Page 43 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Hannah

Hawthorne Lane

Hannah’s fingers twitch over the keyboard of her laptop.

She tells herself there’s no point in checking her email again, that there will be nothing new, that it’s a dead end, that it always has been.

But still, she feels drawn to it, as if it’s a compulsion she can no longer resist, the way one might pick at an old scab.

“Good morning, gorgeous.”

The sound of Mark’s voice just over her shoulder makes Hannah jump in her seat. She slams the top of her laptop shut as he nears the back of the couch; his strong hands reach over it to massage her shoulders.

“You’re up awfully early,” he says before leaning down to tenderly kiss Hannah’s neck.

She forces a smile as she looks up at her husband, into his kind, guileless eyes. “Just wanted to get a head start on some of the event programming for the library next month.” The lie is thick and filmy on her tongue.

“I love how much you love your job,” he says, trailing his fingers along Hannah’s collarbone. “But if you’re open to a distraction…”

Mark’s hand travels lower, dips under the neckline of her shirt, fingers the lace at the edge of her bra. She feels a swell of want as he cups her breast, his thumb moving methodically over the mound of her nipple, his breath warm in her ear.

“Come back to bed,” he says, his voice a low growl. “I can be a little late getting to the office today…”

“I…” Hannah wants to. There is nothing she wants more than to follow Mark back to their bedroom.

She wants to be the kind of newlywed bride who makes love to her husband on a sunny morning.

But she isn’t. She can’t be. Not with all the lies that have built up between them, the threat to their marriage that lurks around every corner.

How can she let herself go? How can she be in the moment with Mark while knowing that she could lose him at any second? “I should probably finish up here.”

Mark sighs. He walks around the side of the couch and positions himself next to Hannah. Gently, he lifts the laptop from her thighs, sets it on the coffee table in front of them, and takes her hands in his.

“Talk to me,” he says, his fingers massaging the inside of her wrist.

“About what?” The words spring too lightly from her lips.

“Is it me? Have I done something to upset you?”

“Mark, no, of course not. Why would you think that?”

Mark lets go of her hands, pulls his own back into his lap.

“I’m at a loss here, Hannah, I really am.

I feel like…you’ve changed since we moved here.

You’ve been so distant. Secretive. At first I chalked it up to the move.

I know coming here, to Hawthorne Lane, was a big adjustment for you.

But it’s been almost three months now, and it feels as though this space between us is only getting bigger.

Was this move a mistake? Are you happy here? ”

“I am,” she responds without hesitation. “I love my job, I’ve made friends, I am happy here.”

“So, then, what is it? What’s changed between us?”

Mark’s eyes search Hannah’s face, and she can see the hurt in them.

The confusion. It’s enough to make her feel as if her heart is being torn out of her chest. She wants to tell him the truth.

She wants to assure him that she is the problem, not him.

But she knows that she can’t. She thinks of the notes, the threat that is circling her like a shark in open water.

Hannah doesn’t know how it’s possible, but someone, somewhere, knows about her past, about the worst thing she’s ever done, and they’re going to use it against her.

She can’t let Mark be dragged down with her.

Hannah hates that her lies are hurting him, but she knows that the truth would do more than hurt him—it would destroy him. “Nothing has—”

“Please don’t,” Mark cuts in. “Please don’t pretend you don’t see it. I’m losing you, Hannah. Piece by piece, day by day, I’m losing you. And you won’t even tell me why. It feels like torture, just sitting here watching it happen without knowing how to fix it.”

“I’m right here, I promise you. I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Maybe physically you’re here, but…I can see it when it happens. When you drift off to somewhere I can’t reach you. I thought we were closer than this. I thought…God, I thought we were going to start trying for a baby. But now you won’t even let me near you.”

Hannah winces at the cold jab of truth in his words.

They were supposed to be starting a family.

It’s what they’d both wanted. But things have changed for Hannah and she can’t tell Mark why.

She can’t explain how terrified she is to bring a child into their lives when her past is hanging over her head like a swinging blade.

She can’t explain how much she wants this, how every time she walks past an empty bedroom in their house, she imagines the nursery it could someday be and how having this dream, this baby, ripped from her arms feels like her punishment for all the mistakes she’s made.

She can’t tell her husband that every time he reaches for her in the dark, her mind is somewhere else.

How when she closes her eyes, she feels not his hands on her but her own hands on skin slicked with warm blood, her fingers fumbling for a pulse she already knows she won’t find.

She can’t tell Mark any of it. Not without telling him all of it.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Because it’s all she can say.

And she is sorry. Desperately sorry that she dragged him down into the dark well of her past. She’d thought she could outrun it, that marrying Mark was her chance at a fresh start.

But she should’ve known that it would catch up with her eventually and that when it did, it would drown them both.

Mark watches her as if waiting, hoping, for more, but it doesn’t come. He nods, and there’s a new heaviness to it, his gaze drifting away from Hannah as he stands. “I’m going to take a shower,” he says. “When you’re ready to let me in, you know where to find me.”

Hannah leans back into the couch, the sound of her husband walking away from her causing tears to prickle at the backs of her eyes. She’s done this to them. To him. She hates herself for it.

Outside the window, morning sun shines on another day on Hawthorne Lane.

Birds twitter in the trees, which are resplendent in their autumnal palette—splashes of fiery reds, vivid oranges, golden yellows.

Porches have been festooned with hand-carved pumpkins and bumpy, curling gourds, and crisp brown leaves dot the paved sidewalks.

