Page 7 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Audrey

Hawthorne Lane

Audrey looks out her kitchen window across her vast green backyard.

It’s nearly dusk, but the gardener has only just arrived.

He whizzes by on his ride-on mower and waves.

She lifts her hand, gives him a slight nod and a tight smile in return.

Everyone loves Tony Russo. They rave about him.

He’s the gardener of choice for all of Hawthorne Lane.

Personally, Audrey doesn’t understand what he’s done to earn such a standing.

She suspects there are plenty of other middle-aged men who are capable of wielding a hedge trimmer, but it is what it is.

She was hardly going to be the only stuck-up bitch on the block who refused to let the guy ride his obnoxiously loud mower back and forth over her lawn.

And so she and Seth dutifully leave a check for him in their mailbox once a week, just as their neighbors do, and she pretends not to notice the unnerving way he stares through their windows.

Audrey opens the wine refrigerator, pulls out a bottle of pinot grigio, and tips a generous helping into her glass.

She needs a little something to take the edge off.

It’s been two weeks since Seth returned from the latest leg of his book tour, and things have been tense ever since.

From what Audrey gathers, his new Detective Marlow novel isn’t being received as well as he’d hoped, and as a result, there have been an endless slew of closed-door phone calls with his agent, his editor, his publicist. Audrey has largely just tried to stay out of the way.

There’s a loud bang outside and she watches as Tony disentangles his mower from her wrought-iron garden bench.

Audrey huffs. You’d think he might feel compelled to be a little more careful, what with all the money he makes on this block alone.

Perhaps I should take his job, she thinks.

Get myself a ride-on mower, collect all the checks lined up in the mailboxes.

She can’t help but laugh as she imagines Seth’s reaction if she were to tell him she was going to quit her job at Top Cast to be the neighborhood gardener.

It’s not so much that they need the money she makes as an executive editor—Seth’s books are certainly successful enough that they don’t need Audrey’s income—it’s the principle of the thing.

The optics. Seth Warrington’s wife in khaki pants with a leaf blower strapped to her shoulders.

Audrey shakes her head at the very idea and turns to make her way into the dining room.

As she does, she catches sight of the invitation stuck to the side of her refrigerator with a magnet.

A barbecue being hosted by Georgina Pembrook to welcome the new neighbors.

Audrey rolls her eyes at the formality of it all.

A simple text would have sufficed, but of course Georgina ordered printed invitations on thick, creamy card stock and hand-delivered them to each mailbox.

She never does anything halfway. Audrey once watched that woman serve a five-course meal in Louboutins without breaking a sweat.

But it feels performative to Audrey, this pretense Georgina insists on keeping up that they’re all the best of friends simply because they happen to live on the same block.

It’s not that Audrey particularly dislikes her neighbors, but she sees them as exactly that: neighbors.

Friendly enough, but certainly not friends.

If they were all real friends, maybe one of them might have noticed how unhappy she’s been in her marriage these past few years.

Maybe she’d have wanted to confide in them about how lost she’s felt, how lonely.

But none of that happened. Because the relationship among the wives of Hawthorne Lane is a surface-level one—no deeper than waves from the ends of their driveways, forced smiles over a shared fence.

Audrey doesn’t understand why they should pretend it’s anything more than that.

At least, for once, she and Seth will be on the same page about something.

He’s not going to be thrilled at the prospect of attending this barbecue either.

She recalls him once referring to Georgina as a Stepford Wife and her husband, Colin, as insufferably arrogant.

It was the kind of thing they used to laugh about together.

Audrey carries her drink into the dining room, takes her seat at the far end of the table.

Seth doesn’t look up from his phone long enough to notice her arrival.

She watches him, rolling the stem of her wineglass between her fingers.

She’s trying to look at her husband with fresh eyes, to spot the things that once drew her to him, see if they’re still there.

She and Seth and have been together a long time—coming up on fifteen years now—and, as far as Audrey is concerned, that’s an awfully long stretch to assume that they’re still the same people they were when they first met.

At thirty-four, she’s certainly not the woman she was at twenty.

She wonders as she watches him now—absently sipping at his glass of whiskey, thumb scrolling over the screen in his palm—whether she’d still choose him if they’d met today.

Given the fact that she’s been sleeping with another man, she tends to doubt that.

“What are you reading?” she asks. She could venture a guess, but she’s eager to shatter the stifling silence that’s settled between them.

“Another review. Not good.”

Audrey tries to suppress a sigh. She knows Seth hasn’t been pleased with the early reviews (Seth has come to expect that his work will be met with nothing less than glowing accolades), but the damn book will still probably hit the bestseller lists.

