When her cold MIL gives Jess expensive shoes for her birthday, she thinks something is up. The worst things she fears come true when she wears them on a work trip and the TSA finds something fishy inside. Now she has to figure out if this gift was an attempt to harm her or something even worse.
I should have known not to believe Debbie’s gift. The too-sweet smile she gave me when she handed me the box and the way her eyes sparkled with something that wasn’t quite friendliness were all red flags. But what should I have done?
I mean, they were just shoes. Lovely yellow glossy leather shoes with a big heel that look great on me. My mother-in-law seemed to be trying for once.
I tried to sound excited as I said, “Oh, they’re lovely,” and Arthur smiled next to me. “Thank you, Debbie.”
She shook her head no and waved her hand. “Well, I saw that you always wear such… useful shoes.” For once, I thought you might want something nice.
Like always, the barb was there, wrapped in silk. But, as always, I smiled and nodded. You do that when you want to keep the peace, right?
When you want to be the bigger person because your husband loves his mother? Also, it wasn’t the first time she’d made fun of me in this way. At Christmas dinner, she asked Arthur directly if he remembered how his ex-girlfriend Sarah had made “the most divine turkey.”
On our anniversary, she showed up out of the blue with old photo albums full of pictures of Arthur as a kid and stayed for three hours.
Every trip was a practice run for foreign relations, with me acting as an ambassador to a country that didn’t like me. “She’s just set in her ways,” Arthur would say after getting into a fight. “Give her time.” However, she had become more rude since we got married more than a year ago, not better.
For a week, I didn’t put the shoes on. They sat in their box, clean and accusatory, until I had to go to Chicago for work. While I packed my bags, Arthur sat on our bed and looked through his phone.
He told her, “You should wear Mom’s shoes.” “Show her you appreciate them.”
I touched the smooth leather with my finger. “Yeah, maybe I will.”
He looked up from his screen and said, “You know, I think she’s trying.” “That this is her way of extending an olive branch.”
Should have gone with my gut instead of his positivity. At the airport, there was the first sign of trouble.
There was something not right. It felt like there was something in my left shoe, but when I took it off to check, there was nothing there. Just clean leather and the smell of new shoes.
“Everything okay?” The guy behind me in line for security looked antsy as he checked his watch a third time in a minute. I mumbled, “Fine,” and put the shoe back on. “Just breaking in new shoes.”
It wasn’t fine, though.
With each step toward safety, the feeling got worse—a constant push against the ball of my foot, like something was trying to get out. I was pretty much limping by the time I got to the conveyor belt. When the TSA agent told me to take my shoes off and put them on the belt, I felt better.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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