I was hosting Christmas dinner this year, but my brother and his wife showed up days before and asked to stay.

I didn’t mind their surprise stay until my sister-in-law’s ridiculous antics drove me crazy!

My brother Ryan and his wife Lindsey came at our door wrapped and stressed a week before Christmas.

After the cold snap, their house was unlivable due to a malfunctioning heating system.

Despite my worries, my husband, Nathan, and I welcomed them in, oblivious of the calamity.

“Thanks for letting us crash here,” Ryan remarked, placing their bags in the hallway. “We might be here over the holidays because we can’t find an electrician, but we’ll keep trying.”

Nathan said, “It’s no problem,” ever the polite host. “Comfort yourselves.”

Everything was OK at first. However, my sister-in-law’s (SIL) behavior was wearing on me by the third day.

Despite having full access to the guest bedroom shower, she monopolized our master bathroom, leaving damp towels and toiletries everywhere. Worse, she had inexplicably taken some of my sweaters and other clothing without asking!

I didn’t want to cause a scene, but I was annoyed. Still, nothing compared to what I found Christmas Eve morning!

We were gathered for breakfast when I noticed something odd. The mantel in the living room, which had been lovingly decorated with garlands and stockings, looked… empty. My heart jumped.

Has anyone seen Mom? I asked, shaking. I was referring to the black marble vase holding my mother’s ashes, which we had placed there to honor her wish to “spend” Christmas with us.

This was supposed to be our first Christmas without Mom, who died after a short battle with cancer. On her deathbed, she’d made my brother and me promise to keep her ashes with us in the same room where we celebrated Christmas so she could “be with us one more time.”

After this holiday, my brother and I were supposed to scatter her ashes at her favorite place—the local river where she and our late dad had gone on their first date. Now she was gone.

Lindsey looked up from her plate and gave me a nonchalant shrug. “You mean her ashes? I threw them out in the backyard. That vase scared me to death every time I saw it!”

The room fell silent. Time seemed to freeze as her words sank in.

“You did what?!” I finally managed to choke out, my voice rising.

“I threw them out,” she repeated, as if she were talking about a piece of trash. “Relax, it’s just ashes. Why are you all so dramatic?”

Fury erupted inside me, and without thinking, I shot up from my chair, ready to lunge at her. Nathan and Ryan jumped between us, holding me back!

“You had no right!” I yelled, tears streaming down my face. “Mom had one wish, and you—how could you?!”

Lindsey rolled her eyes. “It’s not like she’s going to know!” she retorted.

Her indifference was a slap in the face! Shaking with rage, I stormed out to the backyard, praying it wasn’t too late.

I spent the next hour combing through the grass and the vase in the trash bin, but there wasn’t much left to salvage. My mother’s ashes, her memory, were gone!

That night, I lay awake, seething! I wanted to kick Lindsey out right then and there, but Ryan’s pleading look at dinner stopped me.

“Just wait until after Christmas,” he’d whispered at one point. “Please, we have nowhere to go at such short notice.”

I reluctantly agreed, but I wasn’t sure how I’d get through the next twenty-four hours without exploding!

Around midnight, a bloodcurdling scream shattered the silence! Nathan and I bolted upright, exchanging alarmed looks before rushing upstairs. The smell hit us before we reached the door to Lindsey and Ryan’s room—a rancid, gut-wrenching stench that made my stomach turn.

“What in the world?” my husband muttered, covering his nose. We burst into the room to find Lindsey standing on the bed, clutching her hair and shrieking hysterically!

The carpet, Lindsey’s clothes, and some of mine were soaked with murky water, and a foul-smelling mess was oozing from the en-suite bathroom!

“Oh my God!” my SIL screamed. “It’s everywhere! Do something!”

Nathan tried to keep a straight face, but I could see the corners of his mouth twitching. “Wow,” he said. “Looks like the toilet backed up.”

“Why is it only this room?” I added, unable to suppress a smirk. “The guest bathroom’s fine and ours is working perfectly!” I said a bit too gleefully.

“Must be some kind of Christmas miracle,” my husband quipped, earning a glare from my brother’s livid wife!

My brother was crouched by the bathroom door, desperately trying to mop up the mess with a towel. “Honey, maybe we should—”

“Don’t you dare ‘honey’ me!” Lindsey snapped. “Do something useful for once!”

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to twist the knife. “Maybe this is karma,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “You know, for what you did to Mom. This must have been her revenge—she did have a wicked sense of humor, after all.”

Lindsey shot me a look that could kill! “This is your house! Your plumbing! Fix it!”

Nathan stepped in before I could retort. “We’ll call a plumber first thing in the morning,” he said calmly. “In the meantime, maybe you two should sleep in the guest room after cleaning up what you can.”

“Do you think I was right that the incident was a sign from Mom?” I whispered to my husband as Lindsey whimpered and wailed, trying to salvage what she could. “If it wasn’t, it sure feels like one.”

My SIL looked like she was about to explode, but Ryan gently guided her out of the room.

As they passed me, I caught Lindsey muttering under her breath about how it wasn’t her fault. I rolled my eyes and headed back to bed, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction.

The next morning, my brother woke up first and shared with Nathan and me how the toilet backed up that night when my SIL decided to use it. He was fast asleep and woke up when she screamed, slipping on the ooze as she made her way back to jump onto the bed!

We couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of Lindsey slipping in that stinky muck, and my brother even joined in!

Sadly for Lindsey, her bad luck continued on Christmas Day. The plumber we called couldn’t make it out until the day after Christmas, leaving us to spend the holiday with the mild stench of sewage lingering in the air.

When we sat down for Christmas dinner with the rest of the family—including cousins, aunts, uncles, and more—my SIL was unusually quiet. She picked at her food while the rest of us laughed and exchanged stories.

At one point, Ryan pulled me aside. “Thanks for not kicking us out,” he said awkwardly. “I know Lindsey can be… difficult.”

“Difficult?” I raised an eyebrow. “Ryan, she threw away Mom’s ashes!” I hissed.

“I know,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Believe me, I didn’t know she was going to do that. I’m so sorry.”

For a moment, since my anger had brewed up again, I considered telling him to pack up and leave, but then I looked over at Lindsey. She was sitting stiffly at the table, her face pale and her eyes darting around nervously as if expecting another disaster to strike.

“Maybe this is punishment enough,” I said finally. Ryan nodded, relief washing over his face.

The rest of the evening passed without incident, though my SIL avoided me like the plague. When she tried to complain to the rest of the family about her ordeal, they sided with me without hesitation!

“You threw away their mother’s ashes?” my aunt gasped. “What were you thinking?!”

By the end of the night, my SIL was thoroughly humiliated, and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of poetic justice.

As Nathan and I were cleaning up after everyone had left, he gave me a sly grin. “You think Mom was with us today even though Lindsey spilled her out?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “If she was, it sure feels like it and I really hope so!”

Nathan put an arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “Well, either way, Lindsey got what she deserved.”

I nodded, feeling a weight lift off my shoulders. Mom may not have been with us in the way we’d planned, but in that moment, I felt her presence more strongly than ever.

Sadly, Lindsey isn’t the only horrible SIL, in the following story, a married man finds himself accused of trying to cheat with his SIL only to have her family turn against him. After proving the truth to his wife, they take on his SIL together and finally get revenge!

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