The first time, she locked me alone in a pitch-black bathroom and left me there for two hours, drowning in fear. Afterward, she'd laughed in my face. "Wasn't that a rush, Mrs. Abbott?"
The second time was the company's holiday party. She called me in a panic, said my husband had fainted. I threw on whatever I could grab and raced to the office in my pajamas, hair a mess, heart pounding out of my chest. When I got there, I found her doubled over laughing and my husband watching her with that helpless, indulgent smile of his.
There was a third time. A fourth.
Every single time I was about to lose my temper, he'd step in and wave it off with a grin. "Doreen just likes her little dares. Don't take it so seriously."
Because I loved him, I swallowed it. Every time.
But this was different.
My mother had just undergone coronary bypass surgery. Her doctor had been adamant: no alcohol, nothing cold. But I'd only stepped away to use the restroom, and in those few minutes, Doreen had goaded her into downing a glass of hard liquor.
By the time I came back, my mother was on the floor, convulsing. She needed to get to a hospital immediately. This was not the time for party dares.
"A dare?"