Page 52 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Audrey

Hawthorne Lane

Audrey looks at her reflection in the full-length mirror that hangs on her bedroom wall, fastening the backs of her diamond stud earrings.

It’s been only two days since Colin waltzed into their basement with his threats and his swaggering bravado, but Audrey feels like she’s become a different person since then.

Her hair, which she usually pampers with regular trips to the salon, is dull and lanky, and there are purple circles under her eyes that look like two pressed bruises.

“Are you sure you want to go to this thing?” she asks Seth, who lies on the bed behind her, scrolling through his phone.

“Audrey, the fall festival is going on right outside our house. Of course we have to go. How would we look if we were the only house on the block not handing out candy?”

“Does it matter how we look?” She watches Seth in the mirror as he puts down his phone, looks quizzically at the back of her head.

“Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”

Audrey knows he meant the question in jest, but the truth is that she doesn’t know who she is anymore.

She once prided herself on her confidence, her self-assurance.

But now? Now she’s the type of pathetic, insecure woman who carries on an affair with the man next door just because she was feeling a bit neglected.

The type of woman who’s gotten herself in so deep with a dangerous man that she’s afraid all the time, even in her own home.

She can’t sleep; she can’t eat. The guilt, the regret, the fear…

it’s all chipping away at her. And she hardly recognizes the shell of the woman it’s left behind.

“I’m just saying…” Audrey continues. “We could skip it if you wanted to.”

“Do you want to skip it?” Seth’s eyes narrow as he watches his wife appraisingly. Audrey should’ve known he’d see right through her. “Is there a reason you don’t want to go, Audrey?”

There is a reason. And his name is Colin Pembrook. He’s undoubtedly going to be there, with his smug face and his piercingblue eyes, standing next to his perfect wife, handing out candy apples to children as if he’s not some kind of monster in disguise.

Audrey looks at herself in the mirror one last time before turning to face her husband. She knows what she has to do. She’s known for some time now. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

Telling Seth the truth is the only way for Audrey to free herself from the hold Colin has on her.

If she tells Seth everything, Colin will no longer be able to dangle the threat over her head.

It’s only a matter of time until he makes good on it anyway.

Audrey knows that. He’s just a cat toying with its prey before it goes in for the kill.

Audrey had wanted to spare Seth the pain of learning the details of her affair.

Of finding out that it was with Colin, of all people.

He might have his suspicions about Audrey’s infidelity, but she knows that everything will change the moment he finds out the truth.

There will be no more pretending, no more hiding from it after that, and it’s only going to bring him more pain.

These past months haven’t been easy on Seth.

Coping with the loss of his career has nearly broken him, and the last thing Audrey wants to do is shatter him beyond repair.

But now that it seems inevitable that he will find out, isn’t it better, kinder, for it to come from her lips, from a place of love and remorse rather than revenge?

“Seth,” she says, swallowing back the bile that rises in her throat. “We need to talk.”

She walks toward him, perches on the edge of the bed. She tries to take his hand but he pulls it away.

“Just tell me.” His words are steely, as though he’s already armoring himself against what he knows is coming.

Audrey lets out a sigh, her head hung low in shame. “I had an affair.” Speaking the words aloud feels like releasing shackles from her wrists. But she knows she has no right to feel relief in relinquishing this burden as she shoves the weight of it onto her husband.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him. “More than I can ever put into words. It was a mistake, and it’s over now.”

“Why?” Seth asks, the single question ringing out into the silence of their bedroom. “Why? Have I not given you everything? The life you always said you wanted?” His arms spread wide, gesturing to the beautiful home they share.

“You did. You do. It wasn’t about that, Seth. It wasn’t about the things, the cars, the house. It was about how I felt. How lonely I was. You were gone all the time, and—”

Seth holds up a stony palm. “Don’t you dare blame this on me.”

“I’m not. I promise you I’m not. But you asked why I did it, why I made the choices that I did, and I’m trying to tell you how I felt.

It isn’t an excuse, it isn’t a justification for what I did, but it’s the truth.

I felt like I’d lost you. That you’d moved on from me, from us.

God, there were times when I felt like you didn’t even see me anymore.

Like if one day I were to quietly disappear, you wouldn’t even notice. ”

Seth is silent, waiting for her to continue, but Audrey can see the anger simmering to a boil behind his eyes.

“I ended it because I wanted to work on us, on our marriage. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you.

” Even as she speaks the words she knows she’s supposed to say, she isn’t sure how much of it is true.

Audrey has been lying for so long, to Seth, to herself, that somewhere along the way, the truth has become a slippery, evasive thing, a minnow darting between her fingers that she can’t quite grasp.

Had she ended the affair, scrambled to save her marriage, out of love for Seth or because she was simply too afraid to disrupt the comfortable complacency of their lives?

“I just…I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me,” she adds. “I know it won’t be today or even tomorrow, but I want the chance to earn your trust back. I hope that, in time, we can—”

Seth shakes his head. His next words are glacially cold: “No. You’re not finished yet. I need to hear all of it. From the beginning.” He reaches into his bedside drawer, takes out two white pills, crushes them between his teeth, and swallows them down.

Audrey winces. She’d been hoping to leave out the sordid details, but if this is what Seth needs from her, she owes him that much.

And so Audrey lets go of her pride and she tells Seth everything.

About how she’d met Colin at the martini bar where they’d drunkenly shared their first kiss and about how that kiss led to an affair that lasted six months.

She tells her husband that she’d ended things with Colin when she’d come to her senses, realized that she wasn’t willing to destroy their marriage for a man who meant nothing to her, and that he’d been reluctant to let her go.

The more she talks, the more easily the words flow, like a river breaking through a dam.

She tells him how Colin flooded her phone with calls and texts.

How she blocked his number, so he’d shown up at her office, dragged her into an alley, and forced himself on her.

And how, when she still wouldn’t go back to him, he’d strolled into their home as if he had every right to be there and cornered Audrey in the basement, threatening her and terrifying her beyond belief.

When Audrey is finished, when she feels wrung out, like she sliced open her veins and bled herself dry of every last drop of the truth for him, she looks at her husband, nervously awaiting his reaction.

She’d expected him to be furious, to scream and shout.

She’d expected broken glass and smashed picture frames.

She’d expected him to demand that she pack her things and leave. But Seth remains terrifyingly silent.

Audrey watches him, the emotions trotting across his face like actors on a stage: sadness giving way to disappointment, disappointment becoming hurt, and, finally, hurt turning into burning anger. But still he says nothing.

“Seth?” she says after several moments, her voice tentative and unsure. “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling right now, but please, talk to me. Just say something. Anything.”

His face hardens into an iron mask, and when he finally speaks, his words are scalpel-sharp, as if all of the anger he’s been holding inside for the past two months over the loss of his career, over the affair he’s long suspected, is concentrated into six words:

“I’m going to fucking kill him.”