The Night's Legacy by P.T. Dilloway

back in college.  A fraternity at Northwestern had made it a rite of passage for new members.  Every pledge had to ask the pimple-faced fourteen-year-old kid out on a date.  She had been stupid enough to take the first two seriously. 
    Those boys had seemed so earnest and she was so young and stupid she thought they were serious.  The first had left her stranded at a rest stop outside Chicago, without so much as cab fare.  She thought they had been stopping to use the bathroom, but when she’d finished, he was gone.  She had to hitch a ride back to campus.  The second got more creative.  They broke into the campus pool and gone skinny-dipping.  While they were swimming, his buddies were locking the doors.  He asked her to stay in the water while he fetched a condom.  But he hadn’t come back and when she finally got out of the pool, she found all of the doors locked from the outside.  The girl’s swim team had found her the next morning, huddled in a corner and using a life preserver to cover herself.
    Her subsequent spray-painting curse words all over the fraternity house had gotten her kicked out of the school.  She had been more careful after that, avoiding the college jocks like Red and Blue T-shirts in Durndell.  She had thought Tony was different.  He wasn’t.  He was just like those boys at Northwestern, except she wasn’t fifteen anymore.  She was a grown woman and she was going to show him a grown woman’s revenge.
    When she got home, she hoped Mom would be up to comfort her.  But the note was still on the table, seemingly untouched.  She wadded it up and then went upstairs to Mom’s room.  She listened at the door for her mother’s snoring.  Hearing nothing, she opened the door.  The bed was empty and unmade.  Mom had disappeared again.  Was she looking for Lois?  But the note didn’t look touched.  Maybe she was sleepwalking or something.
    With a sigh Lois went back to her room and took off Melanie’s dress.  She threw herself on the bed, but didn’t cry into her pillows as she’d done when she was fifteen.  Instead she looked up at the ceiling, thinking of that kiss again even as she plotted her revenge.

Chapter 6
    Lois woke up again to Mom shaking her.  Just like the previous morning, Mom was already fully dressed and ready to go.  “Time to get up, sweetheart,” she said, not sounding the least bit tired.
    “Yeah, great.”  Lois crawled out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom.  A lukewarm shower helped shake away some of the cobwebs.  While she did her hair, she thought of the night before.  That jerk Tony had ditched her at the club and then she’d gotten home to find Mom out of the house again.  She frowned into the mirror, determined to get some answers on both fronts.
    Mom had two bagels and a dish of cream cheese sitting on the table for her.  “I know you don’t like pancakes,” she said.  “Are bagels all right?”
    “It’s fine.”  Lois sat down, watching her mother closely.  Mom took her protein shake from off the counter and then sat down across from her.  “When did you buy bagels?”
    “They were in the freezer.”  Lois studied her mother’s face for any indication that she was lying, but there was nothing.  “We’ll have to do some grocery shopping soon.”
    Lois took a bite of the bagel.  Cinnamon raisin, her favorite.  How long had Mom kept these in the freezer?  They tasted fresh enough, so not too long.  Maybe she kept a few on hand just in case Lois came back.
    When Mom raised the protein shake, Lois saw an angry purple bruise.  “What the hell is that?”
    “Language.”
    “Don’t give me that.  Where’d you get that bruise?”
    Mom set the shake down and then rolled up her sleeve.  “This?  I slipped in the shower a couple days ago.  It’s nothing serious.”  This time her mother’s voice sounded strained and her eyes twitched to the right for just an instant.
    “I didn’t see it