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?”
Toby 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.
“Thank goodness,” Toby said, picking me up. “Finally!”
Once we were safe within the second trimester, we told our family — satisfied that our baby’s growth was on track.
And then, before we knew it, our daughter, Maddie, was born.
My mother-in-law took over, caring for the three of us while we navigated the new waters of parenthood. She cooked and cleaned, and took over Maddie’s early morning feeding times.
Julia’s presence made me feel loved, especially because my parents were unable to come over and meet our baby yet.
Until Toby discovered something in our home that changed the way I viewed Julia forever.
Toby and I didn’t mind that Maddie spent the night in our bed – it was just easier for me to feed her through the night. But one night, Maddie had a blow-out, causing our bed to suffer the consequences.
“You sort the baby out,” Toby yawned when I woke him up to Maddie’s drama. “I’ll sort the bed out.”
I picked up my daughter and took her into the bathroom – her blow-out called for a bath, not just a diaper change. Maddie cooed and pressed her gummy hands to my face.
“Sweet girl,” I told her. “You just have to make life difficult for Dad and me, huh?”
Meanwhile, what I didn’t know was that while Toby was stripping our bed, he had uncovered something strange attached to our mattress.
By the time I was done with Maddie, she was almost asleep again. So, I took her to our bedroom, ready to put her into the crib while I helped Toby change the bedding.
“Oh, honey,” he said when he saw me standing in the doorway. “We cannot use this anymore.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, setting Maddie down. “Did she get it into the mattress?”
Toby looked nervous. He had picked up the mattress so that it stood on its side.
“No, it’s not that,” he said.
I was perplexed, watching him struggle with words. “What are you talking about? It’s just a mattress, we’ll clean it–”
“No, Larissa,” he interrupted, his voice rising in panic. “It’s not just a mattress.”
By this point, I was sleep-deprived and slightly annoyed with my husband. Toby was not a man to fumble for his words, and yet, here he was, in the early hours of the morning, too uncertain to change the sheets.
“What?”
“Look what I found,” he said.
Toby handed me a little silk bag. Inside there were various herbs. I hadn’t seen the bag before.
“What is this? Where did you find it?” I asked.
“It was pinned to the mattress. It was under the mattress protector, so I think we just didn’t notice it before.”
“Fine, but what is it for?” I asked, confused and irritable.
“It’s fertility herbs, it has to be!” Toby exclaimed.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Listen, I don’t know if this is true or not, but I do know that my mother believes in old wives’ tales. What if this is one of those tales?”
“She would never do that,” I said. “No way!”
“Then where else did it come from?” Toby asked flatly.
He made us sleep in the guest bedroom – where Julia slept when she stayed over. But of course, I couldn’t sleep. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t silence my mind.
I looked at Maddie, sleeping in between Toby and me. She was perfect. Sure, we had a difficult time conceiving, but Maddie was our child through and through. She had my hair and Toby’s eyes. She was ours in every sense of the word.
But there was no mistaking the fact that she was born shortly after Julia had gifted us the bed.
Could those herbs have helped with Maddie’s birth? But was that even possible?
I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, the familiar smell of gas hit my nose. Outside, Toby was dousing our mattress. He threw the match on it as I stepped outside the back door.
The mattress went up in flames in an instant – the flames seemed to dance with a fervor that matched the turmoil inside me. I was trying to understand Julia’s motives. She had always been so close to us – to me – so I couldn’t understand why she would keep this away from me.
I didn’t understand the significance of the herbs, but if she had explained it to me, I wouldn’t have felt the paranoia and fear that had settled in my body since Toby’s discovery.
“What are you doing?” I exclaimed, hearing the fire grow louder.
“We couldn’t keep it, honey. We just couldn’t,” he said.
Toby had a deep fear for anything esoteric – anything that bordered the supernatural was too much for him. He would have rather slept in our car than spent another night in the house with the mattress.
As the mattress burned, I kept an eye on the baby monitor, watching Maddie sleep. The silence between Toby and I was heavy with the uncertainty of what had been going on in our home.
Later, Julia came over to make was breakfast as usual. My husband took the lead, his voice steady but laced with an undercurrent of betrayal.
“Mom, why didn’t you tell us about the mattress? About the herbs?” he asked.
I poured Julia a cup of tea – despite everything that we had learned, she was still one of my favorite people. I loved her like I loved my mother.
My mother-in-law’s face crumpled, her usual vibrancy replaced by a somber guilt.
“I just wanted to help. I knew that you were having trouble conceiving, and I thought that if it worked, you wouldn’t care how. I never meant to hurt either of you. Especially not my granddaughter.”
“What else did you do? What’s in the bag? Other than the herbs?” Toby’s questions flew hard and fast around our living room.
“Nothing!” Julia exclaimed, finally registering Toby’s fear. “It’s just dried herbs. I can give you a list of them,” she said. “I’ll take you both to the store where I got them from. It’s a sweet little apothecary next to my dentist. It’s a store all about natural wellness.”
“You could have just told us,” I found myself saying. “How we can trust anything you do now? How do we know if our baby is a miracle baby or just an outcome of your herbs?”
