Page 57 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Hannah

Hawthorne Lane

Hannah twists her body, pulling her arm from Dean’s grasp.

She briefly catches the look of surprise that flashes across his face as she turns and begins to run.

She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she knows she can’t slow down even as she leaves the safety of the paved path, crashing through thickets of knotty branches and creeping vines that grab and claw at her as she passes.

It’s just like the last time she left him behind, only that time, she knew he couldn’t follow her.

Maggie ran then too. Ran until her legs gave out.

She hadn’t realized where she was heading until she came to rest under a streetlight, doubling over to catch her breath, coughing and sputtering, blood still flowing from her nose and lips.

She looked up then and saw where she’d ended up.

Without realizing it, she’d run to the one person she’d always known she could come back to: Sam.

Maggie knocked on his door, the effort of lifting her arm almost more than she could manage. When Sam opened it, he took one look at her and caught her in his arms just as she collapsed.

When Maggie came to, she was lying on Sam’s couch, an ice pack on her swollen wrist, a wet rag on her forehead. She blinked, and his face slowly came into focus over her, his eyes brimming with worry.

“Thank God,” he breathed. “What happened? Was it Dean? Did he do this to you?”

And Maggie slowly but surely told Sam everything.

She started from the beginning. She told him that when she aged out of foster care at eighteen, she didn’t know how she was going to survive.

She was all alone in the world, without her mother, without Sam, who was away at college by then.

She struggled every day just to make ends meet, just to keep her head above water.

She was so scared, always worried about her next meal, the next bill she’d have to pay.

And then there was Dean. When he waltzed into the diner that first night, he seemed like a dream come true.

Here was someone who could love her, someone who wanted to build a life with her.

And suddenly she didn’t feel so alone anymore.

Suddenly, and for the first time since cancer took her mother from her, Maggie was truly happy.

Until the abuse started. Maggie couldn’t look Sam in the eye as she told him about that part.

She explained how it had started so small—an insult from Dean when he was having a bad day, a shove that could have been an accident.

But it escalated as the months and years passed.

Escalated to the point where Maggie feared for her life.

She told Sam about the money Dean owed, about the drugs and the gambling and the jam jar. She told him about Dean’s plan for Halloween and the accident she’d caused, and finally, she told him about how Dean had died in a ditch that night because she’d chosen to let him.

“You’re safe now, Maggie.” It was all Sam said as he took her hand in his. “No one is ever going to hurt you again. I just wish you had told me what was going on sooner. I would have helped you.”

“I knew you didn’t want to speak to me. Not after the way I’d treated you. And I understood, I really did. It wouldn’t have been fair to call and dump all this on you when—”

“What do you mean, I didn’t want to speak to you?”

“I called you. The day after we had that argument. I wanted to apologize, but you never called me back.”

“Maggie, I did. So many times. I called, I texted…when you didn’t answer, I thought that you were the one who didn’t want to speak to me. ”

“Dean.” Realization dawned on Maggie then. “He must have blocked your number in my phone. I never got any of your messages.”

Sam scowled. “Is it too soon to say I’m glad he’s gone?”

Maggie dropped her head into her hands. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

“We’ll call the police,” Sam said, sturdy and assured. “We’ll tell them what happened. Dean was on drugs, he was being reckless, the accident was his fault, not yours.”

Maggie shook her head. “But I left the scene of an accident. I left him there to die.”

“They’ll understand. When you tell them what you told me, they’ll understand why you were scared, why you ran.”

“I didn’t just run,” she insisted. “I stood there and watched him die. I wanted him to die, Sam.”

“No one else has to know about that.”

“The police aren’t the only ones I have to worry about, though,” Maggie reminded him. “Dean got us involved with some pretty bad people. Even if the police don’t come after me, those guys are going to.”

“I won’t let anyone touch you,” Sam said, holding her hand even tighter. “No one will find you here.”

“And what if they do?” Maggie struggled to sit up. “What if they do and something happens to you because of it?”

“I don’t care what happens to me.”

