Page 33 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Hannah

Hawthorne Lane

Hannah pulls to a stop in front of her house.

The curtains she’d chosen are now hanging inside the windows; the doormat Mark picked out at the garden center, Home Sweet Home in looping cursive, is lying in front of the door; and the mums Libby recommended for the planters on the porch are blooming in shades of deep purple, burnt orange, and saffron yellow.

This is Hannah’s home, and yet she’s afraid to let herself believe that it won’t all be snatched away from her in the blink of an eye.

She waits before turning into the driveway to let a woman about her age with a stroller pass by, a little boy trotting beside her.

Hannah has seen the woman before. From what she understands, she’s a nanny for the family at the end of the block.

Hannah smiles politely, lifts a hand in greeting.

But the other woman’s eyes hardly meet hers before she hurries away.

Hannah considers the sleek Mercedes rumbling beneath her, the big house in front of her, the flawless diamond glittering on her finger, and imagines how she looks to the other woman, wonders if she realizes that they aren’t as different as it might appear.

Hannah edges into her driveway and steps out of the car, hefting her canvas tote bag onto her shoulder as she closes the door.

The bag is weighed down with books she borrowed from the children’s room at Sterling Valley Library, and she feels them bumping against her hip as she walks toward her house.

She wants to get a head start on planning next month’s activities.

Although Hannah is only an assistant in the children’s room, the head librarian asked for her input on upcoming events for the kids, and she was happy to help.

“You have a knack for this, you know,” her boss had said, and Hannah beamed with pride, her cheeks rising like two round apples high on her face.

Hannah loves her job and the children she works with.

She likes the quiet kids who curl up with books in the library’s nooks and crannies; she likes the loud ones who bounce in their seats and can’t help but exclaim in excitement when the read-aloud story takes an unexpected turn; she likes the ones who come in wearing superhero capes or sparkly tutus because they know that they can be anyone they want to be inside the library walls.

She wonders which of them her own future children, hers and Mark’s, will be like.

A pang of longing, regret, strikes her then, a physical stabbing pain in the center of her chest. She thinks of the texts she sometimes gets from Mark, baby names he thought of, photos of tiny blue booties and pink satin bows that he saw in shop windows.

Hannah wants to start a family with him more desperately than she can put into words.

It was the whole reason they bought this house on Hawthorne Lane with all of its empty bedrooms waiting to be filled.

But how can she even consider a child now, with the past closing in on her like an ominous storm brewing on the horizon?

Liar. This isn’t over. The notes have unsettled Hannah to the point where she can’t sleep—the past revisits her every time she closes her eyes.

But what do they mean? Is it possible that someone knows what she did?

Hannah is used to living a life where she’s constantly having to look over her shoulder.

Her mother taught her the importance of vigilance from a young age.

But these notes—this feels different. She finds that the vague, cryptic threats from a distant, faceless enemy are much more frightening than the devil she’s always known.

Hannah digs her house keys from her bag and absently reaches into the mailbox as she does every day when she gets home from work, lost in her own thoughts. But today, all she’s met with is cold metal at her fingertips. It’s empty.

That’s strange. She looks out over the cul-de-sac, at the other houses, mailboxes brimming with catalogs and flyers.

And then a thought occurs to her. A memory of her first night on Hawthorne Lane, when Doug, the mailman, had accidentally delivered Georgina’s mail to Hannah’s address.

Perhaps he’s mixed up their house numbers again, given Georgina Hannah’s mail this time.

She lifts one hand, uses it to shield her eyes from the sun like a visor as she looks across the street.

Georgina is outside, tending to her garden beds.

Hannah hasn’t seen Georgina since the PTA auction two weeks ago, and she’s gotten the impression that the other woman is avoiding her.

She sent a text asking Georgina to grab a cup of coffee in town but she got no response, and their paths conveniently haven’t crossed at all since.

But checking for her mail would be a perfect excuse for Hannah to go over there.

Hannah bites at the cuticle on the edge of her thumb as she considers the idea.

