Larissa, having won the mother-in-law lottery, has come to love Julia. After struggling with getting pregnant, she relies on Julia’s support. However, months after the baby is born – her husband finds something that makes them question exactly how Julia helped the situation. When I married Toby, I was lucky enough to be one of those girls who had a magical mother-in-law. Julia was everything I wanted in a mother-in-law — she was kind and loving, and didn’t regard me just as an extension of her family. Instead, she adopted me as her daughter. “I told you,”

Toby said one day when I told him that I was so grateful Julia had accepted me. “She’s loved you since the beginning, Larissa.” Despite her age, Julia was just full of life. She constantly walked in and out of our home, ready to throw herself into our kitchen. “I just want to feed you guys,” she told me when I asked her to sit down, ready to cook for her instead. “I don’t have anything else to do besides meet the ladies for drinks,” she chuckled. It usually ended with us cooking together — Toby coming home to music and laughter echoing in the kitchen. My parents were across the country because I had moved for college, and ended up settling down here with Toby. And as much as phone and video calls kept me close to my family, at the end of the day, Julia filled the role of a mother — a mother in close proximity anyway. After three years of being married, Toby and I were trying to have a baby. “I’m ready if you are,” Toby told me. “I think it’s time now.” I agreed with Toby. I was ready — I wanted to be a mom. So, we began trying. And for months, we just couldn’t get pregnant. And the longer we tried, the more reality set in. Maybe we just weren’t meant to have biological children “What do you want to do? ” I asked Toby. “Keep trying?” oby nodded. I knew that he wouldn’t ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do, but I also knew that he desperately wanted to be a father. So, torn, I turned to my mother-in-law for advice. Julia took me to meet with a wellness coach, she took me for fertility massages, and then, she even bought Toby and I a brand new mattress. “Maybe your body is just not rested enough,” my mother-in-law said. “Maybe you just need to give your body the best chance possible at this.” “Do you think that it was a bit unnecessary?” I asked Toby as we got into bed that night, testing out our new mattress. “Normally, I would have said yes,” Toby admitted. “But maybe there’s something to what Mom said. Our mattress was horrible before. Maybe it will make a difference.” And it did. Because not even a month later, I discovered that we were pregnant. At first, I didn’t know whether to tell my husband and our family because I was so nervous about everything. I felt that if I acknowledged the truth, then maybe I was inviting something to happen. But it made no sense — my irrational fear was selfish. Toby needed to know that we were well on our way to being parents.