**A Wreath for the Living: How One Parcel Ended a Marriage**
The kitchen smelled of fried sausages when the doorbell rang. Emma, still wearing her apron, answered to find a young delivery man on the doorstep.
“Afternoon! Package for you,” he said cheerfully.
“What package? I didn’t order anything,” Emma replied, puzzled.
“Flat number four?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s correct.”
She signed the form hesitantly and took the large box. The moment she opened it, her blood ran cold. Inside was a funeral wreath—not decorative, not festive, but real, with a black ribbon bearing her name.
No sender was listed. Just a silent message: “Rest in peace, Emma.”
“Who could hate me enough to send this to my home?” she whispered later, her voice shaking.
Her husband, William, dismissed it.
“Why assume it’s Mum? She adores you!”
“Adores me? She’s never once said my name without scorn!” Emma shot back.
And it was true. His mother had despised her from the start—her height (“hardly five foot”), her job as a receptionist, her simple dresses. Emma tried everything: sewing her own clothes, staying polite, biting her tongue. Yet all she got was disdain and snide remarks.
“Look at this mouse,” Margaret would mutter to her son. “Can’t even string a sentence together!”
William stayed silent, pretending all was well. But his silence was approval. His mother grew bolder, even though they lived in *Emma’s* flat.
When Emma suggested renting a place that suited Margaret’s tastes, the woman refused every option—shrieking, guilt-tripping, dramatic. And William? He sipped his tea and said nothing.
The wreath failed, so the next move came. William suddenly “discovered” men’s underwear in the wardrobe.
“Care to explain this?” he hissed, holding them up.
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd? I can’t even reach that shelf without a stool!”
His mother had a key. The pieces fit. But William stayed silent. Again.
Then came the “gift”—a bucket of blueberries. Margaret handed them over sweetly. “Vitamins! For my dear daughter-in-law!”
The next morning, Emma found a live—but half-frozen—hedgehog inside. Fortunately, William saw it too. Of course, he dismissed it: “Must’ve crawled in. Happens.”
Later, she found a doll under the bed, needles stabbed through its chest. It felt like a bad horror film. Still, she endured. Because she loved him. Because she believed the man beside her was her shield, not just his mother’s son.
The end came unexpectedly. Emma came home early and caught William with another woman. In *her* flat.
She threw him out. Fast. No mercy. Left him in his socks, as they say.
He spluttered excuses: “She just showed up! I didn’t plan this!”
But Emma was done. Especially when the “guest” turned out to be his mother’s best friend’s niece. Too convenient.
Three years she’d put up with it. Some wouldn’t last three months. But she’d hoped.
And William? He crawled back to Mum. Where else?
But life had one last joke. Margaret had a new romance—a late-life flame, fiercer than the first. And she wasn’t in *her* flat anymore, but her beau’s tiny bedsit. Margaret, the lovestruck squatter.
Irony? Poetic justice?
The lesson? Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes, you get it—just not the way you imagined.
