Zoe Ball loved holidays. All of them. From Arbor Day to Christmas, she turned every occasion into a production. But her absolute favorite was April Fools' Day.
Because on that day, she could torment me under the guise of celebration and no one would blink.
One year, she'd swapped the files on my work USB drive with videos of people trashing their bosses and coworkers. I nearly lost my job.
Another year, while I was away on a business trip, she called to tell me my parents had carbon monoxide poisoning and were being rushed to the ER. After I'd wired the money in a blind panic, she cheerfully announced, "April Fools!"
I'd raged at her before. But the angrier I got, the more she enjoyed it.
"April Fools' Day is for pranks. You can prank me too, you know. Why do you have to take everything so seriously?"
And my father-in-law, Silas Delgado, and my husband, James Delgado, always took her side. Every single time, they called me petty.
So it went.
Zoe's pranks escalated year after year, until today, when she sabotaged my brakes and sent my daughter and me into a crash.
And Silas and James couldn't have cared less about the truth. To them, I was nothing but a burden.
The thought made my blood run cold.
I swallowed the murderous impulse clawing up my throat, arranged my face into the smile of a woman who suspected nothing, said "Thanks, Mom," and took the keys from her hand. Then, calm as anything, I took my daughter's hand and walked out the door.
I didn't take my daughter to school.
Instead, I called her teacher to excuse her for the day, hailed a cab, and headed straight for the amusement park.
Lily Abbott was over the moon.
The park had been open for years. Every one of her classmates had been there at least once. My daughter never had. It wasn't that we couldn't afford the tickets.
Every time I'd planned to take her, something always came up.
Sometimes James had to work overtime.
Sometimes Silas dragged the whole family to some networking dinner with relatives.
Sometimes Zoe invented a holiday nobody had ever heard of and flat-out forbade us from leaving the house.
I kept waiting. My daughter kept waiting. We waited until I was dead, and we never made it to the amusement park.
Dying once taught me something. Some things can't wait for other people. Can't wait for tomorrow. If you want to do something, you do it now.
Lily didn't know any of that.
She just clung to me, beaming.