? Fine, I *am* forcing you!” She stopped paying attention to my husband and turned all her anger on me. “If you still have a conscience, you’ll divorce my Liam Sterling right now! Don’t you dare turn him into a man with no descendants!”

I let out a bitter laugh. As if not being able to have children was something I’d chosen.

Right after we graduated, we’d decided to work for four years before having kids. No rush.

The first two years went exactly as we’d planned. Our jobs were getting more stable, our lives slowly settling down.

But in the following two years, the conflict with my mother-in-law began.

She nagged me constantly to have a baby. To shut her up, my husband and I helped pay for a new house back in his hometown, along with his older brother and sister-in-law. We hoped keeping her busy would stop her from meddling in our lives.

Her old house was near the river and really inconvenient, so we decided to build the new one by the main road instead.

Sure enough, once the new house construction started, she was busy running around all day. She didn’t even have time to bring up grandchildren when we went back for New Year.

Although we’d paid for the new house, we rarely stayed there, since both of us worked out of town.

Four years passed in a blur. Our jobs were stable by then, but we hadn’t managed to save much. Part of our money had gone toward paying back the bride price, and the rest toward that house.

On top of that, I was prone to exhaustion and pretty frail. My husband was always buying me tonics and supplements.

We didn’t have much money, but we still decided it was time to try for a baby.

My mother-in-law said as long as the two of us had a child, she would help raise it; we wouldn’t have to worry.

I’d never really liked children, but I didn’t want to put my husband in a difficult spot, so I started preparing for pregnancy anyway.

Our relationship had always been good, and it didn’t take long for me to conceive our first child.

Pregnancy, however, wasn’t at all what I’d imagined. From the second month on, I was constantly nauseous, vomiting day and night.

The morning sickness was so bad I couldn’t work. My husband told me to quit my job and rest at home.

Lying there retching into a trash can, I started regretting getting pregnant. I hadn’t expected it to affect my life—my work—this much.

But it was too late to take it back. I resigned and spent my days in our rented apartment, mostly in bed.

When my mother heard how severe my morning sickness was, she rushed over by bus to take care of me.

During my pregnancy, I often lost my temper with my husband for no reason, but he never raised his voice at me. He always soothed me gently, like nothing I said could hurt him.

Watching him, my mother told me I’d chosen the right man.

I thought things would continue like that—hard, but manageable. But life rarely follows our script.

One day, my mother and I went to the hospital for a routine check-up. I was five months along.

We watched the baby move on the ultrasound screen, tiny limbs twitching inside my belly, and both of us were smiling.

Then the doctor said one sentence that sent us straight into hell.

“There’s a problem with the baby’s head.” The doctor pointed to the fetus’s partially formed skull, where something clearly seemed to be missing. “Even if the child is born alive, there’s a high chance it won’t be healthy.”

“Doctor, is there any way to treat it?” My mother squeezed my shaking hand to comfort me, then looked up and asked.

“At the moment, no.” The doctor sighed, his expression full of pity. “If you decide not to have this baby, you should terminate the pregnancy as soon as possible. The older the fetus, the more difficult and dangerous the procedure.”

“Ah…” His words hit me like another hammer blow.

“You’re still young…” he began, trying to comfort me when he saw I was breaking down.

But my mother was afraid I’d hear something that would hurt even more. She grabbed our things and hurried me out of the examination room.

Back at home, I went straight to bed and lay there staring at the ceiling.

I placed a hand on my belly. I’d never been a fan of children, but I had started to look forward to this one, to meeting this little life that was half me, half my husband.

When my husband came home, my mother told him everything.

He fell silent when she finished. The room felt painfully still.

“What do you want to do?” he finally asked.

“Abort it.” My voice was steady. I didn’t want to bring a sick child into the world, only to watch it suffer.

“Okay.” He said just that one word, then lay down beside me without another sound.

