Chapter 3: The Thing Lucy Did
The kitchen worker's name was Ethan.
He was sixteen, worked weekends and after school, and had been with Diane's restaurant for four months.
He was supposed to be taking out the recycling.
He didn't move.
Mark hadn't noticed him yet.
His eyes were still on Diane.
"What proof?" Mark's voice had gone very quiet.
"What are you talking about?"
Diane straightened.
Something shifted in her face — the fear pulling back, something harder taking its place.
"Ask her," Diane said.
"Ask Lucy what she was planning to do the night she disappeared."
"Diane—" Lucy's voice cracked.
"Ask her about the money, Mark."
Jack looked up from the floor.
He didn't understand the words but he understood the tone.
He pressed closer to his mother.
"What money?" Mark said.
Lucy closed her eyes.
"It's not what she's going to make it sound like."
"Forty-two thousand dollars," Diane said.
"From the joint account you and I share for the restaurant.
Gone in one transfer.
The night before Lucy showed up here."
Mark turned slowly toward Lucy.
"Lucy."
"I can explain—"
"She came here to confront me," Diane said.
"She broke in through the back.
She was going to take the ledgers.
She was going to take everything she could find and disappear with it.
I caught her in this kitchen at two in the morning."
"That is not what happened." Lucy's voice was stronger now.
"I came here because I found out what you were doing.
I came here because I had proof — real proof — and you knew it."
"Proof of what?" Mark said.
Neither woman answered immediately.
The refrigeration units hummed.
Ethan hadn't moved an inch.
"She locked me in there," Lucy said.
"She didn't call the police.
She didn't call you.
She locked me in that freezer and told the whole world I had run away.
She told my son his mother had abandoned him."
"Because you broke into my property—"
"Because I knew what you were stealing from him." Lucy looked at Mark directly for the first time.
"Not from me.
From Jack.
From your son."
Mark's hand lowered the phone slowly.
"What does Jack have to do with this?"
Diane's jaw tightened.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
Lucy saw it.
"Show him," Lucy said.
"Show him the second set of books, Diane.
The ones you keep on the laptop in the office upstairs.
Show him what you've been doing with the restaurant income for the past three years."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Then you won't mind if he looks."
The silence stretched.
Jack was watching his mother's face.
He had never seen her like this — cold and still and certain, even with her wrists still bound, even sitting on the freezer floor in a coat she had been wearing for seven months.
Mark looked at Diane.
Diane looked at the back door.
That was when she noticed Ethan.
Her face didn't change.
But her hand moved to the counter beside her, and her fingers found the edge of a dish towel, and she gripped it.
"You need to go home," she said to him.
"Your shift ended an hour ago."
Ethan didn't move.
"Ethan." Her voice dropped.
"Go home."
May you like
"He stays," Mark said.
Ethan stayed.
