I have been married to my husband for ten years. Five years ago, his mother’s rent was due, and because my husband is her only child and we already had our own house, we decided it would be best to bring her to live with us. The arrangement made sense. She would no longer struggle with rent, and she could also help us with the children whenever we were not around.

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When she moved in, I braced myself for trouble. I had heard too many stories about difficult mothers-in-law who interfered, competed, or quietly turned homes upside down. But that was not my reality. She was calm, helpful, and respectful. She cooked, scrubbed, and took care of the children without complaint. She never questioned how I ran my home. In return, I did my best to respect her as a daughter-in-law should. There was peace in the house, and for that, I was grateful.

One ordinary day changed everything. That morning, the land tax officers came around to collect the yearly property tax, as they always did. I was running late for work, so I handed the money to my mother-in-law and asked her to settle it for me. She agreed, and I left without another thought.

Months passed. One day, while going through my records, I realized I didn’t have the receipt for the last payment. I went to her room to ask for it. She took a long time searching through her bedroom, moving slowly, muttering to herself. Eventually, I followed her inside to help. She said that because of her age, she might have misplaced it. She handed me a black poly bag filled with old papers and asked me to go through it.

As we searched together, her phone rang. She stepped outside to answer the call. While waiting, my eyes wandered around the room. That was when I noticed another black poly bag hidden under some clothes in her wardrobe. Thinking it might contain the receipt, I pulled it out and opened it.

I found the receipt almost immediately. But beneath it was something else. An old photograph. It was the picture of a man who looked exactly like my husband. Same face. Same posture. Same presence. It was like a photocopy faded with time. This man in the photo looked like my husband from another moment in history but it was not the man I knew as my father-in-law.

Confused and shaken, I quickly took a picture of the photograph with my phone. That was when I realized she was standing behind me. Without a word, she snatched the photos from my hand and told me to leave her room. Her voice was firm, but her hands were trembling.

The next morning, she told my husband she wanted to return to her hometown immediately. The urgency shocked him. My husband asked me if something had happened between us. I told him no. I wanted to tell him the truth, but something held me back. I thought maybe she had her reasons. Maybe this was not my story to tell.

I went to her room and she was crying. Before I could say a word, she knelt before me and said, “I beg you in the name of God, don’t make mention of the photo you saw to my son or even his father. It will bring a huge problem that will affect all of us.”  I asked her to tell me what was going on with the photo and then she told me the truth.

She said she was never married to my father-in-law. When she was young, she had been dating a man, her true love. A month before her true love traveled abroad, she discovered she was pregnant. At the same time, she was also seeing my father-in-law, who was older and already married. His wife could not have children. Faced with fear and uncertainty, she made a decision she believed would protect her unborn child. The man she truly loved had traveled, and she did not know when or if he would return. The older married man was present, stable, and desperate for a child. She chose him as the father of her baby.

My father-in-law accepted the pregnancy. He raised my husband as his own. To this day, he has no other children. He loves my husband deeply. Even now, if my husband falls sick, his father becomes restless with worry.

Physically, there is no reason to suspect anything. My husband is tall, and so is my father-in-law. But if you stand my husband next to the man abroad you won’t need a DNA test.

The man abroad, my husband’s biological father, has always known he has a son. Years ago, he reached out to my mother-in-law and quietly supported my husband through his university education. My husband never knew the source of that help.

Then came the part that trapped me. She said, This is why you need to keep this a secret. Someday if your father-in-law dies, all his properties would go to your husband. The man abroad, too, would leave something behind. Your children will benefit twice.”

December last year, the man abroad sent three hundred dollars. My mother-in-law gave me one hundred and fifty. Since then, I have not known peace. Doesn’t my husband have the right to know who he truly is? Am I the right person to tell him? What will happen when he discovers that I knew all along?

Marriage Through the Eyes of Millennials and Gen-Z

If my father-in-law finds out, it will destroy him. His first wife is dead. He remarried three years ago, and his new wife came into the marriage with her own children and grandchildren—none of them his. If the truth comes out, everything he worked for could slip away from my husband. Every day, I live with this burden. Every smile feels heavy. Every family gathering feels like a lie waiting to be exposed. Until when can a secret like this survive? And when it finally breaks, who will it destroy first—my husband, his father, or me?

—Barbara

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