“Does that matter?” she asked, her eyes brimming with tears. “Maddie is here and she’s ours.”
I couldn’t exactly argue with that. Of course, Maddie was ours. I was just feeling wounded that Julia had done this and not told me. I also felt obligated to be angry with her – because my husband was livid.
“I’m sorry,” my mother-in-law whispered. “I really am.”
At her words, I felt Toby soften next to me.
“We need to start over, Mom,” he said. “If you plan on doing anything like this again, you have to tell us first. We need to know what’s going on in our own homes.”
Julia nodded and smiled at us. She seemed shaken that we had discovered the truth.
I was confused – there was a part of me that was eternally grateful to her because I know how difficult it was for us to get pregnant. But at the same time, how could sleeping on a bunch of herbs actually help us get pregnant?
Toby spent the rest of the day looking for mattresses online, while Julia baked us a tart for lunch. I just reveled in spending time with my daughter.
What do you think? Do you believe in natural remedies and old wives tales?
For 10 Days, My Husband Claimed to Be Sleeping in His Car — I Thought He Was Cheating, but the Reality Was Crazier
When Nella notices her husband, Eric, acting a bit strange, she follows him to see where he goes off to. A few nights into this new routine, she decides to just ask him the truth. But the truth is deeper and darker than Nella could have expected. And it changes her life forever…
It all started when my husband, Eric, told me he needed some space to think things through.
We’ve been married for 12 years, and while we’ve had our share of ups and downs, this was the first time he’d ever said something like that.
A newly wed couple | Source: Midjourney
“It’s not about us, Nella,” he insisted. “I just need time to clear my head.”
But of course, my mind went to the worst possible place.
Eric was always the steady one in our marriage. He was reliable, grounded, and calm. So, when he packed a bag and casually mentioned that he would be sleeping in his car for a few nights, my anxiety went into overdrive.
A man packing a bag | Source: Midjourney
Was Eric cheating? Was this his way of leaving me? Was this how he was going to slowly slip out of our lives?
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I can give you space here, at home. You can take the guest room, or we can make the pool house into something cozier?”
“Nella,” he said, smiling slowly. “It’s not about us. But this is important to me, okay?”
A worried woman | Source: Midjourney
For ten nights, Eric would leave the house right after dinner and return just before sunrise.
He looked like hell, honestly. His hair would be disheveled, he had dark circles under his eyes, and he would move very slowly like his body just didn’t want to cooperate.
But every single time I asked, he’d brush me off with a forced smile, saying that he just needed a break.
A close up of a man | Source: Midjourney
“I promise, it’s nothing like that. Trust me, please,” he would say whenever I pushed him about whether there was someone else.
But how could I? My imagination ran wild. I pictured him in a hotel room with someone else, living a double life.
By the fifth night, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I decided to follow him.
A frowning woman | Source: Midjourney
Honestly, I felt ridiculous. It was like some cliché out of a soap drama. But I had to know what was really going on. I waited until he drove off and tailed him a few blocks behind.
He didn’t go far. Just to the local park, where he pulled up under a tree and killed the headlights.
I parked a little farther down the street and watched from the shadows. I was nervous, like I was expecting something… or someone to get into the car. Was this where Eric’s mistress met him?
But the longer I sat there, the more I realized that nobody was going to show up. He just sat there, staring at his phone, then stretching out with his pillow and blanket.
A car parked in a park | Source: Midjourney
It was just him, alone, in the dark.
For the next few nights, the same routine played out.
Eric would go to the park, curl up in the front seat, and spend hours there before driving home. My mind was just spinning.
Why would he sleep in his car unless he was hiding something? Why suffer through all that discomfort unless it was for someone else?
A man sleeping in a car | Source: Midjourney
On the tenth night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had had enough. I needed answers. After putting the kids to bed, I locked them in and drove out to the park. This time, I wasn’t just going to watch from the sidelines.
No, we were too far into this.
I pulled up next to his car and tapped on the window.
Eric looked up, startled. He quickly unlocked the door and motioned for me to get in. The air between us was thick with unspoken words, and as I slid into the passenger seat, all my emotions came rushing to the surface.
A shocked man sitting in his car | Source: Midjourney
“What the hell is going on, Eric?” I demanded. “Why are you doing this? Be honest, are you seeing someone? Is that why you’re here? Are you afraid that the kids would see or find out?”
I spoke too fast, as though all the words just needed to fall out as quickly as possible.
Eric sighed deeply, rubbing his face with his hands. I could see the exhaustion in him now, the kind that went deeper than just losing sleep. It was like he’d been carrying a weight he didn’t know how to put down.
A close up of a woman | Source: Midjourney
“No,” he said quietly. “It’s not like that, I keep telling you. There’s no one else.”
“Then what is it?” I pressed on. “You’re scaring me, Eric. Why are you out here every night?”
He glanced at me, then reached into the backseat, pulling out a small stack of books and a recording device.
“I didn’t want you to know,” he said softly. “Because I just didn’t want to worry you. But I’ve been out here recording bedtime stories for the kids.”