The bucolic scene clashes so harshly with the gray gloom that hovers over Hannah’s living room that she stands up and goes to pull the curtains closed, ready to shut herself away from it.

But as her fingers curl around the fabric, she sees something that gives her pause.

Georgina. She jogs lightly down her front steps in sneakers and black Lycra pants with a matching quarter-zip top, and her long red hair has been pulled back into a shiny ponytail that swishes behind her as she moves.

Oversize sunglasses hide her eyes, but from what Hannah can see, her face looks as flawless as ever, no trace of the swelling Hannah had noticed days earlier.

Hannah feels her muscles coiling beneath her skin, anger clouding her vision.

Georgina reminds her so much of her own mother.

The way she’d dab at her face with foundation and concealers, wincing as the blending brushes dusted over her broken skin.

The way she’d avoid her friends, their neighbors, blaming chronic migraines for her absences.

Hannah had felt so powerless then. Much the way she feels now, her marriage on the verge of implosion with no means to stop it.

But Georgina. Georgina she can do something about.

It might be too late for Hannah to divert the course of her own life, but maybe it’s not too late for her to help Georgina.

Hannah quickly pulls on a pair of sneakers, shrugs a jacket over her T-shirt, and runs outside just in time to fall in step with Georgina as she passes the driveway.

“Good morning,” Hannah says.

Georgina slows, jogs in place. “Good morning! I was just heading out for a run.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Er…” Georgina looks uncertain. Hannah can see an internal battle playing out across her face, but in the end, politeness wins, as Hannah hoped it would. “Of course. I didn’t realize you were a runner.”

Hannah looks down at her ensemble. Bright white sneakers, a bulky jacket. “I’m not, usually. But I’m trying to get into it.”

“All right, well, I’m just headed up to the jogging path if you’d like to come along.” She nods toward the entrance to the woods that surrounds their cul-de-sac.

“Great!” Hannah chirps, though she’s not certain she’ll be able to keep up with Georgina. Just looking at her, at the lean, toned muscles of her body, her expensive athletic wear, Hannah can tell that she’s outmatched.

Georgina sets off, her strides long and graceful, and Hannah clumsily trots along at her side like a puppy.

“Do you…run…often?” Hannah asks as they approach the entrance to the jogging path. She’s embarrassingly out of breath already.

“I try to. Whenever I find the time.” Georgina’s words effortlessly float from her lips, as weightless as clouds. Hannah makes a resolution to start doing this sort of thing more often.

They turn off the sidewalk and onto the paved path through the woods.

Hannah has walked by this place so many times, but she asks herself now why she never made the time to explore it.

She feels like she’s entered a different world.

In the woods, the autumn trees form a kaleidoscopic canopy, a collage of vibrant colors and rich textures that arch over their heads.

The air feels fuller here, saturated with the scent of morning dew and fresh soil.

There’s something almost sacred about it, the way that the spongy ground, the soft bark of the trees, has created a lush silence around them.

If she didn’t know better, she would think they were a million miles away from their neat suburban town.

Hannah jogs beside Georgina for a while, savoring the solitude of this place, the fresh air filling and expanding her lungs, and suddenly she finds that her breathing is not as labored, her legs not as tired.

As if just being here in these woods has transformed her into someone new.

“I’m sorry, you know,” Hannah starts, her voice small against the vastness of the forest around them. “About the other day. I shouldn’t have approached you at your house like that.”

“It’s all right,” Georgina tells her. “It’s already forgotten.”

“It’s just…” Hannah pushes herself forward, striving to keep up with Georgina. “I know what you’re going through. And I know how lonely it can feel and—”

“I appreciate the concern,” Georgina says. “But, really, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“My mom used to say the same thing.” The words ring out among the quiet trees. “Her name was Julie.” There’s something freeing in saying it aloud, in releasing her memory here in the wilderness.

Georgina’s pace slows and Hannah hopes that means that she has her attention, that she’s willing to listen.

“My father. He was like Colin. Well, in a lot of ways he wasn’t.

He was broke, he drank too much and worked too little, but he was like him in other ways.

He was controlling, always putting down my mother.

And he’d…hurt her. She thought I didn’t know, thought that she was hiding it from me, but she wasn’t. ”

Georgina stops, turns to face Hannah. “I’m so sorry you went through all that. Truly, I am. It sounds like it was terrible. But my marriage, it’s nothing like that.”

Hannah’s heart sinks. For a moment there she’d thought she was getting through to Georgina, but it seems that she’s still beyond reach.

“And even if it was,” Georgina continues, her voice uncertain as she resumes a slow jog, “even if you were right about Colin, there’s nothing you or anyone else could do to stop it.”

“Maybe I can’t,” Hannah says, following behind Georgina as they round the next bend, turning out of the woods and back onto Hawthorne Lane, “but you don’t have to go through it alone. There are places you can go, you—”

“Please,” Georgina begs. “Just let this go.”

“I can’t,” Hannah says. “If you won’t get help for yourself, do it for your daughter.”

“Christina doesn’t need help. Colin would never hurt her.”

Hannah shakes her head. “You might not see it now, but living with a man like that, it does things to a kid. You might think you’re shielding her from it, just like my mother thought, but Christina knows, Georgina, I promise you she does, and when she gets older it’s—”

“Hannah.”

The tremor in her tone stops Hannah in her tracks. She follows the older woman’s gaze to her front door, where Colin leans against the frame, one hand raised in greeting, a plastic smile pinned to his lips.

“Please. I’m begging you. Just stay away from me and my family.”