“Yes, he’s hiding something. Go with him next time, visit your mother-in-law yourself.”

That’s when another idea occurred to me. I decided I’d go, but I wouldn’t tell my husband. I’d wait until he left, and then follow in my car.

On Saturday morning, he said as usual:

“See you tonight, my love. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I answered automatically, but silently added something completely different: “No, my love. We’ll see each other tonight.”

My husband’s hometown was small. Everyone knew each other there, and hiding anything was nearly impossible. I pulled up to my mother-in-law’s house and sat in the car. When I saw what was happening through the window, I was truly terrified. 

How could they do such a thing? 

It wasn’t just my mother-in-law and my husband in the house. A young woman was standing next to my husband, holding a baby in her arms.

Later, the true horror became clear. My mother-in-law, who had disliked me from the first day and had never accepted me as a daughter-in-law, had been trying all this time to persuade my son to leave me and marry the neighbor’s daughter. And in the end, she got her way.

It turned out they had secretly married, and my husband still couldn’t bring himself to leave me. Moreover, they already had a two-month-old child.

All this time, my husband lived with both families, visiting them every day under the guise of caring for his mother. He lied to me deliberately, day after day, under pressure from his mother-in-law and for the sake of his own comfort.

That same day, I left him. A short time later, I filed for divorce and have never regretted my decision.