At the wedding, my daughter-in-law told the officiant to skip the part where she'd start calling me "Mom."

"I only recognize the woman who gave birth to me and raised me, so I won't be calling this stranger 'Mom.'"

"And from now on, your son and I are the family. You'll need to think of yourself as an outsider and stay out of our business."

I wanted to argue, but my son told me to let it go.

"She's just scared you'll turn into one of those monster mothers-in-law, so she's setting boundaries early. Do it for me, okay? Don't make a scene."

I didn't want my son stuck in the middle, so I swallowed it and went along.

But I never expected it.

After that day, my son and daughter-in-law really did become "strangers."

Not only was I barred from their home, on every holiday they vanished without a trace.

The moment I tried to say anything, my daughter-in-law would throw her wedding-day words back in my face to shut me up.

Even when my heart condition flared up and I called them begging for help.

The two of them just laughed into the phone and said.

"You've got the wrong number. There's no son or daughter-in-law of yours here."

The rage seized my heart, and I died on the spot.

Now I had it all over again.

I didn't swallow it, didn't get angry. I simply stood up, calm.

"I came to attend my son and daughter-in-law's wedding."

"But since you say we're strangers, then I must have wandered into the wrong reception."

——

The instant the words left my mouth, the lively reception fell dead silent.

The faces in the crowd ran the whole range.

Still, most of them didn't think I was the one out of line.

After all.

There was only one daughter-in-law in the world who'd stand at her own wedding and announce that the couple and the mother-in-law were strangers, and that was Gwendolen Dale. All I'd done was follow her logic to its conclusion.

Gwendolen frowned, not feeling she'd said anything wrong, and clearly not believing I'd actually leave.

She let out a few cold laughs.

"What? Did I say something untrue?"

"I married Karl to be his wife, not to be your daughter or your daughter-in-law."

"After the wedding, Karl and I are the family. You're not!"

"So tell me, was I wrong to say you and I are strangers?"

I'd heard this twisted logic plenty of times in my last life, so I was more than ready for it.

I wasn't angry at all, and I didn't argue. I just smiled and nodded.

"You're absolutely right. So I'll do as you say and be a stranger, and leave your reception. Is there anything wrong with that?"

Gwendolen opened her mouth, but didn't know what to say.

So she stamped her foot and looked over at Karl Tanner, who was standing there playing deaf.

Karl had his own headache now. He walked over to me, lowered his voice a little, but his tone carried an edge of impatience.

"Mom, can you read the room and stop causing a scene?"

I looked at Karl, my expression utterly cold.

"I'm causing a scene?"

"I'm only doing what you told me, listening to your wife. She says I'm a stranger, so of course I have to leave. Unless you'd rather I get into a fight with her?"

Karl stared at me.

As if he was searching my face for anger.

The second my expression slipped, he could slap the "monster mother-in-law" and "making trouble for no reason" labels right onto me.

But I wasn't angry. The way I looked at him really was exactly the way you'd look at a stranger!

So his tone softened a touch.

"Gwendolen's words were harsh, sure, but as long as you treat her sincerely from now on, she'll come around and treat you the same way, and one day she'll truly want to call you 'Mom.'"

"Look at me. Isn't that exactly how I am with my father-in-law and mother-in-law?"

These words of Karl's were word for word the same thing I'd told myself in my last life.

I'd been a daughter-in-law once too. I knew exactly what it felt like to be asked, out of nowhere, to call a "stranger" your mother.

So in the beginning, I wasn't actually angry.

I told myself the same thing, over and over.

As long as I treated Gwendolen with sincerity, heart for heart, surely she'd be won over and call me Mom in the end.

But I was wrong about that too.

In my last life, after the wedding banquet.

I wanted to win them over, so I upgraded their honeymoon trip.

But Gwendolen wasn't pleased in the slightest. She rolled her eyes at me instead.

"If you could upgrade it, why wait until now? You just want me grateful to you, don't you? What a scheming little witch!"

With Karl backing her up, I started thinking Gwendolen had a point.

So the next time I gave her a gift, I went straight for the best from the start.

But while Gwendolen loved the gift, her face stayed just as sour toward me.

"Your money is my money. You spend my money to buy me a present, and I'm supposed to thank you for it?"

…

Time after time I tried to please her, and time after time she met me with cold contempt. So I cooled off. But the moment I cooled off, the moment Gwendolen stopped getting anything out of me, she panicked.

She wouldn't let me visit her family. She wouldn't let Karl come see me.

And when I asked why.

She said.

"I made it perfectly clear at the wedding. From now on we're strangers. You didn't object back then, so what are you making a scene about now?"

So in the end.

I lost my daughter-in-law, and I lost my son too.

All I could do was watch the son I'd raised wear himself to the bone serving his in-laws…

The memory came back to me.

I looked at Karl.

"Heart for heart. There's nothing wrong with that."

"But you tell me. Does Gwendolen have any sincere feeling for me?"

"Or does it only count as sincerity if I, the elder, grovel at her feet? Then what would you call the way she's acting?"

"As I recall, the first time you went to meet your in-laws, you knelt and kowtowed and called them Mom and Dad. Did your in-laws trade you their sincerity for yours back then?"

