Page 31 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Audrey

Hawthorne Lane

Audrey curls up on her living-room couch with a bowl of air-popped popcorn and a glass of pinot noir.

She flicks through Netflix looking for a rom-com, the kind of thing Seth never wants to watch with her, as she sips her wine.

Seth, thankfully, was asked to speak at a creative writing conference at the University of Rhode Island, which means he’s out of town overnight, and Audrey has the house to herself.

She’s hopeful that the conference will give Seth the boost of confidence he needs, and she’s grateful for the time alone it’s afforded her.

For the first time in weeks, she feels like she can breathe.

Lately, it’s been impossible to find a moment of peace.

Seth is always here, always watching her.

It’s gotten worse since those damn roses arrived on her doorstep.

She feels like his eyes are always on her now, as if he’s just waiting for her to slip up.

She’s constantly walking on eggshells in her own home.

And Audrey is supposed to love this house.

She designed every inch of it, from the white upholstery of the couch to the coffered ceilings.

She’d taken her time selecting the Schumacher wallpaper in the hall bathroom, the slab of marble for the kitchen island with just the right amount of veining, and the perfect shade of snowfall-white paint for the primary bedroom.

The house was meant to feel like an extension of her, brick-and-mortar evidence of her and Seth’s success.

Not a prison that she can’t wait to escape from every morning.

Audrey clicks through the movie selections, finally settling on Sleepless in Seattle.

She’s seen it a thousand times, but it’s one of those movies that brings her right back to her childhood.

To being curled up on her mother’s floral-print sofa, eating popcorn (the real, full-fat kind) and drinking cherry soda.

She’d loved those nights when her father was working a late shift and it was just Audrey and her mom.

Both of her parents worked so much—her father as a security guard at the local hospital, and her mother as a receptionist at a dental practice during the day, a waitress at a local diner on odd nights—so between that and having to share their attention with her two older sisters, Audrey rarely had time alone with either of them.

It made her appreciate their movie nights all the more, bringing out the big metal bowl and filling it to the brim with buttery popcorn mixed with handfuls of M&M’s.

Her sisters couldn’t stand rom-coms. They’d make mock gagging noises, teasing Audrey and her mom as they cried at the same scenes no matter how many times they watched them.

But Audrey didn’t care. Those nights belonged only to her and her mom.

It’s been a long time since Audrey thought of her once-cherished movie nights, since she’d even called her mother.

She makes a mental note to reach out to her parents soon, to invite them to the house.

They haven’t seen the new renovations yet, but she can already imagine their reactions: her mother standing nervously with her purse in her hands as if afraid to touch anything in the house, her father unreservedly asking how much they’d spent on the new Wolf cooking range.

They don’t understand Audrey’s life choices, her focus on her career, buying this big house and not filling it with children.

Their silent disapproval has driven a wedge between Audrey and her parents over the years. And her sisters are no better.

Audrey had never been close with her older sisters, Camila and Isabella.

She always felt like she didn’t fit in, a useless third wheel among her own siblings.

Her sisters are only two years apart in age, while Audrey is the youngest by five years.

That meant that her sisters experienced high school together, shared friends and inside jokes, and Audrey was always too young to join in, was cast aside, ignored.

It also meant that she’d never owned a single thing that hadn’t belonged to her sisters first—clothes, bicycles, even her shoes always passed through Camila and Isabella before they made their way, worn and mended, to Audrey.

The money, hers and Seth’s, changed everything. Now she has shiny new things, things her sisters could only dream of. Like this house, her wardrobe. Luxuries that Audrey earned and that belong only to her.

Her parents don’t understand her lifestyle, and her sisters resent it.

Audrey suspects that they all thought she’d eventually change her mind, that one day her priorities would shift.

They’d expected her to follow in her sisters’ footsteps, pop out a couple of kids and give over her beautiful living room to the chaos of bright plastic toys and pack-and-plays.

But she never has, and the older she gets, the clearer it’s becoming to them all that she never will.

There’s nothing wrong with the way her sisters live. Audrey doesn’t look down on them, as they probably assume, but it’s simply not the life she’s chosen for herself. And she gets to choose now. She no longer has to take their hand-me-downs. She just wishes her family could accept that.

Last Thanksgiving had been particularly brutal. Camila, Audrey’s oldest sister, had hosted it in her tiny one-story ranch on Long Island.

Audrey was already overwhelmed by the time she and Seth pushed open the front door.

Kids, Audrey’s nieces and nephews, were tearing around the small house in paper turkey hats, her dad was in front of the TV watching football at maximum volume, and Audrey could hear Camila barking orders at their mother and Isabella from the kitchen.

It was warm in the house, so warm that Audrey was already regretting the cashmere sweater she’d worn, and the smell of the cooking food—fatty meat, butter-soaked vegetables, pan-fried bacon—felt like an assault.

She could feel a headache blooming behind her eyes.

It hadn’t helped that she and Seth had argued in the car on the way there.

She’d been snappy with him because they were running late.

She hated being late to anything, especially to Camila’s house.

She was already anticipating the comments her family would make, and arriving late would just give them one more thing to criticize.

But this one might have been avoidable if Seth hadn’t spent so much time on his damn phone instead of getting ready when she’d asked him to.

“Is it really that big of a deal?” he’d said as he slid on a pair of Ferragamo loafers. “You hate going to your sister’s house. And the later we arrive, the less time we have to spend there.”

He could be so clueless sometimes. And so they were late, and they’d argued, and Audrey felt like a rubber band about to snap.

“Oh, look who decided to grace us with her presence,” Camila trilled as she stepped out of the kitchen, her hair tied up into a messy bun on top of her head, a spatula in her hand.

