Page 63 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Audrey
Hawthorne Lane
“I’m in.” The others look at Audrey in wide-eyed disbelief. “What? Colin deserves it,” she says, folding her arms over her chest. “You might not want to admit it, but we all know it’s true. Georgina is right. This is the best solution. For all of us.”
Libby looks like she might puke, and Hannah stares, eyes unfocused, into the thick darkness of the woods around them, but Georgina is harder to read, a mixture of both relief and confusion playing across her face.
Audrey opens her mouth to explain, but then closes it again. She grabs the collar of her sweater, pulls it down, slides it off her shoulder. She lets the deep purple bruises in the shape of Colin’s fingers, stark against her moonlit skin, say everything she can’t put into words.
She sees the moment that recognition, understanding, slots into place for Georgina.
“I’m sorry,” Audrey says. And she means it.
More than Georgina will ever know. “For everything. I should never have gotten involved with Colin.” She turns to Hannah.
“And I never should have posted that photo. If it weren’t for me…
” A wave of guilt overtakes her. If she hadn’t been having an affair with Colin, if she hadn’t allowed herself to be goaded into his twisted mind games, Dean wouldn’t have found his way to Hawthorne Lane, and none of this would have happened.
But Georgina lifts a palm, stopping her. “It doesn’t matter now. What we need is a plan.”
Audrey watches in awed amazement as Georgina takes control, orchestrating a plot to frame her husband for murder the same way she might organize a dinner party. She lays out each of their parts as if they’re actors in a play.
“Hannah,” Georgina says, “you were never here, understood? You never met Peter, you’ve never seen this man”—she gestures at the body lying at their feet—“and you’ve never been anyone but Hannah Wilson.
We need to leave you out of the story entirely if we’re going to keep the police from looking into you. ”
Hannah swallows, her lower lip quivering. And then she nods. “Thank you.”
“And Libby…” Georgina turns to the other woman.
“The police will surely find the messages between you and Peter, so they’re going to be able to connect him back to you.
If you tell them that you last saw him with Hannah, that will bring up questions we don’t want her to have to answer.
So we need another story—one that doesn’t involve Hannah—to explain why he was out here in the woods tonight and why he might have attacked Christina. ”
Libby is quiet. And for a moment Audrey isn’t sure which direction she’s going to go. She can tell that Georgina feels the same way, unease etched in the lines around her mouth. But after a moment that feels like an eternity, Libby finally speaks:
“I…I think I can do that.”
“As for me,” Georgina continues, breathless with relief, “I’ll make sure all the evidence points to Colin.
Christina will never have to know the truth about what happened here tonight.
I’ll talk to her before we go to the police, but as far as she knows, Dean was alive when she left the woods.
Let her think her father did this. She’s only a child.
Even if the police do believe she acted in self-defense, this isn’t something she should have to carry for the rest of her life.
Let Colin shoulder that weight for her. It’s the very least he can do. ”
“Do you think,” Hannah says hesitantly, “do you think this actually will work?”
“What if it’s not enough?” Libby adds, her face a pale oval in the moonlight. “I mean, it’s not like we can say we saw Colin out here. What if he talks his way out of this and we’ve only made things worse?”
“I can help with that,” Audrey says. “Leave it to me.” She wants to do this; she has to.
Not just because of the guilt she feels for her part in bringing them all here, and not just to protect herself from Colin, but for all of them.
She’s doing this for Hannah, who doesn’t deserve to have her life torn apart for a man like Dean; for Libby, who deserved better than what Peter did to her and whose son will not be safe as long as Colin walks free; for Christina, who is just a child, the only innocent in all this; and for Georgina and every other woman like her who has ever been hurt by a man like Colin.
It’s time that they take their power back.
It’s time that they come together to make things right.
The four women look at one another, their eyes meeting in the dark, and it’s as if they’re seeing each other, really seeing each other, all the little ways in which their separate lives have become irrevocably intertwined, for the very first time.
And slowly but surely, each one nods. They’re in this together now, and there’s no turning back.