After my incident, my husband let his mother pack her bags and tell me, "My son didn't sign up for this." The next morning, they asked me, "How dare you do this to us?!"

My cookbooks were no longer on the worktop.

"Cindy," she said without smiling. "You look tired."

"That's normal after a car accident."

"David, help her to her room. She needs to rest."

My husband helped me through the corridor without looking me in the eyes.

"You look tired."

Behind us, I could hear my mother-in-law's heels clicking confidently on my kitchen floor, opening drawers she had no reason to open.

Something in my torso, apart from my broken ribs, began to contract.

I leaned back against the pillows, each rib throbbing with a dull, stabbing pain.

Abbie had snuggled up next to me with her stuffed rabbit, and I could hear Eleanor somewhere at the end of the corridor, walking purposefully.

I could hear my mother-in-law's heels clicking confidently.

Then I heard it.

Drawers. Not the ones in the kitchen. The ones in the bedroom, which opened and closed with a rhythm I couldn't quite grasp.

"Eleanor? David?" I called, carefully adjusting my leg. "Is everything alright in there?"

No response. Just more drawers.

I stroked my daughter's hair, trying to appear relaxed.

"Sweetheart, why don't you go and choose a coloring book, okay? Mommy needs a minute."

"Is everything alright in there?"

Abbie jumped off the dresser, docilely.

Two seconds later, Eleanor burst into the room with two designer suitcases, and my stomach knotted.

They were brand new. Matching. Already tagged.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

My mother-in-law didn't look at me.

My stomach was in knots.

She walked over to David's closet and began taking shirts off their hangers with the ease of someone who had rehearsed this gesture a hundred times in her head.

"Eleanor. Stop. What are you doing?!"

"I'm packing my son's suitcases."

" For what ? "

"He's going home."

I laughed because it seemed to me to be the only appropriate reaction to such an absurd statement.

"David has returned."

"He's going home."

My mother-in-law folded a sweater without saying a word.

My husband then appeared in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the floor as if it owed him money. He refused to look at me or his mother. He simply stood there, hands in his pockets, a grown man pretending to be a piece of furniture.

"David." My voice broke. "David, look at me!"

He didn't do it.

He didn't want to look at me.

"Can someone tell me what's happening in my room right now? How could you abandon your injured wife and child?"

Eleanor closed the first suitcase with a decisive gesture and sneered.

"My son didn't sign up to be a nanny. He has an important career. He'll come back when you're back on your feet."

I stared at her. "Back on her feet?"

"You heard me perfectly."

"I am his wife!"

"You've got a broken leg and a few fractured ribs, darling. He's not equipped for that."

"You heard me perfectly."

I turned to my husband, and I felt something small and desperate rising in my throat.

"Say something! Anything. Your wife just got hit by a car. Your daughter is four years old. Are you really going to let your mother pack her suitcase?"

David finally looked up. His gaze was that of a child caught red-handed, even though he had been told it wasn't his fault.

"Honey," he said softly. "It's just really stressful right now."

"Stressful for whom, David?"

" In my opinion. "

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