A stack of children’s books | Source: Midjourney
I blinked slowly.
“Bedtime stories? Why would that worry me?”
He hesitated, his hands trembling slightly. “I went to the doctor a few weeks ago. They found something, a tumor. A biopsy was done, and the results came back. It’s cancer, Nella. And it’s bad. Borrowed time is all I have.”
A doctor’s office | Source: Midjourney
It felt like the ground had crumbled beneath me. I couldn’t breathe.
“What?” I gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to put that on you,” he said. “I wanted you to be normal around me, and with the kids. But I also wanted to make something for the kids to remember me by.”
An upset man | Source: Midjourney
I grabbed his hand and held it tightly, as the reality of what he’d been hiding hit me all at once. This wasn’t about some other woman.
This was about my husband preparing for a future that I didn’t want to imagine.
“I refuse to let you go through this alone,” I said. “We’re going to face this together, Eric, whatever it takes.”
He nodded, tears slipping down his face, just as they slipped down mine.
A crying woman | Source: Midjourney
The months that followed were a blur of doctor’s appointments, treatments, and nights spent huddled together, clinging to each other as we tried to stay hopeful.
Eric spent all this time with the kids, playing with them and taking them on walks if he could manage it. He made them pancakes for dinner and pizza for breakfast.
He told them that they could choose their Halloween costumes months in advance.
Children in Halloween costumes | Source: Midjourney
And he fought harder than I ever imagined, but despite everything, the disease was relentless. He’d known from the start that the odds were against him.
He’d known it when he started recording those stories in his car, preparing for the worst while still trying to give us the best of himself.
“I’ll try for as long as I can,” he promised me one night when we were in bed. “But I’m getting… tired.”
A voice recorder on a table | Source: Midjourney
“I know, my love,” I said, gripping his hands under the covers. “Whatever you do, listen to your body, too. Rest when it tells you to.”
Eric passed away in the quiet hours of a winter morning. I remember the stillness of the house, how empty it felt without him there. Our kids, so young and full of life, didn’t yet grasp the enormity of the loss.
But they sat at the funeral, looking glassy-eyed and lost.
A funeral setting | Source: Midjourney
Just like me.
A few days after the funeral, when the house was filled with the muted sounds of family members and well-wishers, I finally felt ready to listen to those recordings.
I went out to his car and took the recorder out of the bag he had left it in. I scrolled through the files, seeing the familiar titles of the kids’ favorite stories.
A voice recording device | Source: Midjourney
But then, one caught my eye:
Our Story.
I took a deep breath and pressed play. His voice was warm and steady and filled the space around me instantly.
“Once upon a time,” he began. “There was a princess. She was kind, smart, and braver than any knight in the land. But most of all, she had the biggest heart anyone had ever known.”
I smiled.
An upset woman | Source: Midjourney
“One day, she met an ordinary man, just a guy from a village with no title, no riches. But the moment he saw her, he knew his life would never be the same.”
Tears welled up in my eyes as I listened, his voice wrapping around me like a hug I so desperately needed.
“The princess and the man lived many happy years together,” he continued. “Raising a prince and princess together. And even though the man grew old and weary, he knew that his princess would go on. She would continue to rule their home… with love and strength.”
Eric’s voice faltered on the last words. I could almost imagine his upset face.
A crying man | Source: Midjourney
“So, my love,” he said softly. “If you’re listening to this, know that you were my fairytale. You turned my ordinary life into something extraordinary. And even though I can’t be with you anymore, your fairytale must go on.”
It was just what I needed.
And now, whenever the days feel too heavy, I listen to Eric’s voice again. And somehow, I can smile again.
A smiling woman | Source: Midjourney
What would you have done?
If you enjoyed this story, here’s another one for you:
My Husband Surprised Me on My Birthday — When I Saw Who Jumped Out of the Gift Box, I Broke Down in Tears
As Amelia’s 30th birthday approaches, her husband, Jared, keeps hinting at a major surprise for her, causing her imagination to grow wild. On the day of her birthday party, she discovers that her birthday surprise is a man who she never wanted to see again…
I could tell that something was up. My husband, Jared, had been buzzing for weeks about this “life-changing” gift. Every day, another cryptic comment came my way.
“You’ll love it, babe, trust me!” Jared would say, practically bouncing on his feet.
An excited man | Source: Midjourney
When I asked him about it, he’d just smirk and say, “You’ll see!”
Honestly, by the time my birthday party rolled around, I was convinced that it was something practical. Like maybe an appliance, or the recliner with the massage functions I’d been eyeing. I would have been happy with the ice cream machine that I wanted, but honestly, Jared’s enthusiasm made me feel good that he’d gone to so much trouble.
“You’re worth all the effort, Amelia,” he said. “I just want you to feel special and know that I listen and I care.”
A recliner with a green bow | Source: Midjourney
So when he walked in on my birthday, he struggled to roll in a massive gift box much bigger than our washing machine.
This work is inspired by real events and people, but it has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The author and publisher make no claims to the accuracy of events or the portrayal of characters and are not liable for any misinterpretation. This story is provided “as is,” and any opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.
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