Hearing the gossip of the neighbors, my mother-in-law — Mrs. Teresa — always looked at me with suspicion. Since the day I became a daughter-in-law in the house in Quezon City, she never smiled at me, only coldly sarcastically saying things.

“Getting a girl to be your wife,”
she often said sourly, as if I was a defective product that her son — Mateo — had mistakenly chosen.

I knew that, in her eyes, I was no longer innocent, not worthy of Mateo — the son she always considered perfect.

I tried to fulfill my duties as a daughter-in-law. Every morning, I woke up early to cook almusal with pandesal, tocino, fried eggs; then cleaned the house, tended the vegetable garden and the sampaguita flower pots behind the house. But no matter how hard I tried, Mrs. Teresa did not change.

The gossip from the neighbors — who knew where it came from — was like a thorn stuck in her mind.

“She used to live in Manila, who knows what her past was,”
they whispered. And she believed… without a doubt.

Mateo, my husband, always comforted me that my mother just needed time to understand me better. He was gentle and caring, but I knew he was tired of being the one standing between my mother and his wife. I didn’t blame him, I just told myself to be patient. But every time I heard the phrase “take a girl as a wife” from Teresa’s mouth, my heart ached.

Three months passed, and the atmosphere in the house was still heavy. One night, the full moon was shining brightly in the sky, and Teresa suddenly called me out to the porch. I was nervous, thinking that I was about to hear another “lecture.”

But this time, her eyes were no longer cold, but mixed with confusion.

“Isabella, I want to apologize to you,”
she said, her voice trembling.

I was stunned, not believing my ears. Teresa — who had always criticized me — was apologizing?

She told me that the night before, she had overheard a conversation between two neighbors. They weren’t talking about me… but about herself. It turned out that many years ago, when she was young, she had loved another man before marrying Mateo’s father. The story had been rumored, exaggerated, and over time, the neighbors had mistakenly attributed it to me.

“I was wrong to believe the rumors and blame you,”
she said, her eyes welling up with tears.

“It was me who was called a ‘whore’ back then.”

I was stunned. This unexpected twist made me both sympathetic and angry. It turned out that she had judged me based on her own past wounds.

I hugged her, told her I didn’t blame her, and from then on, we began to understand each other better. The gossip outside gradually faded away, and the moonlight that night seemed to witness a new beginning for our mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship.