At Sunday dinner, my uninvited mother-in-law looked pale but said she was fine. She secretly shared her water bottle with my son, and two days later he got the flu.
I told my husband, furious, but he said she was in the hospital—her flu hit her hard and she has lupus, which weakens her immune system.
I was stunned. I didn’t know she was sick—she hadn’t even told her son. Our relationship had always been tense, so my anger slowly turned into guilt. I stayed home with our son while my husband went to see her.
Later, my husband said she wanted to talk to me alone. At her hospital room, she apologized. She admitted she’d been ill for weeks but didn’t tell anyone. She came to dinner hoping to make peace with me, and regretted not stopping our son from drinking from her bottle.
She gave me a long handwritten letter explaining her past: her jealousy, her fears, and that she was diagnosed with lupus before our wedding but kept it secret out of pride and shame.
Moved, I visited her with our son the next day. We weren’t instant friends, but we began to understand each other. She later shared more about her life and fears, and by the time she was discharged, we had an honest, if still fragile, relationship.