When Cecelia found out her mother-in-law had been secretly opening her deliveries, she decided she wasn’t going to let it slide anymore. But she never expected Martha’s nosiness to backfire so spectacularly. One package, carefully planned, changed everything.
At five months pregnant, I thought my life was close to perfect. I had Arnold, my dream husband, who still brought me coffee every morning and massaged my feet whenever they swelled. We had our cozy little house with the white fence we’d worked years to afford, and the nursery was halfway painted a soft yellow since we wanted the baby’s gender to remain a surprise.
The only shadow on my happiness was my mother-in-law, Martha.
Arnold was wonderful—patient, funny, and willing to indulge every one of my pregnancy cravings. Just last week, he drove across town at midnight to fetch pickle-flavored ice cream for me. But when I moved into his home after we married, I also inherited his live-in mother.
Martha had been staying with him since his father passed, and at 65, she was sharp, stubborn, and incapable of respecting boundaries. Deliveries were her weakness. She pounced on every UPS, FedEx, and Amazon box before it even cooled on the porch. Labels with my name meant nothing to her—she’d rip into them anyway, later excusing herself with the same line:
“Oh, I thought it might be something for the house.”
I often bit back my irritation, telling myself it wasn’t worth the drama. But pregnancy made me more protective of my space, and her snooping cut deeper than before.
The final straw came when I was secretly planning our gender reveal. I’d been ordering decorations, games, and supplies for weeks, hiding them so Arnold wouldn’t see. But one afternoon I came home to find a destroyed package sprawled across the kitchen counter. Martha was beaming, waving a bright blue card.
“It’s a boy!” she shouted to Arnold down the hall.
My heart sank. She had spoiled the surprise I had planned for weeks—our moment, stolen in a single careless act.
I wanted to scream, but I knew Martha’s pattern. She loved provoking dramatic reactions just so she could later play the victim. So, instead, I swallowed my fury and quietly decided it was time to teach her a lesson.
That night, after Arnold fell asleep, I began my scheme. I scrolled online, not for baby supplies this time, but for items guaranteed to make Martha regret ever prying.
First, I ordered the loudest, most absurd neon-pink adult toy I could find—something impossible to explain away. Then I added a glitter bomb disguised as an ordinary padded envelope, designed to explode sparkles everywhere upon opening. Both were set for overnight shipping.
And thanks to our porch camera, I knew I’d have video proof of Martha’s package piracy.
The next morning, I tracked the deliveries obsessively. When they finally arrived, I settled near the window, pretending to read while watching the porch. Right on cue, Martha bolted from her room, snatched both packages, and disappeared.
Minutes later, the silence broke with a scream that rattled the walls. A commotion followed—thuds, shuffling, chaos. Then her door opened slowly. She shuffled out, defeated, and placed my opened packages on the coffee table.
I entered the living room to find the scene of her downfall. Glitter coated everything—our rug, the table, even her glasses. And there, impossible to ignore, sat the neon-pink embarrassment she had uncovered.
From the kitchen, I heard her scrubbing frantically. I called sweetly, “Everything okay in here?”
She emerged, disheveled, cheeks still sparkling. “Oh yes, dear, just a little spill,” she muttered.
I held up the glitter bomb envelope. “Funny, this has my name on it. Did you see who opened it?”
For once, Martha had no excuse. She stammered, turned red, and quickly retreated.
Arnold entered just in time to take in the disaster. His eyes darted between the glitter storm and the absurd toy on the table. “What happened here?”
I smiled innocently. “Why don’t you ask your mother? She’s the one who opened my packages.”
Martha mumbled apologies and fled. Arnold looked at me in disbelief. “Did you seriously order a glitter bomb?”
“Maybe,” I said with a satisfied grin.
From that day forward, packages were left untouched on the porch until I claimed them. Martha never so much as glanced at another delivery.
She tried to save face later, gossiping to relatives that I had been ordering “inappropriate” things. But Arnold and I released the camera footage of her Olympic-level porch dash. The family group chat erupted, and Aunt Karen delivered the final blow:
“So, you snooped, stole, lied, and tried to humiliate a pregnant woman? Martha, you’re lucky all you got was glitter.”
And just like that, Martha earned her new title in the family: The Package Bandit. As for me, every unopened box waiting at the door still makes me smile, a sparkling reminder of the day I finally put a stop to her snooping.