Five months pregnant and glowing, I truly thought my life was finally perfect. Well… almost perfect.
I had my dream husband, Arnold, who still brought me coffee in bed every morning and rubbed my swollen feet without complaint. I had our little white-picket-fence house we’d saved years to afford. The nursery was already half-painted a soft yellow because we wanted the baby’s gender to be a surprise.
Everything should have felt peaceful. But there was one dark cloud over my happiness—my mother-in-law, Martha.
Arnold’s dad had passed away years ago, and Martha had been living with Arnold ever since. She was 65, sharp as a tack, and stubborn as stone. Living with her wasn’t the problem. The problem was her total lack of boundaries. Especially with packages.
UPS, FedEx, Amazon—it didn’t matter. The second she heard a delivery truck, she shot out of her room like she was running the 100-meter dash in the Olympics. Before I could even check the tracking notification, she’d already snatched the package and torn it open like it was Christmas morning.
And when I confronted her, she’d just smile sweetly and say, “Oh, I thought it might be something important for the house.”
I tried to bite my tongue, telling myself it wasn’t worth the drama. But pregnancy had changed me—I was more protective of my space, more sensitive to disrespect. And Martha’s snooping suddenly felt a lot more personal.
The breaking point came last month.
I’d been secretly planning our gender reveal party. I spent weeks ordering decorations and carefully timing the deliveries so Arnold wouldn’t catch on. I wanted that moment—the big reveal—to be ours.
But one afternoon, when I came home from a doctor’s appointment, I saw the front door wide open. My stomach sank. On the kitchen counter, one of my carefully planned boxes sat ripped apart. Tissue paper everywhere. Party supplies scattered like confetti.
And there was Martha, holding up a bright blue card, waving it like a victory flag.
“It’s a boy!” she shouted across the house to Arnold, who was working in his office. “Can you believe it? Cecelia’s having a boy!”
I froze. My cheeks burned. That was supposed to be our moment. My surprise. My special announcement for our family. And she had stolen it in one selfish second.
Arnold rushed out of his office, eyes wide, while I stood there trying not to scream. I knew Martha’s game—if I exploded, she’d twist the story until she was the victim. “Oh, poor me, I was only trying to help.”
So instead, I smiled. And inside, I began plotting.
If Martha wanted to snoop so badly, then I would give her something unforgettable.
That night, while Arnold slept peacefully beside me, I grabbed my laptop. My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I started shopping—not for baby supplies this time, but for payback.
First item? The biggest, loudest, most ridiculous adult toy I could find. Bright neon pink. The kind of thing no one could unsee once it was discovered.
Second item? A glitter bomb disguised as a boring padded envelope. I’d seen them online as pranks for porch thieves. Perfect for my own little package thief.
I scheduled both for overnight shipping. And I had one more trick up my sleeve: our security camera by the front door. It would catch everything.
The next morning, I tracked the delivery like a hawk. My heart pounded when I saw the words “Delivered.”
From the window, I watched as Martha’s door creaked open. She rushed to the porch, grabbed the packages, and vanished into her room like a thief in the night.
Ten minutes of silence. Then—
A blood-curdling scream ripped through the house.
It was followed by thuds, crashes, and the unmistakable sound of someone flailing around.
Finally, her door creaked open again. Martha shuffled slowly to the living room, hair messy, glasses crooked, her hands covered in specks of silver glitter. She set the packages on the table and scurried toward the kitchen sink.
I walked in casually, pretending to be confused. “Everything okay out here?”
She turned, cheeks blazing red. “Oh yes, dear. Just… just cleaning up a little spill.”
I picked up the empty glitter envelope and tilted my head. “Strange. This has my name on it. Did you happen to see who opened it?”
Martha stammered, “I… well… I thought maybe—”
“Maybe it was yours? Even though it clearly says Cecelia?” I asked sweetly.
She dropped her gaze. For once, she had no excuse.
Right then, Arnold walked in from his office. He froze when he saw the glitter-covered table and the neon pink embarrassment sitting in plain view.
“What in the world happened here?” he asked.
I smiled innocently. “Why don’t you tell him, Martha? You opened my packages.”
Martha turned red, mumbled, “Sorry, sorry… won’t happen again,” and disappeared back into her room.
Arnold raised an eyebrow at me. “Did you really order a glitter bomb to catch my mother snooping?”
I tried not to laugh. “Maybe. And it worked perfectly.”
He shook his head, half amused, half stunned. “You’re terrible. And brilliant. But mostly terrible.”
From that day on, my packages stayed untouched. Not once did Martha dare grab another.
But of course, she couldn’t help herself in another way—she gossiped. She started whispering to Arnold’s relatives, telling them I was ordering “inappropriate things” while pregnant. She tried to spin the story, painting herself as the victim who had stumbled across something shocking.
For a moment, I worried. Arnold’s cousin Jenny even texted me: “Hey, girl, Mom said Martha was upset about something you ordered? Everything okay?”
That’s when I released the trump card.
Arnold and I shared the security footage with the family. There was Martha, sprinting like an Olympic athlete, snatching my package off the porch and sneaking inside.
The family chat lit up. Arnold’s aunt Karen delivered the final blow: “So, you snooped, stole packages, lied about it, AND tried to embarrass Cecelia? Martha, you’re lucky all you got was glitter.”
From that day forward, Martha earned a new nickname in the family: The Package Bandit.
And me? Every time I see a box sitting untouched on the porch, I grin. Because it reminds me of the glitter bomb, the pink embarrassment, and the day I finally beat Martha at her own game.