She understands that Georgina is probably embarrassed by what Hannah witnessed at the auction, and maybe she should just leave her alone, but despite everything Hannah is dealing with in her own life, she hasn’t been able to get it out of her head, that image of Colin with his fist clamped around his wife’s wrist, the look of twisted rage on his face.

It strikes her as deeply unfair—Georgina shouldn’t have to hide and feel ashamed over her husband’s behavior.

She’s not the one who did anything wrong.

Hannah makes up her mind and drops her keys back into her purse.

She strides across the street and up Georgina’s front walk.

“Hey!” she says sunnily.

Georgina startles, her knees in the dirt, one hand gripping a spade. “Oh, Hannah, hi! I didn’t even hear you coming. I guess I was in my own little world for a moment there.” She smiles brightly from beneath her wide-brimmed hat. “How have you been?”

“Er, I’m…I’m good,” Hannah stutters. She’s thrown off by Georgina’s cheerfulness, her practiced, flawless smile. “I just came by to see if you’d gotten my mail by mistake. It seems Doug is at it again.”

“As a matter of fact, I did.” Georgina chuckles. “I was going to run it over to your mailbox as soon as I finished here.” She reaches deep into the pocket of her apron, pulls out a bundle of envelopes, and hands them to Hannah.

“Thank you, I appreciate it!” Hannah shifts her weight on her feet. “I’ve actually been hoping to run into you…”

“You texted.” Georgina presses a gloved palm to her forehead. “I completely forgot to answer. My apologies, Hannah. I was feeling a bit under the weather this week, and it must have slipped my mind.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Hannah flounders to find the words to respond to the obvious lie. “I hope you’re feeling better now.”

“I am,” Georgina replies, nodding. She stands up, takes off her gardening gloves, and brushes the granules of soil from her knees. “Thank you.”

As she lowers her head and tucks her gloves into the pocket of her apron, her face catches the light for the first time, and Hannah sees it.

The slight discoloration beneath Georgina’s right eye, just above her cheekbone.

It’s been expertly covered with makeup, as though Georgina knew exactly what combination of hues to use to conceal a bruise, but Hannah recognizes it right away.

In a flash, she’s back in the house where she grew up, the first place she remembers calling home.

The only one where they’d lived with her father.

Hannah remembers that place only in fragments, like a film she’d once watched and mostly forgotten.

She remembers the way the kitchen always smelled of cooking oil and the bright pink of the roses her mother had painted on her bedroom wall, the way her fingers would trace the curling vines in the moonlight as she lay in bed, and she remembers the booming sound of her father’s voice when he thought she was asleep: “Shut the hell up, Julie!” She remembers the crack of his fist against plaster, the sound of shattering glass, and the bruises on her mother’s body.

Red welts that would bloom into deep purple blemishes that Hannah couldn’t stand to look at.

“I bumped my head on a cabinet door,” her mother would say, laughing at her own clumsiness, or “I tripped on the stairs. Mommy can be so silly sometimes.” But Hannah, even at seven years old, could tell she was lying.

Her father became this frightening thing in her mind, a shape-shifter that turned into a lurching monster at night, all bellowing roars and sharp teeth on the other side of her closed bedroom door.

She’d squeeze her eyes shut, wishing she was bigger, stronger.

She imagined herself facing him in his monstrous form.

In these visions she was always brave like the cartoon superheroes she saw on television—she was a hero.

But in the harsh light of reality, Hannah was none of those things.

She was just a little girl cowering in her bed, desperately wishing to be more than she was.

Until the night everything changed. Hannah’s mother crept into her room before dawn. She was holding her side, which would later be covered in bruises that stretched across her skin and looked to Hannah like watercolor paint on canvas.

“Get up, baby,” she’d whispered. “We have to go.”

Hannah sat up in her thin cotton nightgown, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her mother was already stuffing Hannah’s clothes and her favorite soft toys into a big black garbage bag. “Where are we going?” she’d asked.

Hannah’s mother paused, knelt by Hannah’s bedside. “We have to get out of here, baby. Your daddy, he…” Her voice faltered, as if even then she felt the pull to make excuses for him.

