“If I see your mother in our bedroom at six in the morning again, she’s flying out of here along with you!” I shouted, when I realized I couldn’t take it anymore.

Tom had just returned from his night shift at the factory. Tired, exhausted, he only dreamed of silence and rest. But instead, he was met with an explosion of emotions that shattered his ordinary world into pieces.

It all started when Anna used her spare key again. The sixth time this month. Amy woke up with the feeling of a strange presence in the room. Opening her eyes, she saw the silhouette of her mother-in-law, standing by the bed, intently watching her sleeping son.

“Is she crazy?” Amy whispered to herself, as Anna silently crept out of the room.

At breakfast, the mother-in-law explained that she just wanted to make sure Tom slept well after his hard work. A mother’s heart never rests, she said. Amy kept silent, but inside she was seething with indignation.

Now, when Tom had returned home, all that exploded outwards.

“Do you realize what your mother is doing?” Amy paced the kitchen, gesticulating with her hands. “She enters our bedroom as if it were hers! She checks how you sleep! I’m thirty years old, Tom, and I feel like I’m in a kindergarten under a teacher’s supervision!”

Tom sat down tiredly on the stool. His head was buzzing from the noise of the machines, and now also from his wife’s shouting.

“Em, don’t shout like that. Mom is just worried. She doesn’t mean any harm.”

Those words were the final straw. Amy turned to him, and Tom saw something new in her eyes. Not just anger, but a cold determination.

“No harm? Tom, do you hear yourself? Your mother has turned our apartment into a public hallway! She has keys to all the rooms, she enters when she wants, she pries wherever she wants! And you always justify her obsession!”

“It’s not obsession,” Tom tried to protest. “She’s lonely, she worries…”

“Lonely?” Amy laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. “She’s not lonely, Tom. She’s a controller! She wants to run our lives. And the worst part is, she succeeds, because you let her.”

Tom felt caught in a vice. On one hand, his wife, who was clearly suffering because of his mother’s behavior. On the other, his mother, for whom he was the only joy in her life.

“Em, let’s talk calmly. I’ll go see Mom, I’ll explain to her…”

“You’ll explain to her?” Amy stopped right in front of him. “You’ve ‘explained’ it to her a hundred times already. And the result? She comes even more often! Now she doesn’t just jingle the keys at the entrance, she wanders around the apartment like a ghost!”

Amy walked to the window and looked out at the courtyard. There, on the bench beneath their windows, sat Anna. She was reading a newspaper, but every now and then she looked up towards their apartment.

“Look, Tom. There’s your mother. Sitting on the bench watching our windows. Like a guardian. Like… a stalker!”

Tom walked to the window too. Indeed, his mother was in the courtyard. There was nothing strange about it—she often liked to spend time outdoors. But now, after Amy’s words, everything looked different…

Amy stood by the window, arms crossed, watching Anna’s silhouette. Although she tried to tell herself she was just a harmless old woman, the way Anna kept looking up at her windows sent a shiver down Amy’s spine.

“I can’t take it anymore, Tom,” she whispered, her voice cracking with anger and exhaustion. “If you don’t put an end to this madness, I will.”

Tom remained silent. He loved his mother, but he was also aware that his marriage was hanging by a thread. He remembered those nights when Amy would wait for him with a hot dinner and a smile, and now she greeted him with reproaches and tears. Everything had changed since Anna started entering the house uninvited.

“Okay, Em, I’ll talk to her again. I promise,” said Tom, trying to sound firm.

— Again? No, Tom. This is the last time. If you don’t understand, your key disappears. That’s my condition.

Tom bit his lip. He knew that for Amy, that was an insurmountable boundary. If he didn’t act, he risked losing her.

A few hours later, Tom went down to the patio. Anna was still sitting on the bench, as if she had been waiting for him. She smiled warmly at him, but in her eyes shone that possessive glint he knew all too well.

“Mom, we need to talk,” she began. “You can’t keep coming into our house whenever you want. Amy and I need privacy.”

Anna shrugged, pretending to be offended.

“I’m your mother, Tom. A mother has the right to know how her son is living. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just making sure.”

“It’s not about making sure, Mom. It’s an invasion. Amy feels watched. And… to be honest, I feel suffocated too.”

A shadow of anger crossed Anna’s face.

—She put that idea in your head, didn’t she? These young women never understand the sacrifices a mother makes.

Tom sighed. It was the answer he had been expecting.

— No, Mom. I’m the one telling you. Me. If you don’t respect our house, I’ll take away your key.

Anna stood up abruptly from the bench.

— Take my key? From your own mother? I don’t recognize you, Tom!

That night, the atmosphere in the apartment was unbearable. Amy looked at him anxiously.

“Did you talk to her?” he asked in a low voice.

— Yes. But it wasn’t easy.

– AND?

Tom looked down.

— He doesn’t want to give the key back.

Amy felt like her blood was about to explode in her veins.

— Then I’ll do it.

She opened the drawer where she had once seen a copy of the key. It wasn’t there. She cursed under her breath and then fixed her eyes on Tom.

— You’ll change the lock tomorrow.

Tom nodded silently.

The following days were torture. Anna kept appearing: sometimes in the early hours of the morning, other times in the afternoon, like a ghost that refused to leave. Amy felt like she was going crazy. One morning, when she woke up, she found Anna going through the closet “to tidy it up.”

“Get out!” Amy shouted. “Get out right now!”

Anna looked at her with an unsettling calm.

— Tom would be nothing without me. And neither would you. You both belong to me.

Then Amy understood: it wasn’t motherly affection. It was obsession. A morbid control.

That night, she cried in Tom’s arms.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she sobbed. “It’s either her or me.”

Tom’s heart was breaking. He loved his mother, but he also loved the woman with whom he wanted to build a future. He knew he had to choose.

The next morning, without saying a word, he changed the lock. When Anna appeared, her key no longer fit.

The woman pounded on the door with her fists, shouting Tom’s name. He stood motionless, Amy by his side. It was the hardest decision of his life, but he understood that otherwise, he would lose his marriage.

Time passed. Anna began to visit less frequently, though an icy silence settled between them. Tom visited her occasionally, but he never again allowed her into his home without permission.

Amy and Tom gradually regained their peace, though the scars remained. Some nights, when Amy looked out the window and saw the empty bench in the courtyard, she felt relief… but also a pang of guilt.

Tom, on the other hand, lived with a painful nostalgia. He knew his mother was wasting away in loneliness. But he also knew that, if he hadn’t made that decision, he would have lost the woman with whom he had chosen to share his life.

It wasn’t a happy ending, but it was the only possible one. Her life returned to a fragile equilibrium, and the apartment walls no longer echoed with stranger footsteps.

Amy slept peacefully again beside Tom. And Tom, though haunted by memories and remorse, knew one thing: the family one chooses must be protected at any cost.