My In-Laws Said My Son Was Illegitimate; I Agreed, They Panicked

Two: My face stayed calm, edged with contempt, nothing in it that looked like a woman caught in an affair. That wasn't all. I pulled my son forward and told everyone to look at him next to my husband's funeral portrait. “Anyone with working eyes can see it. My son and Daniel came out of the same mold.” “If my son is illegitimate, if I got him by cheating, then who did I cheat with, Daniel's twin brother?” “You all know how much my in-laws love money. You've all heard about the things they've done for it.” What I said made sense. So the relatives and friends in the room recovered a little of their reason, and some of them, once I nudged them, began to remember the “glorious deeds” of Edward Edwards and Stacy Salazar. A few of the things Edward and Stacy had just said were actually true. Like the part where they disliked me the first moment they laid eyes on me. That one was real. Daniel knew exactly what his parents were, so before the wedding he never once brought me home, and he didn't even invite them to the ceremony. But they heard about it from relatives and showed up uninvited, pulling out a “Handbook for the Edwards Family Wife” and reading it aloud right there at the wedding. The very first rule demanded that I sign over to Edward the house my parents had left me. The reason was that they planned to move in later to help take care of us, and they couldn't stand living under someone else's roof. The second rule was slightly better. They wanted Daniel and me to hand over our paycheck cards and our savings for them to control, and if we needed to spend any of it, we had to apply a week in advance. All the way until Daniel cut them off, I hadn't heard a single line in that handbook about honoring one's in-laws or doing housework. The wedding turned into a farce, and afterward, when I picked the handbook up and looked it over, there were thousands of clauses, and every single one pointed to a single word: “money”. And it was because of that wedding that Daniel finally made up his mind to cut ties with them... Three: Plenty of the people in the room had seen these things with their own eyes and heard them with their own ears. The reason no one thought of it in my past life was that I never reminded anyone. I was too busy denying everything in a rage, and I walked straight into their trap. This time I first laid out how much my son looked like my husband, then reminded everyone of the rest, so the suspicion in the room quickly turned to sympathy. Stacy went blank for a moment. Then she started arguing at once. “The only reason we made a scene at the wedding was because of you.” “You egged my son on, kept the marriage from us, and that's why we were angry, that's why we brought up money at the wedding.” “We apologized afterward too. It was you who forced Daniel not to forgive us, you who forced Daniel to break with us.” But no matter what Stacy said, no one's expression changed. Stacy frowned, clutched Daniel's portrait, and burst into loud sobs. “What parent doesn't love their own child?” “All we wanted back then was to secure a few things for Daniel. How did that turn into our own daughter-in-law pointing at our faces and calling us money-grubbers?” “Daniel's been dead in that crash only a few days, and you couldn't wait to cremate him. Isn't that because you're afraid everyone will find out the truth about how he died?” Edward joined in, wailing along. “Before Daniel died, I even got a call from him. He admitted his mistakes to me himself, right there on the phone, and he told me that little bastard isn't his own blood.” To prove he wasn't lying. Edward even made a point of taking out his phone and playing a recording of a call between him and Daniel. But I didn't have to guess to know it was a fake, an AI-synthesized recording. The others didn't know that, though. The way they saw it, Edward and Stacy loved money, sure, but there was no reason for anyone to joke about something like this. I still didn't deny anything. I just looked at Edward and Stacy, both on the verge of crying themselves unconscious. “Since the two of you can't bear to lose Daniel.” “Then where were you when Daniel was dying?” “When I called you, why did you tell me to give up on treatment? Is that not bearing to lose him? Is that love?”

The crying from Edward and Stacy stopped, and for a moment their faces went blank. In my last life I had no way to reach either of them, so I never called, and it was exactly that gap they used against me, insisting I hadn't told them because I had a guilty conscience. This time I wasn't going to make the same mistake. So the moment Daniel was in the crash, I called them both right away. Neither of them had expected me to be this calm, so they hadn't had time to get their stories straight, and they contradicted me almost in the same breath. Edward said, "You're talking nonsense. We never got any call from you." But Stacy said, "I didn't say that. I told you at the time, save him no matter what, whatever it costs, save him!" The two of them finished, glanced at each other, and started up again in unison, only their versions didn't line up. By the time they caught the problem and wanted to fix their lines, I simply took out the tablet. On the screen was a surveillance video. It showed me holding my phone, calling Edward and Stacy. When I hit play, everyone heard Edward's and Stacy's voices. "Where would we get the money to pay for his surgery?" "Life and death are fated, wealth is in heaven's hands. Don't force it." "Which hospital are you at? We'll come right now and sign to stop treatment." "This is for your good and the child's. If the money's gone and the person's gone too and you're left with a pile of debt, how are you supposed to live?" "Oh, and whoever's at fault for the crash, I can come help you hold up banners, squeeze out more money. Just remember to give us our cut." That was as far as the video got before Edward and Stacy snatched the tablet and smashed it. "That's obviously a fake AI-generated video. We never said any of that." "You'll humiliate us like this just to get the money? Are you even human?" I let out a cold laugh. They really knew how to flip the blame back on me. "Then do you dare call the police, and have them verify whether my video is the fake, or your recording is?" Five: Of course Edward and Stacy didn't dare, because that so-called recording of his was fake, and it wouldn't even take any forensics, just a check of the call records to know the truth. But what I'd said was the truth. They just hadn't imagined that, in a moment as urgent as that one, I would still remember to bring the surveillance footage. The two of them exchanged a look and started making trouble again. "Your heart is vicious. You actually prepared this evidence in advance just to hurt us!" "Think about it. If you really loved Daniel the way you claim, how could you remember surveillance footage in the middle of something like that?" I didn't argue. "You both remembered to use a forged recording to hurt me, so why can't I put out the real surveillance to answer it?" "Or is it fine for the magistrate to burn the town but the people can't even light a lamp?" Edward and Stacy had nothing to say. They couldn't come up with a single word to fight back. In their plan, the moment I heard the word illegitimate I was supposed to go to pieces and let them say whatever they wanted. They hadn't counted on me being ready, unhurried, as if I'd known all along. So they traded a glance. And went back to clutching Daniel's portrait and wailing. "Daniel, look at the fine wife you found. She fakes a video to frame us, and she wants to call the police at your own funeral, disturbing your rest." "Yes, we love money, but you were our only child. Everything we ever asked for was for you. Now that you're gone, what use is money to us?" "That Lois, this vicious woman, keeps harping on money, which just proves she's the one who wants your settlement. She's feeding off your dead body." "Since she wants money so badly, then we'll risk our lives to get it back. We will not let her have it." I gave a short, mocking laugh. "Everyone here can see it. Who's really disturbing Daniel's rest, me or you? You don't actually think you can rattle off a few lies and wave a fake recording and walk off with the money, do you?" "If that's what you thought, I suggest you get out now, because it's not happening. The money Daniel left is for me and Bobby. I'm not giving you a cent." At that point, I took out my phone, ready to call the police then and there. "You two probably don't know this, but framing someone like this is also against the law." "With a little luck, we can get you charged with public mischief."

