Page 2 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Libby

Hawthorne Lane

Libby Corbin’s phone vibrates on her kitchen counter and she eagerly snatches it up, expecting a message from her ex-husband explaining why he’s not yet at her front door to pick up their son, Lucas, as promised.

He should have been here by now, and Libby is going to be late for work if he doesn’t make an appearance soon.

But it isn’t a message from Bill that interrupts her anxious pacing.

It’s a new post in the Hawthorne Lane community forum from Georgina reminding everyone about the fall festival.

Libby reads it, and it conjures an image of her neighbor in her mind—her homemade pies and flawless smile, her immaculate house and Better Homes and Gardens –worthy yard.

Now there’s a woman who can do it all, unlike Libby, who doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going most days.

She likes Georgina—she might have once even considered her a friend—but most of the time she finds it difficult not to compare herself to the other woman, especially when Libby always seems to come up short.

Libby closes the post with a twinge of guilt.

She just has so much on her plate right now that the thought of taking on another obligation, even one three months away, is enough to make her eye twitch.

She’ll volunteer to help with the fall festival as it gets closer, she promises herself.

She wants to. And she’ll make it a point to go introduce herself to the new neighbors one of these days too.

Yes, Libby is going to get around to all of it, just as soon as she finds a spare moment…

She clocks the time on her phone screen and frowns. Where the hell is Bill? Would it have killed him to let her know he was running late?

“Mom!” Lucas shouts from somewhere in the depths of his bedroom.

“Yes?” She drops her phone and picks up a sponge. She might as well get a start on the dishes piled up in her sink, do something productive with her time if she’s going to be forced to wait on Bill. Again.

Jasper, her beagle, lets out a tired groan at her feet.

“I know, Jasp,” she says as he looks up at her with his wide eyes surrounded by graying fur.

“I feel exactly the same way.” He’s getting up there in years.

Libby is beginning to see it in the way he moves, his legs a little stiffer, his pace notably slower.

They’ve had him since he was just a puppy, and his frailty is not something anyone in the Corbin family is ready to deal with.

“Mom!” Lucas shouts again, irritation rising in his adolescent voice.

Libby drops a plate onto the drying rack and tries to force her mind back to the days when he was a child.

Back to when Lucas was a sweet, loving little boy who worshipped his mother.

So much has changed since those early, simpler days.

What’s that expression? Bigger kids, bigger problems. It certainly feels that way to Libby lately.

Sometimes she doesn’t know how she’s going to survive his teen years.

“Yes?” Libby calls back, louder now, trying to sound as unbothered as possible.

She often thinks that talking to teenagers is like approaching an animal in the wild: no sudden movements, speak in gentle tones, and never let it sense your fear.

Although Libby knows that they’re almost on the other side of things.

At seventeen, Lucas is nearly a man now, and he’s starting to look it too.

It seems to Libby like he grew up all at once this past year.

A light smattering of stubble now darkens his jawline, and there’s definition in his long legs that were once gangly and thin, poking out from the bottom of his basketball shorts like two sticks.

“Where’s my jersey?” Lucas shouts. Libby can picture him upstairs, his room a disaster of discarded clothes and dog-eared sports magazines. “Did you take it?”

Why on earth would she have taken his jersey? “No,” she replies calmly as she blows a rogue lock of hair out of her eyes. The steam from the sink has turned her blond curls into a mess of frizz. “I’m sure it’s up there somewhere. Have you looked in the hamper?”

Libby dries her hands and checks the time again. She’s definitely going to be late. She opens her phone and sends a text to Erica, her assistant manager, asking if she’s available to open Lily Lane, the flower shop Libby owns.

Erica, always efficient, responds almost immediately:

Not a problem. I’ve got it covered.

Lucas bounds down the stairs just as Libby drops her phone into her purse. He’s wearing a soccer jersey with a distinct green grass stain slashed across the back.

“I don’t have a clean jersey,” he remarks as he walks into the kitchen and immediately begins rooting through the refrigerator. “Dad’s taking me down to the field to practice.”

“Guess your laundry should make it from your bedroom floor to the washing machine every once in a while, then.”

Lucas sighs dramatically, rolling his eyes at his mother.

Libby has always loved that he inherited her eyes, a smoky hazel green that is striking against his long lashes and his mop of dark hair, but every time she looks at him lately, she sees undeniable traces of his father.

In the broadness of his shoulders, the crooked tilt to his smile.

It’s a painful reminder of the status of her marriage.

I think we need some time apart. Bill’s voice floats through her head. As if a marriage is the type of thing you can simply press pause on, like a film that’s no longer holding your attention.

“What do you two have planned for the weekend?” Libby asks, but Lucas doesn’t seem to register the question. He’s already absorbed in his phone, his thumbs tapping away at the screen.

Libby doesn’t know when this happened, when her son stopped talking to her.

They used to be so close, or at least she’d thought they were.

There was a time when he’d tell her about school, his teachers, his friends.

Now it feels as though, somewhere along the way, the door to his inner world has been slammed in her face, a dead bolt slid into place.

The doorbell chimes, saving Libby from having to have yet another talk with her son about prying himself away from his phone from time to time.

Jasper gets up from his favorite sunny spot by the back door with considerable effort, and Libby hears him doing his best to trot behind her while she goes to answer the door, his nails clacking in a lopsided pattern as he moves.

Libby yanks open the front door, and a wave of July heat pours into the house.

“Hi, Lib,” Bill says, leaning casually on the door frame, a pair of aviator sunglasses perched on the end of his nose.