“Turns into a monster,” Hannah filled in for her. It was the first time either of them had spoken about the things her father did, the kind of man he was. But Hannah hadn’t needed her mother to say the words. She already knew.

Her mother swallowed hard, and when she spoke again, her voice was strained. “Yes, baby. He does. And I don’t want that for you. Do you understand? I don’t want my little girl to grow up around a man like that. It’s no good for you, and so we have to go. Right now. Before he wakes up.”

Hannah nodded and silently helped her mother finish packing. They worked in tandem, as if they’d already planned for this day, already decided what would stay and what would go. And then they’d left. They drove off in the dead of night with everything they cared about packed into one small car.

“We can never look back,” her mother said, her eyes meeting Hannah’s in the rearview mirror. “I need to hear you say it, baby: We can never look back.”

Hannah rested her head against the cool glass of the window by her side and repeated the vow she’d later break. “We can never look back.”

“Georgina,” Hannah says now. “You can talk to me.” You don’t have to face this alone.

“I appreciate that, but there’s nothing to talk about.” Georgina busies herself gathering her gardening supplies.

Hannah reaches out, touches her lightly on the arm. She feels the other woman bristle at the contact. “I understand. More than you know.”

Georgina pauses, considers Hannah, her green eyes searching Hannah’s blue ones.

And Hannah waits, her breath held. For a moment it feels so real, as if Georgina is reading all the words Hannah hasn’t yet brought herself to say, as if the broken thing in Georgina sees its own reflection in Hannah’s eyes: I recognize you.

And then it’s gone. The false brightness is back, and Georgina smiles that perfect smile of hers.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Georgina, please,” Hannah tries again. “What happened the other night—”

“Nothing happened the other night,” Georgina insists.

“But your face…” Hannah’s hand rises to her own cheek, traces the crest of her cheekbone.

“I walked into a door,” Georgina says with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I can be so clumsy sometimes.”

The hollow excuse sounds so familiar to Hannah’s ears that it’s like hearing her mother again, feeling the same searing indignation she had as a child.

It wasn’t fair what her father had done to her, what he’d done to them, relegating them to a life of fear, living out of her mother’s car, always looking over their shoulders.

Hannah hated him for it so fully that it felt like it could consume her.

If only there were something more she could have done…

We can never look back.

Except Hannah did. At first, only in her mind.

She imagined herself going back there, creeping into the house she’d once called home, and finding her father passed out on the couch, his terry-cloth robe gaping open to reveal the pale, flabby skin of his chest, a scene she’d witnessed so many times that she could almost smell the rank scent of sour beer on his breath, hear the sputtering snore that rattled in his chest. She pictured herself picking up one of the lumpy couch pillows and holding it over his face with her small hands until the noise stopped—

“Ahem.” The sound of throat-clearing snaps Hannah back into the present.

She looks up to find what must be Georgina’s son, the spitting image of his father, standing on a balcony one story above their heads.

He’s leaning casually over the railing, watching the exchange between the two women with a curious expression on his face.

“I appreciate you checking on me,” Georgina says to Hannah, “but I’m feeling much better now, and I really should go inside and get started on dinner.”

“I—” Hannah begins, but Georgina has already turned away from her.

Hannah watches as she hurries up her front walk and closes herself behind the door of her picture-perfect house.

—

Hannah slowly makes her way back to her own house, her mind still reeling from her interaction with Georgina.

It’s like she’s a prisoner in her own home.

Hannah knows that she should mind her own business, that she has enough to worry about right now without taking on someone else’s problems, but she also knows that she won’t be able to.

That now that she’s aware of what’s going on behind Georgina’s closed doors, she won’t be able to ignore it.

She’s not a frightened, powerless little girl anymore.

She looks down at the envelopes in her hand, rumpled from her grip. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding them. And then she sees one that stands out from the others. A cream-colored mailer, sealed with a scrap of clear tape.

Hannah’s hands feel numb as she pulls it from the pile, lets the rest of the mail drop, fluttering, onto the smooth black asphalt of her driveway. She slides out the note, and this time the message is crystal clear: Murderer.

There’s no denying it anymore. Someone, somewhere, knows exactly what Hannah is.