Page 21 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Libby

Hawthorne Lane

Libby tips some kibble into Jasper’s metal bowl, where it lands with a clatter. He slowly makes his way over and sniffs at it uninterestedly before looking up at her with round, baleful eyes.

“I know, Jasp,” she says. “Blame the vet. He’s the one who said you need to be on a diet.”

Jasper sits with a harrumph as though accepting his fate and slowly begins chewing his new weight-control dog food with little enthusiasm.

She pulls out her phone, checks the time.

Maybe I should go into the shop… It’s her day off, but with Lucas at Bill’s, it’s just too quiet here in her big, empty house.

Libby often finds that she doesn’t know what to do with herself when she’s alone.

Free time makes her anxious. Isn’t there something productive I should be doing?

For so long, there was always something she needed to do, someone she needed to take care of—school lunches to be packed, dry cleaning to be dropped off, shopping to be done, dinners to plan, shifts at Lily Lane to be covered.

But now, her family, or what’s left of it, doesn’t need her quite so much, and she has Erica to share the responsibilities at the store.

Libby, for maybe the first time in her adult life, is often alone with herself, and she doesn’t have the first clue what to do with that.

She sends a quick text to Erica.

All okay there? I can come in if you need me.

Erica types back:

Don’t you dare.

Libby smiles to herself. Erica is only five foot one but she is still one of the most intimidating people Libby has ever met.

She’s curvaceous and loud, the sound of her Colombian accent always filling the store.

It was a great decision, hiring her. The customers love her, Libby loves her, and, most important, Erica loves Lily Lane almost as much as Libby does, treating it as if it were her own.

She’s often shooing Libby off, encouraging her to take some time for herself.

“I’ve got this,” she’ll say. “Now leave me alone.”

Libby knows Erica means well, but she doesn’t understand that Libby doesn’t want time off. She wants to feel needed, useful. Besides, working helps distract her from how very not alone Bill is these days.

Libby’s fingers stray toward the Instagram icon on her phone screen.

It’s become an addiction for Libby, checking Heather’s account, peering into the Pandora’s box she opened when she went searching for Bill’s new girlfriend.

She navigates to her page now, and Libby finds herself staring at her face again.

Heather. She clicks on a random photo, a cheerful Heather crossing the finish line of a race, and studies it—the sinew of her strong legs, her taut stomach—as if she hasn’t already spent hours memorizing every detail of the curated, smiling grid over the past two weeks, her mind expanding the photos into motion, filling in the gaps between the frames.

She’s already imagined Bill’s mouth on Heather’s full, pillowy lips.

She’s imagined the sound of her laugh: throaty, sexy, unencumbered.

She’s imagined Bill’s fingers tangled in her long, dark hair.

She’s imagined Heather’s body beneath Bill’s in the throes of passion, the way Heather, looking up at him, would see the tendons in his shoulders flex, his mouth forming a soft O as he thrusts against her.

Honk.

The sound abruptly halts her spiraling thoughts, yanks her unceremoniously back to reality. It sounds as though it came from just outside her house.

Honk, honk.

Libby slips her phone back into her pocket and makes her way to the front window. Her eyebrows rise nearly to her hairline when she sees the unfamiliar car parked in her driveway, a cherry-red Mustang convertible, engine roaring and exhaust curling up behind it like dragon smoke.

Libby walks outside in a stunned daze.

“Mom!” Lucas shouts from the driver’s seat. “Can you believe this?” He sounds like a little boy again, buzzing with excitement, his fingers trailing along the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

“Whose car is this?” Libby croaks with feigned enthusiasm as she approaches the rolled-down window, noticing how Bill, sitting in the passenger seat, doesn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Mine!” Lucas is giddy with joy. “Dad bought it for me!”

Libby clenches her teeth, forcing a smile onto her face for the sake of her son. She doesn’t want to take this away from him—it’s been so long since she’s seen him this happy—but it’s taking all her self-control not to strangle his father here and now.

“Why don’t you go inside so I can talk to Dad for a minute?”

“Yeah, okay,” he says, sliding out of the smooth leather driver’s seat and pulling her into a quick hug. “And then I’m going to pick up Justin. Wait till he sees me pull up in this!”

He heads toward the house, and Libby gently touches her neck where her son’s arm just was. When was the last time he’d been so casually affectionate with her?

She waits until she hears the front door close, until she knows Lucas is inside, and then she rounds on Bill.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she shouts, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

She’d spoken to him about this, explained how important it was that they be on the same page about not buying Lucas a car.

They’d agreed that Lucas was going to work to save up for it, learn the value of a dollar.

And this certainly wasn’t the car she’d had in mind for their seventeen-year-old son!

Bill’s gaze scans the cul-de-sac in a wide arc. “I know you’re upset, but let’s try not to make a scene for the entire neighborhood.”

Right now Libby could care less if her neighbors overhear. She’s tired of always holding herself back, considering everyone else’s feelings before her own. “How could you do this? There’s no way he’s keeping this car! He’s only seventeen! It’s far too expensive, not to mention dangerous!”

“Lib, I know you said you wanted him to save up for his first car, but I have the money and he’s my son and—”

“This is exactly what we said we didn’t want to do!”

“No, it’s what you said we didn’t want to do.” Bill’s face hardens. “If I want to buy my kid a car, I’ll buy him a car. He’s been going through a tough time and I wanted to do this for him. It was my decision to make.”

Libby can feel the indignation, the resentment taking hold of her, climbing up her throat.

“He’s going through a tough time because of you !

