We barely made it into the restroom before Emma locked the stall door behind us.
Then she pointed down.
At first I thought somebody had spilled paint on my jeans in the store.
But it wasn’t paint.
There was a tiny GPS tracker taped underneath the back pocket of my purse.
Emma whispered, “Grandma put it there when you were trying on shoes.”
I honestly didn’t even understand what I was looking at for a second. My mother-in-law watches Emma three afternoons a week. She buys her little gifts. Brags online about being “the favorite grandma.” Completely normal suburban grandmother stuff.
Except Emma looked terrified.
She told me Grandma had been putting my phone “on airplane mode by accident” lately and asking weird questions about where I went after work. Last week she’d even told Emma not to mention “the little sticker” to me because it was “part of a surprise.”
I peeled the tracker off and wrapped it in toilet paper.
Then I asked Emma why she didn’t tell me sooner.
She got quiet and said, “Because Grandma said if you found it, Dad would lose all his money.”
That made my stomach drop harder than the tracker did.
My husband’s mother had been obsessed with his new business for months. Constantly asking about investors, paperwork, bank stuff she clearly didn’t understand.
I suddenly remembered she’d also asked for copies of our house keys “in case of emergencies.”
I called my husband from the stall.
No answer.
Then while we were still sitting there, my phone buzzed with a security notification from our home alarm.
Garage door opened.
Two minutes later, our front camera sent another alert.
My mother-in-law walking into our house carrying cardboard boxes.