It was obvious that she’d been cooking all day.

Flour dusted her misshapen black T-shirt, and sweat slicked her hairline.

“Hi, Camila,” Audrey said with a wave, the heels of her Stuart Weitzman boots sinking into the wall-to-wall carpeting.

They weren’t off to a great start. And it only got worse when they finally sat down to eat and Seth handed Camila’s husband, Ted, the bottle of champagne he’d brought for the occasion.

“Dom, huh?” Ted announced to the table in that loud, brash way of his as he inspected the label. “That’s some good shit.”

Audrey wanted to crawl under the table. The selection was a mistake, but Seth had insisted: “Who doesn’t appreciate good champagne?” His heart was in the right place, but Audrey knew that the gift was all wrong.

Camila’s lips curled into something between a smile and a sneer. “Well, excuse us!” she tutted sarcastically, drawing out her vowels. “I didn’t realize we were hosting royalty today.”

Audrey sat at the other end of the folding table that had been set up in Camila’s living room to seat them all. It was laid with an assortment of mismatched plates and paper napkins. “It’s just some champagne, Camila,” she retorted through gritted teeth. “No need to make a big deal out of it.”

“Well, Princess Audrey, to some of us, it’s a mortgage payment.”

Seth looked confused, his eyes flitting between Audrey and Camila as their spiked words flew over the table. “Would you have preferred wine?” he asked with a chuckle, an awkward attempt to lighten the mood.

Isabella looked amused, both eyebrows raised, arms folded over her chest like a spectator at a tennis match as she watched Audrey and Camila stare each other down.

Meanwhile, Audrey’s parents eagerly held up their champagne glasses to Ted as though they were about to receive a taste from the fountain of youth.

The entire ordeal had been horribly mortifying.

The rest of the night had been filled with subtle barbs from Camila: “Is that a new bag? Chanel! Must be nice!” “Kids, be careful not to spill on Aunt Audrey’s fancy sweater, Lord knows we can’t afford to replace it!”

She and Seth decided to celebrate Christmas in Bali.

Sometimes it’s just easier for her to keep her distance from her family.

They all act like Audrey thinks she’s above them, but she doesn’t.

They act like everything she has magically fell into her lap, but it didn’t.

She just wishes they could acknowledge that she’s worked hard for and deserves this life she has.

The movie starts to play and Audrey pulls a throw blanket over her lap, settling into the couch.

On the screen, Tom Hanks catches a passing glimpse of Meg Ryan in an airport terminal, and Audrey sighs.

She once thought her life would be like that.

That she and Seth had the kind of love people make movies about.

And, she supposes, they do, except it’s turning out to be more like A Bold Affair than Sleepless in Seattle.

At least her former lover has been quiet lately.

Although Audrey suspects he still lurks on her Instagram account—she’d made it public for that very reason.

Let him see the photo she’d posted of herself and her neighbors at brunch, all their glasses clinking over the table— Brunch with the ladies in our favorite spot!

Let him see that he hasn’t gotten to her, that he hasn’t won.

The doorbell rings, echoing through Audrey’s empty house.

She pauses the movie, freezing in place along with the actors on the screen, one hand gripping her wineglass, the other holding the remote in midair.

Was she hearing things? She glances at the time on her phone screen.

It’s nearly eleven o’clock. Who the hell would be at her door at this time of night?

And then the bell rings again, and she knows for sure. Someone is here.

Audrey tosses her blanket aside, sets her wineglass on the table in front of her.

Could it be one of her neighbors? They’d been out earlier at a school charity thing she hadn’t wanted to attend, but she’s certain that would have ended by now.

How late do those things typically go? Or maybe there’s been an emergency of some sort?

But even as she thinks it, the bubbling dread that churns in her stomach tells her that she’s wrong.

That she knows exactly who is on the other side of that door, and it’s the last person she wants to see.

The bell rings for a third time, and is Audrey imaging things, or does it sound more angry, insistent this time? “Coming,” she calls just to stop the ringing.

She pulls open the door just a crack. Just wide enough to catch a glimpse of a man’s leather shoe, the cuff of a French sleeve.

She can smell his cologne, the one that she once loved to find on her sheets after he’d gone, inhaling it deeply into her lungs before she had to wash it away.

But now the scent causes something sour to rise into the back of her throat.

His hand shoots out, and his palm flattens against Audrey’s front door as he pushes it forcefully. She leaps back and it swings wide, bouncing on its hinges.

“Hello, my darling,” he slurs.

She can tell he’s been drinking. His movements, usually so elegant and intentional, are clumsy, cloddish. For the first time, she finds him repulsive.

“Why have you been ignoring me?” he asks, brazenly attempting to walk into her house as if he has a right to be there, as if he doesn’t need her permission to trample through her life.

She lifts an arm, grabs onto the doorjamb to bar his way. “You can’t be here.”

Colin Pembrook’s blue eyes turn to frost, his handsome face hardening into a grotesque mask of rage.

Audrey’s grip tightens. She shouldn’t have posted that photo.

Baited him with the image of Audrey seated across the table from his wife at brunch.

She’d wanted him to understand that if he was going to meddle in her marriage, she was capable of doing the same.

He sent her a warning with the roses, and Audrey had fired back with a warning of her own.

See how close I can get to blowing up your life too?

But she sees now that the photo was a step too far. She shouldn’t have provoked him.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Colin says, his words slow and measured, “but I can do whatever the hell I’d like.” He smiles then, a twisted, taunting grin that feels like a shot of ice in Audrey’s veins.

She slams the door in his face and slides the dead bolt into place.