Page 49 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Georgina

Hawthorne Lane

“There you are,” Georgina exclaims with a breathy sigh of relief. Rarely is she ever happy to see her husband darkening their doorway, but today she needs his help.

“And hello to you too, my darling wife.” He glares at her, eyes narrowed.

She’s already made a misstep and she can’t afford many, not if she’s going to get him on her side about Sebastian.

Colin has always had blinders on when it comes to his golden son’s shortcomings, but surely his willful ignorance can’t extend to physical violence.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Of course. Hello, Colin.” She goes to him and rises on her toes to kiss his cheek, the way he likes to be greeted.

He takes off his suit jacket, tossing it over the banister.

It will remain there until Georgina picks it up and brings it to be dry-cleaned for him.

She knows this without his having to tell her.

He drops his briefcase and takes off his shoes.

They too will remain where he’s dropped them until Georgina tidies them away.

“It’s been a long day,” he says, “and now I have to come home to you nagging me the moment I walk through the door?” He scowls at her.

“You’re right,” she concedes. “That was thoughtless of me.”

“You have no idea what it’s like. The kind of pressure I’m under at work.” Colin rubs his temples.

Georgina knows how the evening is supposed to go: She’s expected to serve her husband a quiet dinner, being careful not to disturb him, and he’ll follow that with a nightcap and perhaps a sleeping pill that will allow him to drift off to a blissful, dreamless sleep while she lies awake fretting about their son.

But she can’t let that happen, not tonight.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“With you ?” Condescension pours out between his words. “You wouldn’t understand the first thing about it.”

“Sorry,” Georgina says again. She reminds herself that she needs Colin’s help with Sebastian, so she can’t let herself be baited into the argument he’s clearly spoiling for. “I only wanted to help.”

“Well, you can help by cleaning this stuff up.” He gestures to his belongings that he’s strewn about the open foyer. “You know I hate to come home to a mess.”

“Yes, sure.” Georgina picks up Colin’s shoes, folds his jacket neatly over her arm. She thinks she catches a faint whiff of a woman’s perfume but she ignores it.

Colin turns and starts up the stairs.

Georgina follows a few steps behind him, cautiously, tentatively.

Something has Colin in a particularly bad mood tonight.

Normally she leaves him be when he’s like this and waits until the tides shift, until the right moment presents itself for her to ask something of him. But tonight, it simply can’t wait.

She thinks again of Sebastian, of the scene Christina described.

How he’d hit Lucas, leaving his face a bloody mess.

Of how, when she’d confronted their callous, remorseless son, he’d shoved his own mother without an ounce of shame or hesitation.

She and Colin have let Sebastian become this thing, this monster, and now she owes it to him to set things right, to do better for him.

She can’t let it go on a moment longer. No matter what it might cost her.

“Colin?” Georgina steps into the bedroom to find him unbuttoning his dress shirt, his belt already unbuckled.

Seeing him this way unleashes visions of the other night as if they’d been pushing on a barricade in her mind and just broke through: Georgina bent over the bed, Colin taking her from behind, her tears soaking into the mattress.

She can’t—won’t—go through that again. In this moment Georgina feels as if she’d rather die than let him degrade her in that way ever again.

Perhaps she should give him a few minutes, wait for him to come downstairs, maybe have a drink ready for him.

That should help take the edge off the difficult conversation they’re about to have.

But it’s too late. She’s already spoken, and Colin is watching her expectantly, a look of mild annoyance on his face.

“What? What do you want?”

“I…uh…”

“Come on, Georgina. Out with it already. As I said, it’s been a long day and I’m not in the mood for your dramatics tonight.”

Georgina swallows hard. Colin isn’t going to like this, but it’s now or never. She reminds herself that she’s doing this for her son. “There was an incident with Sebastian today.”

“What kind of incident?” Colin’s voice is a cocktail of irritation and impatience.

“He got into a fight. With Lucas Corbin.”

“Corbin? Is that the kid down the block?”

“Yes.”

“Is Sebastian hurt?”

“No, but Lucas is.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” Georgina explains, irritation rising in her own voice now, “is that our son hurt someone and he doesn’t seem to care.”

“He’s a boy, Georgina. This is what they do.”

“I don’t think it is, Colin. I don’t think this is normal kid stuff. Sebastian, he’s…so angry. All the time.”

Colin rolls his eyes, pulls a T-shirt over his head. “That’s a tad dramatic. The boy is perfectly fine.”

