Page 46 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Maggie

Benton Avenue

“Let’s go.”

Maggie startles, the knife she was holding clattering to the floor. “Go where? I’m just getting started on dinner,” she says with some effort. Her jaw is still tender from the last time she’d questioned Dean. She prods one of her molars with her tongue. She’s pretty sure it’s loose.

“You can do that when we get back.”

Maggie wants to ask again where it is that she’s going, but she can tell that she won’t be getting an answer from Dean. And so instead, she picks the knife up off the floor and carries it to the sink. She grips the handle for a moment, feeling the heft of it in her hand.

I could kill him, she thinks. She imagines the expression on his face if she were to plunge the silver blade into his neck. The mix of surprise, horror, defeat that would play across his features. She slides her thumb over the smooth wooden handle.

“What’s taking so long?” Dean barks.

Maggie drops the knife into the sink where it lands with a clang. She doesn’t have it in her. She isn’t a killer.

“I’m coming,” she says.

Maggie follows Dean out to the driveway, feeling more trapped than she ever has before.

She wonders what Sam would say if he were here right now.

She’s been thinking about Sam a lot lately.

She could call him. She knows he’d help her, even after she’d been so awful to him.

But it wouldn’t be right. She can’t ask Sam to ride in like a white knight and rescue her from her own life, not after the way she’d treated him, casting him off like his friendship meant nothing to her.

Besides, what if Sam got hurt because of her?

What if he were to show up here and Dean did something terrible?

She imagines that knife again, but this time it’s in Dean’s hand.

She watches the scene play out in her mind: Dean stabbing the knife into Sam’s chest, the blade sliding between his ribs, Sam clutching at the hilt, thick, black-red blood dripping between his fingers.

She imagines the way his beautiful blue eyes would look as he took his last breath, the life draining away from them, and the way she’s certain he’d still have come for her even if he knew what it would cost him.

No, Maggie can’t take that risk. Not with Sam.

She made her bed with Dean, and now she has to lie in it.

Dean climbs into the driver’s seat of his old Camaro.

He doesn’t drive it often, in part because he prefers his bike and in part because it’s unreliable.

Dean bought it off the owner of the chop shop down the street.

It needs a lot of work, work Dean knows how to do himself, but the repairs require parts, and those require money, something that’s always been in short supply and is getting even shorter since Maggie hasn’t been able to go to work nannying for the Sullivans this week.

Not in the state she’s in. Her back has been hurting her too much to get on the floor and play with the children, and she knows her appearance would raise questions she isn’t ready to answer.

She had to pretend to be sick with the flu.

Maggie gets into the car and buckles her seat belt while Dean turns the key in the ignition. The Camaro starts on the first try, the car roaring to life. He backs down the driveway and the tires kick up gravel and a cloud of dirt that balloons out around them.

As he starts down Benton Avenue, one arm languidly draped over the steering wheel, Maggie notices him looking at her from the corner of his eye.

“We’re going to scope those big fancy houses across town,” he tells her, offering the explanation like a gift. But Maggie knows it’s a Trojan horse.

She says nothing, keeps her eyes on the road in front of her.

“The ones that look like kids live in ’em, those are the ones we hit. Most likely to be empty on Halloween.”

Maggie stares listlessly out her window, watches as they leave their usual stretch of town, passing the run-down gas stations, the barbershops, and the check-cashing places.

“You’re going to be the one to ring the doorbells. Just in case someone answers. You’re less…” He looks at her again, his eyes roving over her body. Maggie wills herself not to move. “Threatening.”

“Of course,” he continues, talking more to himself than Maggie now, “we’re going to skip the houses with those fuckin’ doorbell cameras. Although those are probably the ones that have the good shit in them. Are you listening?”

Maggie nods, pretends to be interested in the scenery outside her window. They’re passing a heavily wooded area now, and the trees look like a green-brown blur as they speed by.

“I don’t think you are,” Dean says. “You’re not listening to a damn word I say.”

“I am,” Maggie insists.

“We’re in this together, Maggie. Me and you. Whether you like it or not. And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that we wouldn’t have to be doing any of this if it weren’t for you.”

Maggie wonders, not for the first time, how much of Dean’s insistence on robbing the houses of their wealthy neighbors is to pay off their debt to Mike and how much is because he enjoys the idea of it, the satisfaction it would bring him to take from those who have always had more than he has.

Dean rolls up to a red light, bringing the car to a stop. He pulls a small plastic bag from the pocket of his leather coat. Maggie pretends she can’t see him in her peripheral vision as he shakes a tiny mound of white powder onto the side of his hand and inhales it up his nose in one quick breath.

He exhales loudly as the drug courses through his veins, the high taking hold of him.

Maggie’s hands start to shake in her lap. “Do you want me to drive?” she asks.

Dean works his jaw, his teeth grinding together, and it makes Maggie’s skin crawl.

“You know, just so that you can get a better look at the houses,” Maggie says, forcing her face into a watery smile.

“Is there something wrong with the way I drive?”

Maggie feels the car accelerating, the tires of the Camaro spinning faster over the asphalt. She clasps her hands together, her fingers interlaced so tightly that her knuckles blanch. Dean does this sometimes—drives too fast, takes turns too sharply—because he knows it frightens her.

Maggie swallows hard, her throat still sore from where Dean had grabbed it. “No,” she says. “Sorry.” She hates the timidity she hears in her voice.

She wasn’t always this way, this meek little mouse of a person.

She tries to remember who she was before.

She knows she was stronger, more capable, but the memory feels so far away to her now.

Dean has broken her down so completely that she hardly remembers that version of herself.

It’s sad, she thinks. She feels it like a loss.

The death of the person she should have been.

“What’s the matter, Maggie?” Dean asks, a taunting lilt to his voice. “Am I scaring you?” He pushes his boot down harder on the accelerator, and the Camaro jolts forward, barreling even faster down the empty stretch of road.

“N-no,” she stammers, but Dean laughs.

“Oh, good. Let’s go a little faster, then.”

The Camaro’s engine roars, the hood shaking as the pistons fire rapidly beneath it.

“Do you want me to slow down?” Dean asks.

Maggie doesn’t respond. She knows it doesn’t matter what she says. There is no right answer.

“I asked you a question, Maggie.”

The car begins to rattle, a metallic jangling, as Dean pushes it past its limits. Maggie squeezes her eyes shut, her stomach quaking.

“Look at me, Maggie.”

She doesn’t; she can’t. She’s so frightened that she can’t bring herself to open her eyes.

“I said look at me.” Dean is angry now, the words leaving his lips like thrown jabs.

Maggie forces her eyes open, her chin trembling as she turns to face him.

Dean is watching her intently, his head fully turned toward Maggie in the passenger seat. He’s not looking at the road.

“Please stop,” Maggie manages, her voice a strangled squeak.

“What did you say?” Dean smiles, a Cheshire cat grin. “I didn’t quite hear you.” He’s still not looking at the road, and Maggie knows it’s intentional. She knows he’s doing this to scare her.

“Stop!” she shouts. “That’s enough, Dean!”

The edges of his smile creak upward. “Didn’t think you had any of that left in you.” He pushes down even harder on the accelerator and the red dial of the speedometer quivers. Maggie can feel the back tires of the Camaro fishtailing across the pavement.

She looks out the windshield and her eyes go wide, the air vanishing from her lungs as she sees what’s ahead of them. “Dean!”

He looks now too, and he slams on the brakes. It’s the first time Maggie has ever seen him truly afraid.