Chapter 2 - THE ARRIVAL OF THE HYENAS
By noon, the news had begun to spread through the family networks like wildfire through dry brush.
I hadn't called them. Teresa had.
Before I even had the chance to step back into my quiet, empty house to process the morning's horror, my mother-in-law, Pilar Vance, and my sister-in-law, Elena, had already arrived in their expensive SUV, blocking my driveway.
Pilar Vance was a woman constructed entirely of rigid expectations, cold judgment, and superficial social armor. For seventeen years, she had made it abundantly clear that I was merely an addition to her family—a working-class girl from a modest background who was lucky to have captured her brilliant, successful son.
When I opened the front door, Pilar didn't wrap her arms around me. She didn't look into my eyes to check for tears.
She brushed past my shoulder with enough force to push me back an inch, stepping into my foyer like an inspector arriving at a disgraced property.
"Where are his personal effects?" Pilar demanded instantly, her voice harsh, sharp, and completely dry. "Where are his keys? His wallet? His rings?"
Behind her walked Elena—Javier's younger sister—a sharp-featured woman who spent her life copying her mother's cruelty. Elena held a leather-bound notebook and a pen in her hand, looking around the living room as if she were taking inventory for an estate sale.
"I don't have his things yet, Pilar," I said, my voice deadpan as I closed the door behind them. "The coroner took his personal items for inventory at the county morgue."
Pilar turned around, her eyes narrowing as she looked at me. There was no grief in her face—only a tight, furious embarrassment.
"That woman called us," Pilar spat out, her hands clutching her designer leather purse so tightly her knuckles turned white. "That... creature in the downtown apartment. She had the nerve to call my home phone at eight in the morning!"
"Her name is Teresa," I said quietly, leaning back against the foyer wall.
"I don't care what her name is!" Pilar snapped, stepping closer to me, her voice rising in sharp, defensive anger. "Do you have any idea what this means, Lucy? Do you have any idea what people in our parish will say if this leaks out? A Vance dying in a cheap rental unit downtown with a woman ten years his junior?!"
I stared at her. "Your son just died, Pilar. And your concern is the parish gossip?"
"My concern is the dignity of this family!" Pilar declared, striking her chest with her ringed hand. "Javier was a respected man! He was a senior executive! We will not allow his memory to be dragged through the mud because of his... his temporary lapses in judgment!"
Elena stepped forward, tapping her pen against her notebook. "We've already called St. Jude’s Cathedral downtown. We spoke with Father Thomas. We need to secure the main sanctuary for Friday afternoon."
"A full service," Pilar added firmly, her tone leaving zero room for debate. "A walnut casket with brass handles. The premium floral arrangements—white lilies and dark red roses. Obituary notices placed in both the city daily and the regional business journal. And we will have the burial in the Vance family plot in Greenfield, two hours north."
I looked at the two of them. They were planning a grand, theatrical, expensive spectacle—a public performance designed to cover up the stench of Javier’s cheap death with expensive lilies and classical music.
" Greenfield?" I repeated softly. "Javier told me last year he wanted to be cremated."
Pilar sneered, waving her hand dismissively in the air. "Nonsense. Cremation is for people without a family history. Javier deserves something respectable. Something grand. The community needs to see us honor him properly."
Respectable.
That word struck my ear like a rusty nail.
Before I could answer, the front door clicked open again, and Victor walked in.
Victor was Javier's younger brother—a thirty-four-year-old perpetual failure who lived off family loans, drove sports cars he couldn't afford, and spent his life waiting for hand-outs. He walked into the living room wearing a black leather jacket, smelling of stale coffee and expensive cologne.
He didn't look at me either. He walked straight over to his mother, kissing her cheek.
"Did you talk to the funeral director yet?" Victor asked.
"We're setting up the appointment for three o'clock at Crestview Funeral Home," Elena replied, making a notation in her notebook. "We need to confirm the payment guarantees before they release the chapel date."
Victor turned around and finally looked at me. His eyes didn't hold a single drop of sympathy or sorrow. They were calculating, impatient, and cold.
"You brought the platinum card, right?" Victor asked, extending his palm toward me. "The blue bank one with the high limit. You can't pay for a top-tier cathedral service and a walnut casket with a basic debit card."
He spoke with the casual, arrogant expectation of a man ordering a coffee at a drive-thru window.
He expected me to hand over the tool to pay for their theater. He expected me to sit quietly in the front pew in a black dress, smiling through my humiliation, absorbing the shame of my husband's betrayal while funding his mother's vanity.
I looked at Victor’s open hand.
Then I looked at Pilar, who was nodding in agreement, checking her watch.
"We need to get to the funeral home by three, Lucy," Pilar said sharply. "Make sure you have the card ready. We don't have time to waste on administrative delays."
I stood in the center of my quiet living room, surrounded by the people who had tolerated me for seventeen years only because I kept their son quiet and fed.
A small, quiet flame ignited deep within my chest—not of rage, but of absolute, unyielding coldness.
"I need to go upstairs and get my coat," I said softly.
May you like
"Hurry up," Victor muttered, dropping his hand to his side. "We're on a schedule."
I turned around and walked up the carpeted stairs toward the master bedroom.
