Gaslit By My Mom

From the back cover

When a young woman comes home for break, her mother, Evonne Ziegler, takes her to the grocery store to shop for a big Thanksgiving dinner. Every item she reaches for is refused: salmon is contaminated, chicken is full of hormones, and the peaches they already have at home. Told she is hard to please and that the trip was pointless, she turns the car around and goes back to buy everything she was denied.

For over twenty years her mother has overruled her this way, from a pair of white leather shoes she needed for a cheer squad performance to the food she is allowed to eat. This time she refuses to back down, filling the cart with salmon and roasted drumsticks and insisting she will pay with her own money.

Then her mother offers to hold her purse while she shops, and by the time she reaches the checkout, her mother is gone, along with her phone and her money. The store will not let her leave without paying, and the surveillance footage shows her mother walking out the front doors with the purse in hand.