Page 32 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Maggie

Benton Avenue

“There you are,” Dean exclaims impatiently the instant Maggie walks through their front door.

She startles, the doorknob still clutched in her hand. “Hi,” she says, watching Dean uneasily as she steps inside.

In the center of the living room, the cracked leather couch sags sadly, and the coats on the rack hang like the ghosts of the life she thought she’d have here.

Maggie wonders how many more times she’ll have to do this, how many more times she’ll have to come home to this gray and lifeless place.

A few more weeks, maybe. Just a couple more paychecks until the jam jar will be full.

Maybe then she could afford an apartment of her own.

It wouldn’t be anything fancy, but it would be hers.

Maggie imagines vases of hand-picked flowers; she imagines painting the walls a sunny yellow; she imagines a single bed topped with a clean white quilt in a small but tidy room.

She could be happy, she thinks, on her own.

“I have a job for you,” he says, cracking his knuckles.

“A…j-job?” Maggie stammers. “What kind of job?”

“One easy enough that even you should be able to manage it.”

Maggie is confused. Dean has been out of work for weeks, and all he’s been talking about is how he’s on the verge of coming into some money, but as with most things in Dean’s life, his grand ambitions have yet to come to fruition.

As far as Maggie can tell, Dean has done very little to pursue whatever business deal Mike had offered him, and Maggie has been grateful for that.

“All you need to do,” Dean explains, “is deliver a package to an address across town.”

“A package?”

He scowls. “Yes, Maggie. A package. You know what that is, don’t you?”

“I do, but why do you need me to drop it off for you?”

“Because,” Dean starts, exasperation lacing his tone as though Maggie had already missed something important, “you’ll look far less suspicious than me in that part of town. You know, since you already work there and all.”

Maggie opens her mouth to object, but Dean presses on before she has a chance to respond. “Just take this package”—he shoves a parcel wrapped in brown paper into her hands—“and bring it to the address I give you. Leave it exactly where I tell you to. That’s all you need to do. Nice and simple.”

“What’s in it?” Maggie asks.

Dean shakes his head. “That’s none of your concern. Just drop it off and come straight back here. Do you understand? Do you think you can handle that?”

“I—I guess,” Maggie replies, weighing the package in her hands. She notes the muscle twitching in Dean’s clenched jaw, the firm set of his glare, and knows that she has no choice.

—

Maggie looks down at the slip of paper Dean had handed her, then back up at the grand colonial home sitting in front of her.

The porch lights are on, casting a warm pool of light onto the rounded bend of sidewalk.

This is definitely the right address, but what could Dean possibly need her to deliver here?

Maggie shifts her car into park and reaches for the handle, but something gives her pause.

She knows this block. The family she works for lives only a few houses down the road, and yet she doesn’t know who lives here, in this big, fancy house.

She wonders what business dealings someone who lives in a house like this might have with Dean, of all people.

She can’t picture him here, in his leather jacket, the roar of his motorcycle echoing around the quiet cul-de-sac.

Something doesn’t feel right to her. Maggie knows she’s not supposed to, but she looks down at the bundle resting in her lap and slides her thumbnail under the corner of the paper wrapping.

She inspects the tiny opening she’s made, shifting the package this way and that in the dim light, but she’s unable to determine the contents.

Maggie bites her lower lip. If she does this, if she opens the package, sees what’s inside, there will be no going back.

She knows that. She’ll no longer be able to pretend that she doesn’t know what Dean has gotten himself involved in.

But it’s not just Dean, is it? Maggie is the one sitting in this car, idling in the shadows between the streetlights.

She is the one who is expected to take the risk of stepping out into the dark night and leaving this unknown package in the hiding spot Dean has directed her to.

Whatever Dean is up to, he’s dragged Maggie into it too.

And she deserves to know what he’s gotten her involved in.

Swallowing hard, Maggie unwraps the parcel.

In her hands is a bundle of tiny bags, some filled with a familiar white powder, others unmarked pills.

Drugs. Dean is dealing drugs. A lot of them, by the looks of things.

A small voice in the back of Maggie’s mind reminds her that she already knew this.

That she would have seen the truth if only she’d wanted to see it sooner.

But she pushes it aside. She needs to do something.

She’s sitting in her car mere yards away from where her employers live with enough drugs to send her to prison for a very long time.

Maggie shifts her car into drive; turns out of the familiar cul-de-sac. She can’t do this. She can’t bring this poison onto the block where Lila and Carter live, to the neighborhood where they visit the playground and go for ice cream.

Maggie drives down Main Street with its cafés, its florist shops and bakeries.

She stops at a red light, and out of the corner of her eye, she watches a police car pull up silently beside her.

Maggie feels her palms slick with sweat on the steering wheel, her heart thudding violently in her chest. She looks straight ahead, willing her eyes not to slide down to the package on the passenger seat beside her.

She could be arrested. Her freedom, the little apartment, the sunny-yellow walls, had been so close, but now the image starts to melt before her eyes, a snowflake held in her palm.

After what feels like an eternity, the light turns green.

The police cruiser pulls ahead of Maggie’s car, turns down a side street a little farther down the road.

Maggie’s shoulders sag with relief, but she’s not out of the woods yet.

She can’t take the risk of driving around with drugs in her car, and she can’t go home to Dean and tell him that she didn’t make the delivery. There’s no way out of this.

But maybe… Maggie turns off Main Street and drives through winding side roads until she no longer recognizes the street names.

On a lonely stretch of pavement, she comes across an abandoned gas station and quickly pulls into the dark parking lot.

Heart racing, she gets out and scans the area cautiously until she’s certain that no one is around, then she creeps through the deserted lot toward a long-forgotten dumpster rusting in the far corner.

She stashes the drugs behind it, covers them with a mound of fallen leaves.

She’ll tell Dean that she left the drugs exactly where he’d instructed.

And if something goes wrong, she can always come back here and get them. Dean will never have to know.