I knew he’d been looking forward to this baby. Ever since she found out I was pregnant, my mother-in-law had called constantly to ask about the child. With this baby as a buffer, she’d stopped cursing me, stopped making things difficult.

And then, with my husband and my mother at my side, I walked into the operating room.

Thinking about our first child is still a stabbing pain in my heart. Was I really supposed to let him grow up with a label, with everyone saying there was something wrong with him?

How many people born with severe defects grow up to thank their parents for bringing them into this world?

“Do you actually think you did nothing wrong?” My mother?in?law saw my expression and got even angrier. “If it weren’t for you, would my son—a perfectly good college graduate—still be without a stable job and without a child?”

“Yes! It’s all my fault!” Rage and resentment surged in my chest. I hated my own uselessness, and I hated all the ways she tried to control me.

After the surgery, I lay in bed for a month.

When my mother?in?law found out I’d had an abortion, she called every single day to curse me for “killing her grandchild.”

My husband was afraid she’d disturb my rest, so he turned off my phone.

Then she started calling him nonstop, or my mother.

She decided it was my mother’s fault—that my mom had “manipulated” me into getting an abortion.

My husband tried to explain that the baby had serious problems, but she wouldn’t believe him.

Because my body was weak, and I’d just had the abortion, I kept having health issues and had to go in and out of the hospital.

Two weeks after I was discharged, my mom went back home. After that, my husband not only had to go out and work all day, but also take care of me when he came home.

I was afraid of dragging him down, so I forced myself to act like I’d fully recovered and started preparing to look for a job.

But he was worried I’d get too exhausted and told me to stay home and rest a few more months.

In the end, I stayed home, helping with housework and cooking.

Little by little, everything started to feel normal again. I didn’t realize that was the moment my life began to drift away from the rest of the world.

From the day I started doing housework full?time, I gradually turned into a stay?at?home wife.

At first, I planned to look for a job as soon as my body was stronger. But because I’d been out of work for too long, my résumé didn’t get me many calls back, and I couldn’t find anything decent.

By the time I finally got a job offer, I found out I was pregnant again.

Just like that, the job I’d just gotten slipped away.

When my mother?in?law heard I was pregnant, she insisted I go back to my hometown immediately to “protect the baby,” terrified the same thing as last time would happen again.

I didn’t want to be separated from my husband. I didn’t want to go. So my husband suggested that his mother come live with us instead.

I refused. I couldn’t stand the way she was always pointing fingers at my life, criticizing everything I did.

In the end, my husband promised that this time, no matter what, he would never let me get an abortion again—no matter how the baby turned out.

His mother didn’t come, and I didn’t go back.

I slipped into a life of “protecting the pregnancy.”

This time, my mom didn’t come either, because my sister?in?law was pregnant too.

My husband silently took on everything—housework, laundry, cooking, all done after a full day at work—while I mostly lay in bed, occasionally going out for a short walk.

He was exhausted, but every time he looked at my growing belly, he seemed to feel it was all worth it.

But life never goes the way you want it to.

That day, I was out walking like usual when my foot landed on a bottle. I slipped, and instinctively grabbed for the nearest stool, but it couldn’t take my full weight as I fell toward it.

“Bang!” The stool crashed to the ground with me. I was already four months pregnant, and a sharp, tearing pain shot through my lower body.

Clenching my teeth, I called my husband—then the pain swallowed me whole, and everything went dark.

When I woke up, I was already in the hospital.

I reached for my belly. The moment my hand touched it, tears poured down my face and wouldn’t stop.

Seeing me cry, my husband rushed to the bedside. He pulled me into his arms and held me tightly, gently patting my back.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” The words tumbled out of me. I blamed myself for being so careless. I used to think TV dramas were ridiculous—how could a simple fall cause a miscarriage?

But reality proved me wrong. I had been fully conscious when I felt the baby slip away from my body. The pain had been unbearable—I didn’t know if it was my body that hurt more, or my heart.