My Aunt Gifted My Baby A “Daddy’s Maybe” Onesie At Her First Birthday Party. I Responded By Revealing Her $22,000 Theft From My Dying Grandma. Am I The One Who Went Too Far?

Apologies

That afternoon my phone rang again and this time it was Kayla, Daniel’s mom. My stomach dropped when I saw her name because I figured she was calling to yell at me or defend Beverly somehow. But when I answered, her voice sounded small and shaky. She said she needed to apologize for questioning Daniel about paternity.

She told me she realized now that she let Beverly’s gossip get into her head and change how she saw things. She said she was ashamed that she doubted her own son and made him feel like he needed to prove something. She kept saying she was sorry over and over.

I told her it was okay and that I understood how Beverly’s constant comments could mess with people’s heads. We talked for a few more minutes and she asked if she could come visit Lily soon. I said yes because I could tell she really meant the apology.

My phone buzzed with a text from Christopher about 20 minutes after I got off the call with Kayla. The text was long and said he wanted to apologize for his comments about Lily’s features. He admitted he was just repeating stuff he’d heard other family members saying at gatherings. He wrote that he never actually believed any of it and felt terrible for joining in. He said he should have stood up for us instead of making Daniel feel worse.

I texted back that I appreciated him saying that and it took guts to admit he was wrong.

Taking the Test

Two days later we did the DNA test. Daniel opened the kit at the kitchen table while Lily played with blocks on the floor. The instructions said to swab the inside of the cheek for 30 seconds. Daniel did his first, rubbing the long cotton swab against the inside of his mouth while watching the timer on his phone.

Then I held Lily still while he did hers, which was harder because she kept trying to grab the swab and bite it. We got enough cells though and sealed both swabs in their separate tubes. The kit came with a prepaid shipping envelope and we walked to the post office right away to send it overnight. The lady behind the counter scanned it and said it would arrive tomorrow. The waiting period was 3 to 5 business days after they got it.

Walking back to the car, Daniel grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. Neither of us said anything, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Every hour was going to feel like torture even though we both knew what the results would say.

3 days into the waiting period I got an email notification on my phone. Beverly’s name popped up in my inbox and my hands started shaking before I even opened it. The email was long, maybe 10 paragraphs, and she called me vindictive and cruel in the first sentence.

She claimed the estate situation was just a misunderstanding and I was using it to manipulate the whole family against her. She wrote that I’d always been jealous of her close relationship with grandmother and that’s why I was making up lies now. She said I was a terrible person for destroying family bonds over a joke that was meant to be funny.

The email went on and on about how I was too sensitive and couldn’t handle teasing. She accused me of turning everyone against her because I wanted attention and sympathy. By the end, she was saying I’d regret using lies to hurt her.

I read it twice and felt my face getting hot with anger. I didn’t write back to Beverly. Instead, I just hit the forward button and sent the whole email to Dad without adding any comments. He replied in less than 5 minutes. His message said he’d already contacted the estate lawyer that morning and they were pursuing legal action against Beverly. He wrote that Beverly was no longer welcome at any family gathering he hosted and he’d made that clear to everyone. He told me to block her number and email so she couldn’t contact me anymore. I did exactly that.

99.9% Probability

The next day Scarlet called while I was folding laundry. She asked how I was holding up after everything that happened at the party. I told her I was okay, just waiting on the DNA results and trying not to think about Beverly.

Scarlet got quiet for a second and then said she needed to tell me something. She revealed that Beverly had actually gotten five other relatives to put money in the betting pool about my marriage ending. She listed their names and I felt sick hearing some of them because they were people I thought liked me. Scarlet said she refused to participate when Beverly asked her to join. She told me she’d even argued with Beverly about how wrong it was, but she didn’t tell me before because she thought I already had enough stress.

I thanked her for telling me now and for not joining in. After we hung up I sat on the couch for a while just processing the fact that six people in my family had been betting on my marriage falling apart.

Day four of waiting arrived and I was feeding Lily breakfast in her high chair when Daniel came into the kitchen holding an envelope. His face looked pale and his hands were shaking slightly. He said the results came in the mail. I put down Lily’s spoon and watched him open the envelope slowly like he was scared of what might be inside, even though we knew.

He pulled out the paper and stared at it for what felt like a full minute without moving. Then he turned it around to show me. The paper had official letterhead at the top and a bunch of technical language I didn’t understand, but right in the middle in bold letters it said: 99.9% probability of paternity.

Daniel’s eyes filled up with tears and so did mine. We just stood there in the kitchen crying while Lily banged her plastic spoon on her tray and babbled at us. Daniel came over and hugged me so hard I could barely breathe. Neither of us said anything for a long time.