Page 30 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Hannah

Hawthorne Lane

“Did you win?” Mark asks.

Hannah blinks. “Huh?”

“I asked if you won the raffle.” He nods toward the ticket in her hand, and Hannah realizes she’s been staring at it.

“No,” she says with a small shake of her head. “I didn’t.”

Mark looks at her curiously, his brow furrowing slightly, as if Hannah is a puzzle he’s trying to solve. “Are you all right?”

“Yup,” Hannah says a touch too brightly. “I’m fine.”

Mark opens his mouth as if to question her further, but then closes it again.

They’ve been having a version of this same conversation for two weeks now, ever since Hannah opened the latest message— This isn’t over —and every time her answer has been the same: Everything is fine.

Hannah is fine. There’s nothing bothering her at all.

She knows Mark doesn’t believe her, but they seem to have reached something of a stalemate.

“I wonder what’s keeping Georgina,” Libby says, setting her phone aside for the first time all night.

Libby has been quiet for most of the evening.

More so than usual, Hannah thinks. But then again, she doesn’t know the other woman that well.

Maybe she’s always this connected to her phone.

Hannah knows that Libby has a company to run, and perhaps it’s keeping her busy tonight, but she suspects it’s something else.

Something that has her occasionally smiling down at the screen in her palm.

“Yeah,” Mark agrees. “She and Colin never did come back with those drinks.”

“Probably cornered by a pack of PTA moms,” Libby replies. “They can be pretty aggressive on their home turf.”

Mark laughs, that deep, open laugh of his, and Hannah is nearly broken with it. With the love she feels for her husband and the knowledge that she might soon lose him.

She closes her eyes, wincing at the unexpected stab of guilt.

She sees herself then, so clearly it’s as if she’s back there: her hair fanning out behind her, caught in the wind, her shoes hitting the pavement so hard that she can feel the impact reverberating in her shins.

And then there’s the blood. Always the blood.

So much of it that she feels it sticky and warm between her fingers, the dark bloom of it soaking through her shirt.

What have I done? she thinks. What have I done?

Hannah opens her eyes with a jolt, suddenly feeling lightheaded. These episodes have been happening more and more frequently, images of the past bursting into her mind when she least expects them, so vivid, so real, that they take her breath away.

She feels Mark’s eyes on her again, and she stands from the table, wobbling slightly in her heels.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks, his eyes searching Hannah’s for a truth he must know he won’t find.

“Fine,” she says again. “I’m fine.” She sees something dim in her husband’s eyes as he absorbs her latest lie, and it’s so painful that she has to turn away from it. “I’m just going to get some air.”

Mark is everything good, everything right in Hannah’s life. Her clean slate. She hates the thought of her past contaminating it, spreading its poison, corroding the life they’ve built until it crumbles. There has to be something she can do. Something to stop what she knows is coming.

But sometimes it’s impossible. Sometimes reality catches up to you, a storm you can’t outrun, no matter how hard you try.

Another vision of the past breaks through as she stumbles through the gym, but this time Hannah isn’t running.

She sees herself as a little girl, knees tucked to her chest, arms wrapped around herself protectively, her spine digging painfully into the back of the small plastic chair in the hospital waiting room.

And yet she didn’t move. She sat perfectly still, counted the butterflies painted on the wall: four purple, two blue, three pink.

She hadn’t spoken, not one single word, for what felt to Hannah like hours.

Though it could have been days, even weeks, and she wouldn’t have known.

She was vaguely aware of other people coming and going, some who talked to her, some who talked about her in concerned whispers, using words like mother and passed away and child protective services.

But Hannah couldn’t bring herself to respond.

She couldn’t even bring herself to move.

She just stared at those butterflies, imagining she could shrink herself down until she was small enough to ride one, that it could take her far away from this place with its strange antiseptic smell and evil things like cancer.

Hannah hadn’t even known her mother was sick, and then, in what felt like a heartbeat, she was gone.

She simply couldn’t imagine a world without her mother in it, so she didn’t.

If she didn’t move, if she didn’t speak, maybe time would forget about her; maybe it would march by without her and she wouldn’t have to face whatever came next.

Hannah doesn’t know how long she sat there like that before the lady came. The one that had the lanyard around her neck, a plastic ID card dangling from the end, who said that she was there to help Hannah. Didn’t she know that no one could help Hannah?

The lady squatted down in front of her. She had kind eyes, but Hannah still turned away from them.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” the woman said, her voice gentle and coaxing. Hannah did not reply.

“Do you have another grown-up at home?” The woman waited, seemingly comfortable in Hannah’s silence. Slowly, Hannah shook her head.

“What about your dad?”

And for the first time since her world had ended, Hannah spoke, using the words her mother had taught her: “I don’t have one.”

Hannah shakes the memory away. If someone found out what she’d done, the lies she’d told, the life that she’s built here with Mark will be over. She’ll be as alone as that little girl.

Hannah pushes open the doors leading to the school’s courtyard.

There’s a bubbling fountain in the center, string lights hung like a canopy.

There were a few people out here earlier in the evening, but it’s grown colder and they’ve gone inside.

September is a strange, transitive month, Hannah thinks, where the days still cling to the warmth of summer but at night the autumn chill slinks in on catlike feet.

She’s happy to be alone out here, out of the crowd for a moment while she regains her composure.

She leans against the rough brick of the building, exhaling deeply.

That’s when she hears the voices, realizes she’s not alone after all.

There are people around the corner of the building, just out of sight.

She can’t make out all of the words, but one seems to be a man, and he sounds angry.

Hannah pauses, holding her breath while she listens.

“Embarrassment…no respect…”

The voice sounds familiar, but Hannah can’t quite place it. And then she hears the second voice.

“I’m sorry.”

This one is much smaller, and there’s a slight tremor of fear in it. This one Hannah recognizes immediately. Georgina.

Before she has time to think it through, Hannah starts walking, following the sound of Georgina’s voice.

She rounds the corner just in time to see Colin grab his wife by the wrist, his knuckles white as he holds her arm at a painful angle.

“Is everything okay?” Hannah asks, her tone uncharacteristically bold as her voice echoes through the empty courtyard.

Colin releases Georgina’s arm. “Everything is just fine,” he replies, that dazzling smile pinned to his lips.

It’s disorienting for Hannah, how quickly he’s transformed himself into someone shiny and new. It makes her question what she just saw. Maybe she’d been mistaken…but then she looks at Georgina, sees the fear in her eyes, and she knows.

“I was asking Georgina.” Hannah is surprised by her own brazenness as she stands her ground, her arms folding over her chest as she braces herself against the cold.

“We’re okay,” Georgina says, her perfect smile back in place even as she rubs her wrist, which is red and raw. “We’ll be inside in just a moment.”

Hannah doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to leave Georgina alone out here with Colin. But Georgina gives her the smallest nod, the look in her eyes pleading with Hannah to walk away before she makes things worse.

“All—all right, then,” Hannah says, and she turns to go, feeling entirely unsure of whether she’s doing the right thing.