He gives her one of his tilted smiles, the one that made Libby fall in love with him all those years ago.

She feels her knees weaken, but she steels herself quickly, standing up straight, her chin held high.

“Lucas!” she calls into the house. “Dad’s here to pick you up!”

“Uh, gimme a minute,” he yells back. “I’m not done packing.” She hears his feet clomping up the stairs toward his bedroom.

“You gonna let me in, then?” Bill asks, all rakish charm and breezy familiarity.

He looks different somehow, Libby thinks.

Younger. He’s wearing a black cotton T-shirt that tapers at his waist in a way that suggests it probably didn’t come in one of the plastic-bundled packs of five she always bought for him; his sandy-brown hair is a little longer than she’s accustomed to, curling at the nape of his neck, and there’s some new definition in his crossed arms that she definitely doesn’t recall being there before.

“Sure,” she replies. “But I only have a minute. I was supposed to leave for the shop ages ago.”

Bill looks down at his watch; his brows draw together in puzzlement, as if he’s only just realized the time.

“You didn’t have to wait on me,” he says as Libby turns and leads the way toward the kitchen. “I’m sure Lucas could have managed on his own.”

Libby listens to the heavy thud of Bill’s footfalls as he trails her down the hallway. A sound once so familiar now feels out of place in her house. There’s a sadness in that, she thinks, in how foreign Bill’s presence here is starting to feel.

“I know Lucas would have been fine,” Libby replies as they reach the kitchen. “But there’s something I wanted to talk to you about this morning. Didn’t you see my texts?”

Bill leans down and gives a scratch to an excited Jasper, whose tail thuds against the tiled floor in delight. “No. Sorry, Lib, must’ve missed it.”

Libby suppresses a sigh. Bill’s phone is practically glued to his hand. He would never forget to open a text from one of his clients at his real estate brokerage, but hers? Those he manages to overlook.

“Anyway,” she says, pressing on, “it’s about Lucas and the car.”

“He still driving you crazy over that?”

“Yes. He is. He’s been practically begging me to buy one for him, but I’ve been standing firm, telling him that he has to earn the money to pay for it.

I think it’s an important life lesson, you know?

That things aren’t just handed to you even if your parents might be able to afford them.

I want him to understand the value of money and hard work. ”

Bill nods, scratching at the stubble on his chin. When they were together, Bill shaved every morning, but Libby finds that the roguish look suits him.

“It’s important,” Libby continues, shaking away the thought, “that we present a united front on this. I’m sure he’s going to apply the pressure to you this weekend.”

“Yes, boss,” Bill replies with a mock salute, a smile breaking across his face that threatens to crack open Libby’s chest.

She hates how much power he still has over her, how much she still loves him, even after everything he’s put her through over the past eight months of their separation.

“I just need some space.” Bill had said it so casually, as if it weren’t a grenade tossed haphazardly onto everything they’d built together. “It’ll be good for us, Lib,” he’d assured her as she gaped at him, struggling to find her voice.

“But what about Lucas?” Libby could barely conceal the humiliating desperation that weaved its way through her words.

She’d never thought she’d be the type of woman who would beg her husband to stay when he so clearly wanted to go.

But yet, there she was, clinging to his hand while his eyes were already cast out the open door.

“We’ll figure something out,” he promised her, his voice calm and smooth, no trace of the panic that swept over her like a tidal wave. They’d been together since they were nineteen. Bill was the only man Libby had ever loved. How could she possibly imagine a future without him?

She looks at him now, popping a pod into her coffee maker, the dog they’d adopted together as a puppy lying at his feet, and reminds herself that this is only temporary.

They’re just separated, not divorced. It’s probably just some sort of midlife crisis.

Bill just needs to feel like he has some freedom before he sees how good he had it here.

He’ll come around eventually, Libby is sure of it, and when he does, they can start to heal.

Because as hurt as Libby is, when she said “Forever” in their wedding vows, she’d meant it.

They’re just going to have to put in the work.

Maybe he’ll even agree to see that marriage counselor Libby had suggested.

“Well, now that that’s settled, I’m going to head to work,” Libby says, sliding the strap of her purse onto her shoulder.

“Have a good day.” Bill leans over and kisses her tenderly on the cheek, before turning back to his coffee and adding a splash of his favorite hazelnut creamer that Libby hasn’t had the heart to remove from her weekly shopping list.

“Thanks,” she squeaks, her voice unsure and girlish to her ears. What was that ?

She walks outside as if in a daze, the tingling imprint of Bill’s lips lingering on her skin. It’s a gorgeous sunny day and she breathes in the laden smells of summer—citrus and fresh-cut grass, mossy wood and rich earth—savoring the feeling of sunshine warming her face as she tilts it skyward.

Libby slides into her car and makes the conscious choice to ignore the check-oil light as she turns the key in the ignition and starts driving.

She tries not to overthink the kiss. It’s something Bill has done thousands of times over the course of their eighteen years together.

It could have just been force of habit, but Libby can’t help but feel like it was something more.

A rekindling of an old flame. Maybe it’s still there, the spark they’d ignited so long ago.

Maybe it wasn’t extinguished after all; maybe it has just been buried under years of marriage and mortgage payments.

Libby is so lost in her thoughts that she nearly doesn’t see the pretty blond woman stepping around the side of the moving van. She jams on the brakes; her tires squeal against the asphalt as she skids to a stop. That’s one way to meet my new neighbor…