Page 53 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Georgina

Hawthorne Lane

“Thank you!”

The little girl’s face lights up in delight as Georgina hands her one of the homemade cookies she baked for the fall festival.

They’re orange cardamom with a hint of vanilla in the shape of pumpkins, and they’re decorated with a shiny layer of royal icing.

She’d spent hours piping those little curling vines, packing individual cookies into cellophane treat bags, but it was a labor of love.

In her kitchen, Georgina feels confident and capable.

There, she can gather her ingredients and make something that brings people joy.

Colin tends to leave her to her own devices while she’s cooking—he has very little interest in what she does in the kitchen—so she can take her time.

She can pipe and frost and decorate to her heart’s content, until she’s created a thing of beautiful perfection.

She looks out over the crowded cul-de-sac.

The fall festival is starting to get busy now.

Families peruse the vendor stalls, children in costumes—astronauts and ballerinas, dinosaurs and butterflies—run happily through the streets, collecting treats, their eyes bright and shining with excitement.

Across the street, Hannah lifts a hand in greeting, and Georgina returns the gesture with a subtle wave before adjusting the collar of her turtleneck sweater.

She has the distinct impression that the other woman knows exactly what she’s hiding beneath it, the purple bruises that snake around her neck in the shape of Colin’s fingers.

Georgina finds it almost unnerving how well Hannah can see through her when no one else ever has.

She remembers Hannah’s story about her mother.

Maybe that’s how she does it, but…why? Why does she care so much about helping Georgina?

And can’t she see that it’s a lost cause?

That with a man like Colin, there is no winning, no way Georgina walks out of this unscathed.

And then she remembers what Colin said about Hannah: Everyone has something they’re hiding.

Some are just better at it than others. Georgina wonders whether there was some truth to his words.

She can’t help but feel like there’s more to Hannah’s story.

“Where’s Dad?” Sebastian asks, pulling Georgina from her thoughts as he drops a cookie into another child’s bucket.

He doesn’t take care with it like she does, just lets it land in the orange plastic pumpkin with a plonk .

The delicate cookie will be broken now, the icing cracked.

She wonders if she should offer the little boy another one—she doesn’t want him to be disappointed—but he dashes away to the next house, his treat bucket swinging wildly at his side.

“In the garage,” Georgina replies. “He was going to get an extra table out of storage.” She turns and looks over her shoulder, sees Colin standing in the garage holding a drink in one hand, a Maglite flashlight in the other.

One of those heavy, expensive ones he’d insisted they needed for some reason that still evades Georgina. He shines it into the upper rafters.

When she turns back around, Sebastian’s attention is already elsewhere. His eyes are trained forward, a muscle in his jaw working. “Does this guy never fucking learn?”

“Language. There are children here,” Georgina chides him, following his line of sight to Christina and Lucas, who are standing on the opposite side of the cul-de-sac sharing a pink cloud of cotton candy.

She sees how Christina looks up at Lucas, her body angled toward his.

There’s something so sweet about it, the way he takes her hand in his, weaving his fingers between hers as he gives her the sugary treat.

Georgina knows that she’s witnessing her daughter’s first love.

And that there’s magic in that. As Christina gets older, there will be other boys, other, bigger loves, but there will never be another one like this one.

She’s going to remember this boy for the rest of her life.

“Couldn’t find it,” Colin says as he approaches the table.

He sets the flashlight next to the basket of pumpkin cookies and takes a large sip of the amber contents of his glass.

Living with Colin has made Georgina extremely adept at predicting his moods.

She can sense them like the changing tides, knows when it’s best to appease him and when she should avoid him altogether.

But there’s something off about him today, something she can’t quite read.

He seems to be on edge as he looks over the crowd gathered for the festival.

It’s like he’s waiting for someone. She wonders who that might be and why he’s draining his glass so quickly while he waits.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“That,” Sebastian responds, nodding toward Lucas and Christina. Christina is laughing at something Lucas said, her head tipped back, her blond hair tumbling behind her like a waterfall.

Georgina can feel Colin tense beside her, the muscles in his body coiling.

“I thought I was clear about the rules,” he says, his voice a snarl. Georgina can smell the liquor, sour on his breath. She hates when Colin drinks. It makes him too unpredictable.

“I’ll go talk to her,” Georgina quickly offers, and sets off across the street. Maybe she can run interference before Colin humiliates their daughter by dragging her home in front of all their neighbors.

But Sebastian darts ahead of her and reaches Lucas and Christina before Georgina can. He pushes Lucas from behind, sending him tumbling to the pavement.

“What are you doing?” Christina screeches as she reaches for Lucas, her glasses clattering to the ground, the lenses cracking on the asphalt.

But Lucas is quick to jump to his feet, and he shoves Sebastian hard in the chest. “Keep your hands off me,” he growls.

“I thought you would have learned your lesson by now,” Sebastian retorts, his eyes narrowing on the other boy. “Don’t want to have to send you crying to Mommy again.”

Lucas’s hand curls into a fist. “Try it.”

Georgina grabs Sebastian’s arm. “Sebastian, don’t!” she yells just as Lucas’s fist collides with the side of Sebastian’s jaw.

Sebastian flings his mother off his arm as easily as if she were a rag doll. She watches in horror from the ground as her son swells with rage, his chest puffed out, a trickle of blood trailing over his lower lip. He clenches his hands into fists, and Georgina scuttles away from him.

“Sebastian! Don’t!” she cries again. She is terrified to find out how far her son is willing to go. She has the awful feeling that if he lets fly that anger inside him, he won’t be able to rein it in again.

And then suddenly Colin is there, standing between the two boys. For a moment Georgina is relieved, thinking he’s come to end the fight, but instead he grabs Lucas by the collar of his shirt, twists it in his fist, and lifts him off the ground.

Lucas clutches at his neck, kicking and thrashing, as Sebastian steps up next to his father. Seeing them like that, side by side, mirror images of each other, brings on a bout of nausea in Georgina.

Christina starts to cry, fat tears rolling down her face as she pleads with Colin to let the boy go. “Daddy, please!” she cries. “Please!”

But Colin is unfazed by his daughter’s distress. “Shut up,” he barks. “I’ll deal with you later.”

Christina startles. She doesn’t understand it yet, but Georgina does.

She knows that look in Colin’s eyes, that singular focus—Christina’s father, the man she has always known him to be, is gone.

Georgina tried so hard to keep this version of Colin from her children.

She’d sacrificed so much of herself to spare Christina from seeing the kind of violence that’s playing out before her eyes, and Georgina understands now that there’s nothing more she can do.

She can’t protect her child from the world. Maybe she never should have tried.

A crowd has started to gather, and Georgina scrambles to her feet and shields her crying daughter.

“Colin!” she shouts. She grabs her husband’s arm, digging her nails into his skin and shaking him as if she’s trying to wake him from a trance.

“Stop!” she commands. “Get your hands off that boy! You’re out of line, Colin! ”

Colin drops Lucas’s collar, and Georgina hears the sharp intake of air filling Lucas’s lungs as his feet land back on the pavement. But Colin isn’t looking at him; his eyes are locked on Georgina, cold, hard, and unforgiving.

Georgina can feel the stares of the crowd, the eyes boring into her back, but she looks only at Colin, her chin held high, righteous and defiant.

She knows there will be a price to pay for what she just did, but it doesn’t matter.

She did what she had to do. Let him take his anger out on her, as long as he spares her children.