Part Six: When Edward and Stacy saw I was about to call the police, they lunged at me, ready to swing. But the relatives and friends there clearly believed me instead, and they closed around me, so the two of them never got anywhere near. "Calling the police is a good thing. At least we can finally get to the bottom of what happened to Daniel." "That's right. Once the police are involved, we'll know for sure whether Bobby is Daniel's son. You can't just open your mouths, call him a bastard, and have it be true." "There has to be some actual proof, doesn't there?" At the words Bobby and proof, Edward and Stacy quickly remembered they still had their trump card, the paternity test. They regretted letting me lead them by the nose, so much that they'd forgotten to even mention the report. So they changed their expressions and spoke again. "Never mind the video and the recording for now, whether they're real or not." "But this paternity test has an official stamp on it. You dare say this one isn't real?" "If you're going to claim it's fake, we can go to the police and have it checked too." Edward pulled the paternity report out of his bag. I'd already seen this report in my last life, so this time I only gave it a glance before I owned up to it. "This one's definitely real." Edward and Stacy froze. They'd expected me not to dare admit it, but they never thought I'd concede it so lightly, and after the shock came delight. "Good that you admit it!" "You little bastard has nothing to do with the Edwards family." "So you can't take Daniel's inheritance, and on top of that you owe us all those years of child support Daniel paid. Now that Daniel's gone, that money all comes to us..." "But this isn't about the money at all. It's about principle." They said it with all the righteousness in the world, but after the groundwork I'd just laid, no one there believed a word, and I cut them off, unhurried. "You've got it wrong." "This is a paternity test between Edward and Bobby, and it shows no blood relation. But all this proves is that Bobby isn't your grandson. It doesn't prove Bobby isn't Daniel's child." Part Seven: I said it lightly. Before either of them could recover, I went on. "What if the one who put horns on her husband wasn't me, but Stacy? Then not only is he not your grandson, your son isn't yours either. How could there be any blood relation to find?" "After all, everyone here can see how much Bobby looks like Daniel. You, on the other hand, don't resemble Daniel in the slightest." That nearly drove Edward and Stacy out of their minds. But Edward didn't suspect Stacy. He jabbed a finger in my face and cursed me for having no respect for my elders. Stacy wasn't so composed. She launched into the thing she did best, the crying, the screaming, the threats to end it all. "Are you so filthy yourself that everyone looks filthy to you?" "My conscience is clear where the Edwards family is concerned. I'll do a fresh paternity test with Bobby too, to prove there's no relation between us. You dare?" I didn't refuse. I smiled. "Like I said, even if you do the test, all it proves is that Bobby isn't your grandchild. It doesn't prove the child isn't Daniel's." To Edward and Stacy, I was simply being unreasonable. "If you hadn't rushed to cremate Daniel right after the crash, would we ever have had to run a test with this bastard?" "You have to believe us. After Daniel's accident, she didn't wait for us to arrive. She cremated Daniel on the spot, precisely to stop us from having this bastard tested against Daniel." "We can produce a paternity test proving this bastard has nothing to do with us. Don't think one flap of your mouth can turn heaven and earth. If you've got the nerve, produce a paternity test between Daniel and this bastard to prove it." I shook my head. "I don't have a paternity test, and I don't have any physical evidence. But I have a witness." A witness? Edward and Stacy exchanged a look. "Who could possibly testify? How could anyone testify?" I didn't say a word, but a voice suddenly rose from the crowd. "I can testify!" Edward and Stacy turned toward the sound, and the instant they saw the face of the person coming, the two of them let out a shrill, ragged scream. "How is this possible?"