The wedding was just a few days away, and the excitement was at an all-time high. The bride, a kind and generous woman named Clara, had let her future mother-in-law, a woman she had a good relationship with, store her dress at her house. The mother-in-law, a woman who was a bit of a klutz, had accidentally knocked over a bottle of wine on the dress, leaving a large, gaping hole in the fabric.
Clara’s revenge was to not tell her fiancé about the accident. She knew he would be furious with his mother, and she did not want to cause a fight. Instead, she took the dress to a tailor, and with a few stitches and a new piece of fabric, she had the dress returned to its former glory. She told her fiancé that the dress had been a little wrinkled, and that she had to have it steamed.
The revenge was a quiet one. Clara knew that her mother-in-law would be eternally grateful for her kindness. The mother-in-law was a woman who was easily embarrassed, and she would have been mortified if her son had known about her mistake. Clara knew that she had gained a powerful ally in her mother-in-law. The two women, once strangers, had been brought together by a shared secret.
The revenge was not about public humiliation or a public shaming. It was about a quiet, private act of kindness that had been done in the name of love.
