Page 58 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Christina

Hawthorne Lane

Where are you?

Christina stares down at her phone screen, glowing white in the darkness of the woods.

It’s a brisk October night, the kind that smells faintly of burning wood and decaying leaves, where the air is just cold enough to remind you that winter is lingering somewhere on the ever-nearing horizon.

She’s well beyond the streetlights now, and the sounds of the festival fade to a murmur as she ventures farther down the paved path.

Took a walk with my dad. Almost home now.

Christina squints down at the phone, struggling to read the message without her glasses, and then sighs with relief that Lucas actually answered her.

She wasn’t sure if he would. Not after what her dad and Sebastian had pulled today.

That was bad. Like, really bad. Christina was completely humiliated in front of basically the entire town, and she wouldn’t blame Lucas if he never wanted to see her again.

She can still picture her father’s fist gripping Lucas’s shirt, the fear in Lucas’s eyes as he fought to breathe.

She’d never seen her father like that before.

It was like someone she didn’t recognize had slid into the driver’s seat and taken control of him.

The father she knows would never have shown his true colors in public.

He’s usually far more careful about keeping up appearances, making sure that his rage is contained behind closed doors.

No, Christina was not surprised by her father’s capacity for violence, only that he’d forgotten to hide it.

She thinks of her mother. Of the storm they all know is coming.

Christina isn’t stupid. She’s seen the bruises over the years, heard about her mother’s “accidents.” She’s listened to the shouting through the walls, her mother’s whimpered cries.

When Christina was small, she’d cry too.

She’d bury her head under her pillow, waiting for it to be over, tears soaking her sheets.

But the next morning, her mother would pretend everything was fine.

Christina would find her in their spotless kitchen mixing up waffle batter or slicing fresh strawberries, always with a smile on her face.

It was all picture-perfect, just as her mother wanted it to be. And so Christina would pretend too.

After a while, all they did was pretend.

They pretended that Mom was okay, that Christina didn’t know the truth, and that her father wasn’t a monster.

Reality, at least inside their house, became this strange, plastic thing for Christina.

Warped and stretched until it became unrecognizable.

At some point along the way, she could no longer tell what was real and what was pretend.

Which of her mother’s smiles were genuine and which were put on.

It made it impossible to truly know her.

She looks down at her phone again, types out another message:

I’m so sorry about what happened. Can we meet at our spot? Talk?

Lucas’s response follows quickly:

I’ll try. Dunno if my parents are gonna be cool with me going out tho.

I’m heading there now. Please try to come.

She slides her phone into the pocket of her jeans as she turns off the paved pathway and onto the dirt trail that leads to the clearing.

She switches on her dad’s Maglite, and a cone of warm light illuminates the path ahead.

She doubts her father would be too happy to know she’d taken it without asking, but he’d be even less happy to know that she was using it to walk through the woods at night with the hope of meeting up with Lucas.

There would certainly be consequences for that.

Christina’s father has never hurt her—at least, not in the physical sense—but then again, she’d never given him a reason to before. For the most part, she was an easy kid. Never gave her parents any trouble. Because she knew what would happen if she did.

Once, when she was five, the ice cream truck had driven down Hawthorne Lane.

It was a scorching summer day, and Christina had wanted an ice cream more than anything in the world.

She imagined the swirl of vanilla on top of a pointed cone, the bright rainbow sprinkles.

She could practically taste the cold treat melting on her tongue.

She’d begged her parents to get her one, but her father said no.

They hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and he didn’t want her spoiling her appetite.

She looked longingly out the window at the colorful truck, listened to the tinny, tinkling music. “Please, Daddy,” she begged.

“The answer is no.”

“But Mommy lets us have it!”

“I said no!” Her father’s response was swift and unmoving.

“You’re the meanest!” she’d cried.

Later that night, as Christina lay in bed, she overheard her parents arguing.

“She’s just a little girl,” her mother said. Her voice, usually so warm and loving, sounded strange, different. Christina sat up, listening closer.

“You’ve spoiled her. Turned her into a little brat. Talking back to her own father like that.”

“Colin, she’s a child. She just wanted an ice cream, she didn’t mean—”

Christina heard the slap, the sharp intake of her mother’s breath.

She squeezed her eyes shut. It’s my fault. I’ve been a bad girl and what’s happening to Mommy is all my fault. She promised herself that she was going to be better. She was going to be perfect.

The flashlight in Christina’s hand flickers, momentarily throwing the trail into darkness.

Christina doesn’t like being here alone at night.

The trees with their knotted eyes and gnarled limbs seem to stare down at her, and every rustle in the brush is a potential threat creeping ever closer.

She gives the metal flashlight a shake, hoping the batteries aren’t going.

If her mother were here, she’d probably have backup batteries in her purse for just such an emergency.

Christina sighs. She hopes her mom is okay.

Maybe she shouldn’t have left her at home with her father.

They were arguing when Christina left—it was the only reason she was able to sneak out—and she knows this is going to be a bad one.

She saw how angry her father was earlier, heard her mother stand up to him in front of everyone.

She’d been so proud of her in that moment.

When she was a child, Christina loved her mother in a clear, singular way.

It was simple: Georgina was her mother, and she loved her.

But now that Christina is older, her feelings toward her mother have become so much more complicated.

She knows how much her mother loves her, has sacrificed for her.

She’s seen her bear the brunt of her father’s anger all of her life, but why?

Why does she let him treat her that way?

Couldn’t she tell that Christina knew the truth, that it was destroying her to have to watch it?

