“Mom said you pushed her down the stairs. Get ready, Sarah—you’re going to regret this,” my husband’s text read. While my mother-in-law, who had just been swinging her purse at me, was playing the victim by the curb waiting for her son, the trap had already been set.
My husband practically flew up to our floor, but what he found there left him speechless. The sound from earlier had been heavy—like a sack of wet sand hitting the floor with a sickening, brittle crunch. But it wasn’t sand.
It was, as it turned out, my family’s heirloom porcelain set, which I had made the mistake of leaving on the sideboard to be dusted.
“Oh, heavens!” my mother-in-law Eleanor’s voice didn’t hold a shred of regret. Only a staged gasp that barely hid her satisfaction. “The floor is so slippery! Sarah, honey! Who puts fine china out like that? It’s a trap for honest people!”
I froze in the doorway of my home office. In my hands were a pair of precision tweezers and a 17th-century manuscript. I worked as a conservator for the city archives; any sudden movement could cost me a month’s salary. I carefully slid the document under the glass, exhaled to drop the tension from my shoulders, and walked into the hallway. Standing among the shards of porcelain was a stout woman in a heavy wool coat she refused to take off, claiming she was “only staying a minute.”
“That was hand-painted porcelain,” I said quietly. My voice was level, almost clinical. Professional habit—when you see history crumbling, panicking is useless. You just have to assess the damage.
“Oh, please!” Eleanor waved a hand, nearly knocking over the coat rack. “Just some old dishes.”
Mark had been saying for years that we should toss all this “antique junk” and get some normal white plates from Crate & Barrel.
“Anyway, Sarah, I didn’t come here to talk about dishes. Give me the keys.”
I blinked. The transition from property damage to extortion was a bit fast, even for her.
“What keys?”
