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.
"Mommy, you're the best mommy in the whole world."
"But if we go out to play like this, will Daddy and Grandpa and Grandma be upset?"
I smiled.
"No, they won't."
They were about to have far bigger things on their minds than whether we'd gone to an amusement park. By the time they had a spare moment to think about it, they'd probably be nothing but a pile of ash.
As if on cue, a young couple standing in line beside us was huddled over a phone, whispering.
Oh my God, that's awful. A car crash out of nowhere!
At that speed, slamming into a wall? No way they made it.
The news said the person in the car has severe burns. Burns are the most painful thing imaginable.
I tilted my head for a glance and recognized it immediately.
That was my car. But I acted like I hadn't seen a thing, turned off my phone, and spent the rest of the day focused entirely on my daughter. Only when Lily was too tired to go on another ride did I finally pull my phone back out.
Over a dozen missed calls. Every single one from the hospital.
I dismissed them all, then calmly drove Lily to my parents' house.
But I didn't head to the hospital right away. There was a show I needed to watch first.
I found a quiet spot and pulled up the surveillance feed from the Delgado house.
Same as always, Silas and Zoe were parked in front of the TV.
They saw the crash footage on the news and recognized the car instantly, the same way I had.
Silas was so worked up he was shoveling emergency heart medication into his mouth.
Zoe grabbed her phone and made a call.
"I already called the school. The teacher said Lily didn't show up today."
"The news said two people were injured, and the driver was shielding the passenger with their own body. That's definitely Gay."
The two of them "confirmed" I was the one in the wreck, and they were practically dancing with joy.
"Heaven has eyes! We were just trying to figure out how to dump Gay and that kid, and God went ahead and took them off our hands."
"Our son is the only male heir in nine generations, and now he's making real money. Gay and that worthless girl should've been gone a long time ago."
"Widowed beats divorced any day. Now that girlfriend of James's, the pregnant one, can finally marry into the family."
I nodded slowly, a thought clicking into place.
So that was it.
Zoe's "pranks" before had never gone as far as murder. But the moment she decided I was standing in the way of a grandson, she made her move. Kill me and my daughter in one clean stroke.
I watched them celebrate, and honestly, it was almost funny.
When James and I first got married, they called me the best daughter-in-law in the world. Said I was closer than a real daughter. Said the luckiest thing that ever happened to James was marrying a woman like me.
But now that James's career was taking off, they'd conveniently forgotten he was a self-made man from nothing, that everything he had started with my family's money and connections.
There was an old saying that fit perfectly.
Nurse a wolf, and the moment it finds its strength, it bares its teeth.
But I wasn't angry. Not anymore.
Right now, I was just curious.
Curious what Silas and Zoe's faces would look like the moment they found out I wasn't in that car.