“He’s not. I’m telling you. He…he pushed me today.”

“Pushed you?”

“I was trying to talk to him about what happened with Lucas and he turned on me. It was like he just snapped.”

Colin looks Georgina over, his eyes scanning her from head to toe. “Well, I’ll have a chat with him if you want, but you seem fine to me.”

“That’s not the point!” Georgina is shouting now, unable to hold back her anger, her incredulousness that Colin isn’t seeing the same warning signs that she is.

“Watch your tone, Georgina.” The words curl from Colin’s lips in an angry growl.

But she can’t rein it in anymore, her anger, her disappointment, her driving need to help the son she’s so bitterly failed. “I’m his mother, Colin, and he put his hands on me! I was frightened of my own son today. We’re destroying him, don’t you see that?”

“I don’t have the faintest clue what you’re raving about. Now this is my fault?”

Hannah’s words float to the surface, bubbling up from somewhere in the back of Georgina’s mind: Living with a man like that, it does things to a kid.

Georgina thought she’d spared them from knowing what their father was like behind closed doors.

She thought that this was her own private hell, but now she sees the truth.

The evil in him has infested her home—it’s leaked under locked doors, traveled through the walls.

Her children were never safe from it; they were raised on it.

Steeped in it. And it changed them, harmed them in ways she wasn’t ready to see. Until now.

“Yes, Colin. It is your fault. Your anger, your violence—”

Colin steps toward her, his jaw clenched. “I’ve never laid a hand on those children.” The words are pushed out from behind his teeth.

“You didn’t have to. You damaged them just the same.”

“This is your friend, isn’t it?” Colin’s eyes narrow in anger.

“That nosy bitch that moved in across the street. She’s putting all this shit in that stupid fucking head of yours.

” He taps her on the temple. “I don’t trust her.

This whole friendly-neighbor act. Everyone has something they’re hiding, Georgina.

Some are just better at it than others.”

Colin unclasps the silver watch on his wrist. “I saw you with her again, you know. Even after I told you to stop talking to that woman.”

“No.” Georgina shakes her head. “No! I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to manipulate me, to change the subject. You don’t get to twist this around and make it about some perceived infraction of mine to take the focus off you and what you’ve done to this family. I—”

The back of Colin’s hand collides with Georgina’s cheek before she can finish getting the words out. Her mouth fills with something warm, a metallic taste twisting on her tongue. She swallows it down. “Does that make you feel like a strong man, Colin? Does it?”

This time his closed fist lands a blow to her stomach, knocking the air from her lungs.

Georgina doubles over, gasping for breath.

She knows she should stop, that she’s outmatched.

But there’s more she needs to say. More he needs to hear.

She’s feeling emboldened by the pain, the anger she feels toward him, toward herself, for the way they’ve failed their children.

It’s as if she’s taking his blows and harnessing their power for herself.

It’s been a long time since she stood up to Colin, and now that she’s started, she can’t seem to stop.

The words come in a wheeze, but she pushes them out.

“Is this the kind of man you want your son to be? Because it’s what you’re turning him into. ”

Colin grabs her by the throat, his fingers digging into the pale, delicate flesh. “Shut the fuck up.”

Georgina can’t speak, she can barely breathe, but she shakes her head: No.

Colin squeezes tighter, so tight that the edges of Georgina’s vision start to blur and stars burst before her eyes.

She panics now, scrabbling at his hand, kicking, scratching, fighting for her life—but Colin is so much stronger than she is.

He stands back, his wife pinned against the wall, watching her thrash like a fish on a hook.

Georgina looks into his eyes, silently pleading with him to let her go, but the only thing she finds there is a void of cold detachment.

He is no longer human. Maybe he never was.

Georgina can feel the moment that her body gives up. Her brain is telling her to fight, but she has nothing left to give. Her muscles slacken and her breathing slows. She is going to die.

Her last thought is of her children. How much she loves them, how sorry she is to be leaving them behind with him.

How, if she could go back, she’d do things differently.

For them, for her. But it’s too late now.

Her time is up. Georgina’s world goes black, and she begins to slip away, as quiet and unobtrusive in death as she was in life.

Colin lets go of her neck, and Georgina’s limp body falls to the floor. It takes her a moment to realize that she can breathe again, but when she does, she sucks in greedy gulps of air that feel like knives swallowed down her ravaged throat.

Her husband stands over her, casting a long dark shadow over her crumpled and broken body. And Georgina knows, with piercing certainty now, that it’s only a matter of time until he kills her.