Because of your choice! You can’t just buy him off and absolve yourself of any guilt you feel over it.

And as for it being your decision to make—if you wanted to be a parent, you shouldn’t have left your son. ”

“I didn’t leave my son, Libby. I left you. And this is why. The constant arguing. Our marriage was starting to feel like a battlefield. I couldn’t take it anymore!”

Tears well in Libby’s eyes and she turns away, not wanting to give Bill the satisfaction of seeing how much his words hurt her. But as she does, she sees Lucas standing on the front walk, a backpack slung over one shoulder, car keys dangling from his hand.

“Lucas, I—”

The look on his face tells her that he heard everything.

“Why do you have to be like this, Mom?” he asks, the hurt in his eyes, the hate in his words, like daggers through her heart. “Why do you have to ruin everything?”

Lucas pushes past her, climbs back into his new car. He stares resolutely out the windshield, looking anywhere but at his mother.

“Why don’t you get going to Justin’s,” Bill says as he steps out of the car. “I think your mother and I should finish this discussion inside.”

—

Libby paces the length of her living room. “I just feel like this is something you should have spoken to me about!”

Jasper wanders into the room, his nails click-clacking against the hardwood floor to greet Bill, but at the sound of Libby’s shouting, he quickly scuttles back to the kitchen, his tail hanging low between his legs.

“I get it, okay?” Bill says. “Maybe it did warrant a conversation, but, Lib, come on. You know it would just have turned into an argument.”

“Not necessarily, we—”

“Libby. Look at me.”

Libby pauses her pacing, forcing her eyes to meet Bill’s. He’s leaning casually against the wall, thumbs looped over the pockets of his jeans.

“We haven’t been good at this for a long time, me and you. For the past few years, it feels like all we did was argue.”

“That’s not fair. Okay, maybe we were going through a bit of a rough patch, but every marriage does. We could have worked through it.”

“It was more than a rough patch.”

Libby shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t, we just—”

“It was for me.” Bill’s voice is gentle, but his words are resolute. “I wasn’t happy anymore. We weren’t happy anymore. You just didn’t want to see it.”

Libby is incredulous. She feels all the sadness she’s been carrying around, locked tightly inside her chest, giving way to anger.

“You weren’t happy? You’re not a child, Bill! You can’t be happy all the time. That’s not how marriage works! That’s not how life works!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Libby continues as if she didn’t hear him.

She’s been holding these words back for so long, holding herself back for so long.

“But I guess it does work like that for you, right? You can just get yourself a girlfriend and move on without a second thought about what it’s doing to your family.

But, hey, as long as you’re happy, I guess! ”

“You…know?” Bill’s arms drop to his sides, his lips parting in surprise. “How?”

“Does it matter?”

“I guess it doesn’t. But I wanted to tell you myself, in person. It felt like the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do? The right thing to do would have been to work on our marriage instead of throwing it away the second things got tough!” She’s shouting now, unrestrained for the first time in as long as she can remember.

“Whoa, Lib, calm down, I—”

“I will absolutely not calm down! I think I’ve been calm for long enough!”

“We’re separated—it’s not like I had an affair!”

“Jesus, Bill! You said you just needed some time. I thought we’d work it out, I thought…” A defiant tear slides down her cheek and Libby swipes it away angrily with the back of her wrist. I thought you’d fight for us.

“Lib.” Bill steps toward her, reaches for her hand, but she recoils.

“Don’t touch me. I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity, I just…I didn’t mean to upset you. But I think you should know. Things are getting serious with—”

Libby raises a palm. “Don’t you dare say her name in this house.” She knows it sounds childish, but she can’t bear the thought of hearing another woman’s name on his lips in the home they built together.

“Fine.” Bill crosses his arms over his chest, distances himself from her once again. “I won’t say her name. But it’s probably for the best that you know about it now, before she meets Lucas.”

“She’s not meeting our son.” Libby’s words carry an edge of warning.

“That’s not your call to make.” Bill’s eyes lock on hers, defiant now. He’s drawn a line in the sand, and it feels so unfair. So fundamentally unfair.

“How can you be so selfish? You told me time apart would be good for our marriage, and I tried to give that to you, but what good has it done for us, Bill? Tell me, what good is any of this doing? You threw our marriage, our family, away. And for what? So you could go sow your wild oats like a teenage boy?” She throws her hands up in disgusted frustration.

“And now you want to introduce this…this… woman to our son. No. Absolutely not. No.”

“You know what? The beauty of being separated is that I don’t have to listen to this anymore.

I’m going home. We’ll finish this conversation another time.

” He turns and walks away from Libby once again.

Because it’s so easy for him to do. Because he can come and go from her life, from their family, as it suits him without so much as a second thought. It’s unfathomable to her.

Something about the image of his turned back sets her off.

It brings back all the pain of the night he left, of all the nights since when she’s silently cried herself to sleep.

Every day she has to tamp down her broken heart to put a smile on her face, to give him the space he said he needed, to pretend to be okay for Lucas’s sake.

She has to be the strong one who holds what’s left of her family together while he just gets to walk away.

She’s overcome with it, with the need to do something.

The need to be seen, really seen, for once.

As if her hand is moving of its own accord, Libby picks up the framed wedding photo on the mantel and hurls it in Bill’s direction.

It smashes into the front door just as he pulls it closed behind him.

Libby watches the glass explode and fall to the ground like shards of scattered ice.

In its wake, a deafening silence. Libby is once again alone, left to pick up the broken pieces of her life.