The words landed.

A scatter of mocking murmurs rose from the floor. No one could make out exactly what was being said, but a few key words came through clearly enough.

【No manners… ungrateful snake… vicious daughter-in-law… cruel…】

Quinton Dale and Tamara Dale, who'd been sitting above it all as if none of this concerned them, couldn't stay put any longer.

The two of them came to either side of me with placating smiles, urging me not to be upset.

"Our Gwendolen isn't a bad sort, she just speaks a little too bluntly."

"It's not that she'll never come around to calling you Mom. The thing is, she's slow to warm up. You have to give her some time."

"After all, everyone knows our Gwendolen is exceptional, a rare gem of a daughter. Once she accepts you, she's sure to treat you well too."

The corner of my mouth lifted slightly.

"I don't like forcing anyone. If she doesn't want to accept me, I won't hold it against her."

"Everyone here knows it. There's no one more good-natured than me."

There was nothing wrong with what I'd said. Any other mother-in-law in this situation might have caused a huge scene. I was simply taking the easy way out and leaving. That was about as generous as it got.

So the crowd's mocking grew louder, quickly turning into open chatter, then curses, all of them blaming Gwendolen for going too far.

I hadn't planned to linger, so once I'd said my piece I made to leave.

Gwendolen had meant to put me in my place, but she never expected me to actually walk out. If I left, what would that make her?

So her lips puckered and the tears came spilling down at once.

"Fine, fine, fine, I'm the wicked daughter-in-law, I won't get married, I'll go. That works for everyone, right?"

Gwendolen made a great show of getting ready to leave.

Karl went into a panic on the spot. He pulled Gwendolen into his arms, and the look he shot me was nearly spitting fire.

"This is my wedding. Can't you rein in that rotten temper of yours for once?"

"You apologize to Gwendolen right now and sit down for the reception like a decent person. If you actually dare walk out of this hall, then I no longer have a mother!"

I stopped, but I didn't turn around. I simply said one cold word, "Fine," and walked straight out.

After I left, the wedding went on as planned. The only difference was that the people who'd come to give their blessings had turned into people watching a spectacle. Before the reception even ended, what had happened was already common knowledge.

Everyone knew.

They all knew that Gwendolen had refused to call her mother-in-law "Mom" at the wedding, that she'd sneered and demanded her mother-in-law treat her like a stranger, and that she'd ended up making her mother-in-law so angry she walked out on the spot.

Gwendolen felt too humiliated to show her face. She didn't even go on the honeymoon they'd booked, hiding at home and crying for days.

Which had Karl beside himself, fretting over her.

He had no choice. He had to forget every word he'd said at the reception and slap his own face, texting me.

"Gwendolen and I only get married once in our lives. You ruined the wedding. Are you going to ruin our marriage too?"

"Hurry up and buy Gwendolen some gifts and apologize properly, or I really will disown you."

After Karl sent those two messages,

he followed up with a long list, including designer handbags, shoes, some gold jewelry, and skincare and cosmetics.

I didn't reply.

But I did buy everything on the list. Just not for Gwendolen. For myself. And I didn't just use it all, I made a point of posting about it on social media.

【Spending money on myself just feels so good!】

The second that post went up, Karl and Gwendolen completely lost it. This time they didn't text me. Instead they copied me and put up their own post taking veiled shots at me.

Saying I'd lost my mind.

Too bad their post landed without a ripple, and it didn't scare me one bit.

When that didn't work on me, they started a group chat, and in front of a whole crowd of relatives and friends, dropped a statement severing family ties right there in the group.

The relatives and friends all knew what had happened.

But in the spirit of family harmony making everything prosper, of urging people to make up rather than break apart, they still told Karl and Gwendolen not to be rash, and told me to give my child another chance.

I just took a screenshot and saved the statement Karl and Gwendolen had posted severing ties.

Then, copying the way Gwendolen used to reply to my messages, I sent back a "1" and left the group chat right away.

Less than a minute after I left the group, Karl's call came through.

"What's that supposed to mean, what you posted in the group?"

I gave a little laugh.

"Whenever I used to text Gwendolen, she'd always reply with a '1.' I asked you about it once, and you said it meant she'd already seen it. So why are you asking me now?"

Karl was nearly apoplectic.

"How is it you pick up the bad habits and never the good ones? This is a serious matter. How could you just reply with a '1'? That's so disrespectful."

"Gwendolen's crying her eyes out."

I, on the other hand, found it deeply satisfying.

"So it turns out you all know perfectly well that replying with a '1' is brushing someone off, that it's disrespectful, that it's something worth getting angry about."

"And here I thought you didn't know. Here I thought I was overthinking it. Here I thought it was a perfectly proper reply."

"But either way, as long as you understand what it means, that's enough."

Karl went mute.

Only then did it occur to him that throughout his years of dating Gwendolen, she'd been brushing me off this exact same way the whole time. At most I'd simply learned by example, paid them back in their own coin.

Seeing that Karl had gone quiet, I grew impatient and moved to hang up.

That got him panicking.

Through the phone came the sound of a door opening and closing. I figured he'd slipped out to the balcony.