“But I do. I couldn’t live with myself.”

“What do you want to do, Maggie?”

Maggie was quiet for a moment. It had been so long since someone had asked her that, since someone had cared what she wanted. “I think it would be best if I…if I disappeared.”

“You can’t, you—”

“I can, Sam. I’ve done it before. With my mom, after we escaped from my father.

He…he was like Dean. But she was braver than I was.

She got us out of there, and we disappeared.

We spent the rest of the time we had together hiding from him.

Using fake names, moving from place to place whenever Mom thought there was a chance he might find us. ”

Maggie thought back to those years, the back seat of her mother’s Buick stuffed with their belongings, bags they never fully unpacked, shuttling between sketchy motels and cheap rental apartments.

There were some stretches of time, like when she’d lived next door to Sam, that they thought they were safe enough to settle down, to call someplace home.

But inevitably, Maggie’s father would track them down again and they’d have to move without so much as a goodbye.

Sam was the only person she’d kept in touch with through each move, the one thing she couldn’t give up. Until Dean forced them apart.

“Is that why you left so suddenly? Back then, I mean?”

“Yes. It was.” Come on, baby, it’s time to go. He found us.

“I…I had no idea.” He paused then, as if absorbing this new reality. “What was your name? Before you were Maggie.”

“Melody.” The name felt strange and misshapen in her mouth, withered with disuse. It had been so long since she’d spoken it aloud.

“Melody,” Sam repeated, rolling the name on his tongue. “I can’t believe this. All this time, and I never knew.”

“Because you couldn’t. Because it didn’t matter.

I wasn’t that person anymore. I haven’t been for a very long time.

It’s part of the reason I can’t call the police now, I can’t have them digging into my past. I’m pretty sure what my mom and I did wasn’t exactly legal.

But now I need to do it again. I need to become someone new.

My mom taught me how, but I’m going to need your help. ”

Sam looked at her, tears gathering in his eyes. They both knew this was goodbye, but they also knew that he’d help her anyway.

Sam reached out to some of his less-than-savory contacts, people with the resources to repay the favor they owed him when he was arrested for stealing a car they had taken. They’d gotten Maggie a new ID, a new name. She didn’t ask where they’d gotten it, and she didn’t want to know.

On their last day together, Maggie stood in Sam’s doorway, a duffel bag full of new clothes strapped over her shoulder, a fake driver’s license—her photo above her new name—in her pocket.

“I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you for all of this,” she said, adjusting the nylon strap on her shoulder. “You’re giving me a chance at a fresh start.”

“You don’t need to,” Sam replied. “This is what friends are for.”

“Committing identity fraud? Evading the police?” Maggie joked, tears already forming in the corners of her eyes over the goodbye she knew was coming.

“Okay, maybe this is a little beyond the call of duty, but I still have one last thing to give you.” He held out a slim manila folder, offering it to Maggie. “I know you promised your mother that you’d never go digging into the past…”

Maggie remembers the words her mother had made her repeat like a solemn vow— Never look back— as she took the file from Sam’s hand.

“But I did some research. If you ever want answers, the closure you deserve after everything you’ve been through, it’s all in there.”

Maggie rose onto her toes and kissed her best friend on the cheek, her lips lingering against the rough stubble a beat too long. “Thank you, Sam. For everything.”

As his front door closed on a tearful goodbye, Maggie knew that if this was going to work, she’d have to close the door on her past for the very last time. And so, after so many years of running, Maggie broke the vow she’d made to her mother and opened the folder Sam had given her.

She read the documents Sam had acquired, learned about how her father had died, alone in the house he’d once shared with Maggie and her mother, two years prior.

Maggie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel in that moment—relief, sadness—but what she did feel was hope.

Hope that she could really do this. Her mother’s plan had worked; they’d outrun the demons of their past—they’d won.

And now she could do it again; she could have a second chance after Dean and all the darkness he’d brought into her life.

Maggie closed the folder, placed it neatly in Sam’s mailbox.

What was in that file was part of someone else’s story. She was Hannah now.