Why didn’t she get them out of there, away from him?

It’s as if all the things she feels for her mother—love, resentment, disappointment, gratitude, pity—have formed into individual strands, and they’ve become so knotted, so tightly wound, that she can no longer feel one without the others.

All she knows for sure is that she doesn’t want to end up like her mother.

Growing up, she almost thought it was normal.

That love and fear went hand in hand. It was the only example she had of what love was supposed to look like.

But it’s not like that with Lucas. He makes her feel safe. She hopes he can forgive her.

The flashlight flickers again and the light gently dims until none remains.

“No,” Christina mutters, rattling the batteries.

“Not now.” But the light won’t turn back on.

Useless, she thinks. The thing weighs a ton and she carried it all the way out here for nothing.

She looks over the trail ahead of her, squinting her eyes as they adjust to the dark.

She’s almost at the clearing. Or at least, she thinks she is.

It’s hard to tell without her glasses. And she’s never taken this trail at night before, not without Lucas leading the way.

She probably should have been paying attention to the directions instead of watching the back of his head, memorizing the constellations of freckles on his neck.

I’m not lost, she tells herself. I can’t be lost. The tree beside her, the one with the creeping vines, definitely looks familiar. But then again, they kind of all look familiar. Christina turns back, retracing her steps. If she could just find her way back to the paved path…

A rustling in the trees gives her pause.

She stops. Listens. Christina knows that she and Lucas aren’t the only ones who walk in these woods at night.

She remembers the empty cans, the stubbed-out cigarettes they’d found around the clearing.

But still, the idea of someone else being out here with her, the sound of heavy feet crunching through the bed of leaves on the forest floor, causes the skin on her arms to prickle.

“Lucas?” she calls, giving the flashlight one more useless shake. “Lucas, is that you?”

Maybe he’d come to meet her. Maybe they’d be laughing over this a few minutes from now. About how she’d been so spooked, lost in the woods on Halloween like something out of a scary movie.

But Lucas doesn’t answer, and the source of the sound seems to be drawing closer. Christina’s pace quickens. She hopes it isn’t a raccoon. They’re pretty cute and all, with their little masks and bushy tails, but she’d prefer not to meet one face-to-face in the wild.

She breaks into a jog, ducking under low-hanging branches and hopping over fallen logs.

She hears the sound of her own heavy breathing, the snapping of twigs beneath the soles of her sneakers, and that rustling growing increasingly louder.

There’s definitely someone else out here with her.

She’s certain of it now. A raccoon wouldn’t be following her.

Her heart pounds in her chest. There’s someone behind her.

She can feel it, sense the eyes on her back.

But she’s too frightened to turn around to see who it might be.

She thinks she can hear breathing now, the person gaining on her as she forges through the undergrowth.

Up ahead she sees a break in the trees—the jogging path, the smooth asphalt like a silver lake in the light of the full moon. She just needs to get there…

Christina breaks into a run, a full-on sprint, her arms pumping at her sides. She ignores the branches that scrape her face, the detritus that tangles in her shoelaces.

Finally she reaches it, the relief of hard pavement beneath her feet. She knows where she is now. She knows she can make it out of here.

And then someone grabs her.

—

A pair of strong arms wrap around Christina’s chest so forcefully that it knocks the wind from her lungs.

“Help!” she yelps, her voice a breathless rasp.

“Don’t,” a man’s voice growls in her ear. “Make another sound and I’ll kill you.”

A frightened whimper escapes Christina’s lips.

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Maggie, and you’re not going to get away from me again.”

Who is Maggie? Christina wonders. She wants to tell the man that he’s wrong, that she’s not who he thinks she is, but she’s too scared to say a single word.

“Now you’re going to do exactly what I tell you, do you hear me?” the man says.

Christina’s body goes rigid with fear.

“I’m going to let go of you now, and you’re going to be a good girl. Understood?”

Christina doesn’t respond; she can’t. All she can focus on is the feeling of his hands on her body, the sour smell of her own panicked sweat.

“I asked you a question,” he barks, his grip tightening around her ribs. “Is that understood?”

She manages a tight nod, her teeth chattering.

“Good,” he says, his hold on her slowly loosening.

Christina wonders if this is how her mother feels, if sometimes she can’t force her body to move even when she knows what’s coming.

But she’s not her mother.

The man’s hand clasps onto Christina’s shoulder as he spins her around to face him. And when he does, she’s ready. She’s holding the Maglite in both hands, gripping it like a baseball bat, and she swings it directly at his head.

The heavy metal flashlight collides forcefully with his temple, the impact echoing through Christina’s forearms.

She watches as he stumbles back, his hand rising to his head, his mouth agape, his eyes wide in surprise. He looks dizzy, like a boxer staggering toward the ropes, and then he begins to fall.

Christina squeezes her eyes shut in horror as the man collapses to the ground.

“Oh my God,” she cries.

“Christina?”

Her head snaps up; she looks wildly around the darkened woods.

“Christina, honey, it’s me. Hannah.”

Hannah emerges from between the trees, and she takes in the scene before her: Christina’s chest rising and falling with her rapid breaths, the bloody flashlight dangling limply from the end of her arm, the man sprawled at her feet.

“It’s okay, Christina,” she says, her voice steady and calm. “Everything is going to be okay.”

Hannah goes to the man, bends over him, and reaches out her hand so that it hovers just above his lips.

“Is he…dead?” Christina whimpers, her fingertips trembling at her own lips.

“No. He’s not.” Hannah shakes her head as she stands. “But we need to get you out of here. Now.”