Expiration Date

Part Two

When Lucy was thirteen, her mother rented a dilapidated house near the railroad tracks. She seemed pleased about it. "It's nice to have a whole house to ourselves, isn't it?"

It wasn't nice. It was worse than the cramped apartment, even if it was a whole house with a tiny yard and a garage in which to store their new-used car. There were roaches in the kitchen and strange sounds coming from the alley late at night, every night. Lucy didn't complain. She nodded and smiled. It was nice. It was fine. Everything was fine. The house, for all of its problems, came with that car, didn't it? Lucy knew rental houses didn't usually include such things, though. There was a man lurking somewhere. A man had to be responsible for this latest move.

On the day it happened, her mother dropped her off at school, drove home, parked the car in the garage, got out to close the door, then slid back into the car and waited. When she failed to pick up Lucy that afternoon, the school called Auntie Min, who upon arriving at her sister's house, sent for an ambulance. It was too late by then, of course. Hours and hours too late.

This was the official story reported to Lucy that evening by her aunt, who believed Alice's life of unrepentant sinning had finally caught up to her.

"She was a sad woman," Min told Lucy. "We just didn't know how sad."

Lucy knew she was sad. Everyone who spent any time with Alice Quant knew it... but sad enough to do this?

Lucy kept her suspicions close until a policewoman showed up at her bedroom door encouraging Lucy to talk. All she could say was that her mother hadn't killed herself. She hated how she sounded, like a dumb kid who couldn't face the facts.

It turned out, however, that the facts favored her suspicions. While searching for a suicide note, a detective had found a stack of letters on Alice's dresser. Slowly, the gaps in Lucy's understanding filled in, especially after an arrest was made and the media got a hold of the story.

It had been one of her mother's former suitors, a rich man with an even richer wife and with both money to burn and to lose. Lucy tried but failed to remember him. Her mom had hidden the fact that he'd come back into her life, and in the most awkward of ways. Desperate for cash, Alice had written to him, threatening to expose their affair if he didn't give her a monthly allowance. It was her due. She'd kept quiet all this time. He owed her.

That's why her mother had bought a car, moved them to that house Lucy hated. He'd paid up, for a while. Soon though, his patience with Alice, no longer young, beguiling Alice, began to wear thin. Alice Quant's "suicide" was in actuality a murder committed by a man who was sick of being controlled by someone he was used to controlling.

That's what happens when a woman like her mother tries to have the upper hand but doesn't plan for what that upper hand will look like. It isn't a glossy magazine ad. It isn't a week at the Ritz. It's retribution. Vengeance.

With vengeance, you have to plan for things to get ugly.

###

Daniel doesn't bother telling her about her new co-host until the day she's due to arrive at the station. Still, Lucy has known for weeks. It had been easy enough to figure out Daniel's email and social media password (his wife's name plus their wedding anniversary). She's been reading his correspondences for years, ever since the brief affair they'd had right after she'd begun National News with Lucinda Quant. If Daniel means to spring fresh, young Mikayla Michaels on her to see how she'll react, well... it won't be the first time she's squashed that man's fantasies.