It was a bright spring morning when little Liam was born, and the whole family was gathered at the hospital. Proud new parents beamed as friends and relatives passed around the pink-cheeked baby like a winning lottery ticket.
Enter Margaret—the mother-in-law. A woman of strong opinions, louder whispers, and a permanent suspicion of her daughter-in-law, Fiona.
Margaret stared at the newborn with squinty eyes, pursed lips, and arms folded tight enough to crush a walnut.
“Well now…” she muttered, “Keep calm and—oh feck it—where’s me tea?”
Fiona, still in the hospital bed, raised an eyebrow. “Everything alright, Margaret?”
Margaret stepped forward and peered closer at the baby.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” she began, which of course was her favorite way to be rude, “but… he doesn’t look a bit like my son. Not a smidge! No ears, no chin, not even the Grogan nose! Are we sure he’s ours?”
Fiona blinked slowly. The room went quiet.
Then, with a calmness that could chill hot tea, Fiona lifted her hospital gown just slightly, pointed down and said, “I don’t mean to be rude either, Margaret—but nothing in there looks like your son either. And yet… here we are.”
The room burst into stunned silence.
Margaret opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish in shock.
Fiona leaned back on her pillows, grinning like the cat that licked the cream and told the cow about it.
“Would you like to hold him?” she asked sweetly.
Margaret took the baby with trembling hands, blinking away the comeback that never came.
Just then, Fiona’s best friend Siobhán burst in holding a tray of coffees and pastries. “Did I miss anything?”
Fiona winked. “Just the usual family bonding.”
Margaret, now swaying a bit from emotional whiplash, looked down at baby Liam who suddenly let out a perfectly timed fart—loud, proud, and unmistakably familiar.
Margaret’s eyes widened.
“Well, would ya look at that…” she said. “Maybe he is a Grogan after all. That’s your son’s backside trumpet if I’ve ever heard it.”
Everyone laughed.
And from that day on, Margaret never questioned Liam’s lineage again—but she always knocked twice before entering Fiona’s kitchen.