Page 47 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Georgina

Hawthorne Lane

“What were you thinking?” Georgina shouts. She rarely loses her composure, but after the call she just got from Libby Corbin, she can’t help it.

Sebastian huffs. “Of course Lucas would go crying to his mommy.”

“That’s hardly the point, Sebastian!” Georgina throws her hands up in frustration. Behind her, the last rays of daylight stream in through the picture window of her kitchen, golden and bold. “You can’t just go around hitting people!”

“When he’s feeling up my sister, I sure as hell can.” Sebastian opens the refrigerator, pulls out a bottle of water.

His casual reaction to the whole ordeal has Georgina feeling irate.

According to Libby’s frantic phone call, Lucas came home with a bloodied face.

He didn’t want to tell his mother what had happened at first, but he eventually relented and informed her that Sebastian had punched him.

Punched him! Georgina was equal parts mortified and horrified, issuing a slew of apologies to an incensed Libby.

But Sebastian? He doesn’t seem the least bit fazed.

He hurt someone, really hurt him, and as far as Georgina can tell, he doesn’t seem to care one bit.

“No!” she tells him. “No, you cannot! This isn’t how you deal with things, it’s just not…it’s not acceptable!”

“Well, I’m sorry if my behavior was not ‘acceptable’ to you”—he gestures quotation marks in the air—“but it’s already done, so I guess that’s that.” He chugs a long sip of water, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he tilts his head back.

“That is not that! You’re going to go upstairs and apologize to your sister, who is extremely upset over this entire episode, and then you’re going to apologize to Lucas.”

Sebastian sets his water down with such force that some of the liquid jumps from the bottle and splashes onto the counter. “Like hell I am.” His eyes narrow to slits as he glowers at his mother.

Who is this man? she wonders. What happened to the boy I raised?

And then the guilt washes over her again.

Guilt that she wasn’t a good enough mother, that despite her best intentions, she’d failed him somehow.

She must have, because here he is, fully formed and frightening.

This, this anger, this rage inside him, surely it’s her fault.

Perhaps it grew in the empty space between them, the gap she couldn’t close between mother and son.

With Christina, it had felt so natural, so easy.

The first time she’d held her daughter in her arms, she looked down into her big, round eyes and she knew that she belonged to her.

But Sebastian…he’d always belonged to Colin.

Perhaps it was the depression that consumed Georgina after his birth.

Maybe he could sense that ugliness in her; maybe he’d felt it like a rejection that left him floundering for someone, anyone, to attach to.

A drowning sailor desperately clinging to the only life ring in sight.

Or maybe Colin had taken him, the son he’d always wanted, and slowly and methodically turned him away from the light of his mother’s love.

Georgina can’t be sure how it happened; she knows only that she’d let him down, that one way or another, she’d lost him.

“You are going to apologize,” Georgina insists.

“You are.” Because that’s what kind people do.

They don’t just hurt someone and feel entitled to walk away without consequence.

How could her son not know that? It can’t be too late to set him on the right path now.

It just can’t. She can still be the parent he needs; she can still set this right.

“Enough!” Sebastian shouts, the deep timbre of his voice reverberating off the walls. “Leave it the fuck alone already!”

Georgina is stunned, her feet frozen to the floor. “Sebastian Pembrook! You absolutely cannot speak to me that way.”

Sebastian steps toward her and she sees a familiar glint in his eyes, an icy reflection of his father. “I said leave it alone!” he shouts, both of his hands rising to meet Georgina’s shoulders.

Sebastian shoves her, and Georgina feels her back collide with the hard stone of the counter before she falls to the floor. She scrabbles along the cool tiles, trying to pull herself to a sitting position, the small of her back already aching.

Sebastian takes a step toward her, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to reach down and help her, or maybe fall to his knees and cry tears of remorse for what he’s just done to his own mother.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he stands over her, scowling down at her on the floor, disgust twisting his handsome face, as if she were something vile and loathsome.

“Are we finished talking now?” he says with a sneer. Then he turns and walks away.

Georgina hears the back door slam before she finds the will to get up.

She does so gingerly, assessing the damage to her body.

She’s not injured, not really, though she knows she’ll never be the same again nonetheless.

Not after she’s seen what her own son is capable of.

Georgina knows now that she’s let things go too far for too long.

She’s allowed Sebastian to become the very thing she spent his entire life trying to protect him from: his father.

—

Georgina knocks on Christina’s bedroom door, her knuckles softly tapping the wood. “Honey, it’s me. Can I come in?”

“Okay.” Christina sighs dejectedly.

Georgina pushes open the door and steps into the room.

She finds her daughter sitting on her bed, her knees tucked up against her chest, tears in her eyes.

She looks so young to Georgina in this moment.

Like a little girl. Although Georgina knows she’s not.

She’s growing up so quickly. Christina is in that strange in-between time, suspended between being a girl and a woman, where she’s not fully either and yet the world expects both of her.

“Do you want to tell me what happened today?”

Christina props her head on her knees, her arms around her shins. “Not really.”

Georgina sits on the bed beside her and smooths her daughter’s golden-blond hair. “Libby already told me some of it.”

Christina’s bottom lip starts to quiver. “Is Lucas okay?”

Georgina nods.

“It was awful, Mom. So awful. I was with Lucas in the clearing.” Her cheeks pink.

“Go on,” Georgina encourages her, glossing over this small confession.

“We were sort of…well, we were kissing. And Sebastian showed up, and he hit Lucas. And oh my God, he was bleeding and stuff, and it got all over his shirt, and then I tried to stop Sebastian, but he just wouldn’t stop, and he hit him again…

” She starts to cry, fat tears sliding over the round crests of her cheeks.

“He didn’t have to do that, Mom. It wasn’t like Lucas was taking advantage of me or anything.

I wanted to be there with him. We’re sort of…

together? Or at least we were. He’ll probably never want to see me again now.

And we were just kissing. That’s all, I swear.

” She sobs, burying her face in her knees.

“Christina,” Georgina says, her voice gentle and coaxing. “I need to explain something to you. Something very important.”

Christina slowly picks up her head, her watery eyes turning to her mother.

“Sebastian had no right to do what he did today,” Georgina continues.

“It wasn’t his place. And it’s not mine or your father’s either.

We have rules about boys and dating because you’re still young, and we don’t want you to make mistakes that you’ll regret when you’re older.

I want you to understand what it means to love and feel loved and how special it is to be with someone who cares about you the way he should. ”

“Lucas does.”

“I’m glad for that. I really am. But what I’m trying to say is that you are your own person and you get to make your own choices. Your value as a woman doesn’t lie in what you choose to do or not do with a boy.”

Christina’s face turns various shades of red, but Georgina knows that she needs to finish. She needs her daughter to hear this. Really hear it. Her daughter can—will—be so much more than she is.

“As your parent, I always want to you guide you and protect you whenever I can, but I haven’t always gone about it the right way.

In fact, I’ve made so many mistakes that I wish I could take back.

But despite all of that, when I look at you, I see someone stronger, braver than I’ve ever been.

You’re going to go so far in life. I just know it. ”

“Mom?” Christina says. She pauses, her lips parted as if she wants to say more, but she closes them again.

“If there’s ever anything you want to talk about, anything at all, I’m here.” Georgina takes Christina’s hand in hers, gives it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll always be here.”