Every time he bashes out another half-hearted thriller, it climbs to the top of the charts simply because his name is printed on the cover.

Audrey hasn’t read this one, but she’s certain it will be no different.

She hears her phone buzz against the sleek, polished wood of their dining table. Seth, of course, is paying her no mind, but even still, she slips it under the table before checking the incoming message, as if she knows, before looking at the screen, that it’s from him.

Meet me tonight

Audrey bristles slightly at the demanding tone but quickly brushes it off. She usually likes that sort of take-charge attitude in a man, but she already told him that Seth was home this week and she wouldn’t be available.

Can’t. Shouldn’t even be texting. Husband is here.

She silences her phone and puts it facedown on the table. “What’s your agent saying?” she asks, turning her attention back to Seth, who is still staring into the blue-white glow of his own phone screen.

He grumbles an unintelligible reply.

Audrey sips her wine. Is it any wonder I’m having an affair? She is, of course, aware that it’s not the right thing to do, but it was so easy to fall into it, to let herself be led by the heady temptation of feeling wanted and appreciated when she barely exists to her own husband anymore.

There was a time when Seth wanted her. God, there was a time when he’d worshipped her. Now she can’t even manage to get him to speak a full sentence to her.

She sees the edges of her phone screen illuminate again and ignores it.

Instead, she watches Seth as he scowls down at his phone, noticing all the ways he’s changed since they met so many years ago.

There are the physical changes, of course—the crow’s feet marring the corners of his eyes, the deep lines etched around his downturned mouth, the thinning of his hair, the paunch in his midsection—but it goes much deeper than that.

She thinks back to the early days, to the tiny apartment they shared, the two of them talking late into the night about the successful careers they were going to build, the big house they’d live in, the exotic places they’d travel to together.

Audrey can still see the way Seth’s face would light up as she walked through the door, bone-tired, feet aching after a long day at Top Cast, where she’d started as a lowly intern, how he’d take her in his arms and kiss her deeply until all of her stress melted away.

She remembers how eagerly she’d snatch up whatever pages he’d written that day, devour them before she even had a chance to change her clothes, poring over the prose, marveling over the way he could spin entire worlds out of thin air.

But she blinks and the memories melt away.

They aren’t those people anymore. It feels as if, somewhere along this journey that they started together, their paths diverged.

Now Audrey watches from the sidelines as Seth tours the country alone, promoting his books, smiling no longer at her but at his adoring fans.

Seth slugs back his whiskey now, draining his glass. “Getting a refill.” He barely looks at his wife as he stands, turning away from the table.

Audrey raises an eyebrow. She’s noticed that Seth has been drinking more than his usual weekend glass of brandy since he’s been home these past weeks.

She opens her mouth to say something, but she decides against it, chalking it up to his stress over the new book.

She doubts that discussion would be well received at the moment anyway.

How did they get to this point where it feels like even having a conversation is a minefield not worth crossing?

She picks up her phone, taking advantage of Seth’s absence to check the message that came in earlier.

Make it work, and I’ll make it worth your while.

Audrey huffs. Though such an offer from him would normally stir a warm tingle of want deep in her belly, today it’s left her feeling annoyed.

She doesn’t appreciate that he’s not respecting the boundaries she very clearly set for their relationship.

Things may not be great with Seth these days, but he’s still her husband.

They have a history together, a nice life that they’ve worked hard to build.

She’s not interested in a messy divorce, especially one in which she’ll be cast as the evil adulterer.

Audrey doesn’t respond, deciding instead to switch her phone off entirely. She hopes that sends a clear enough message.

“What’s this?” Seth asks, startling Audrey, who drops her phone with a clatter just as he walks back into the dining room.

Seth’s brows are knit together in a puzzled expression as he stares down at something in his palm.

He holds it out to Audrey, unfurling his fingers.

And there, in Seth’s hand, is a silver tie clip that Audrey is acutely aware does not belong to her husband.

She sees a snapshot of him standing in their living room, eyes hungry for her as he pulled off his tie, the tinkling sound of something metallic hitting the hardwood floor…

Audrey swallows the nausea that creeps up her throat and shrugs. “Is it one of yours?”

Seth inspects the little silver clip. “No, it’s not.

I found it on the floor under the bar cart.

” There’s a telltale slurring around his words, as though his tongue is a fat slug in his mouth.

He’s looking at her now. Really looking at her.

Watching her appraisingly, the way an art dealer might inspect a potentially fraudulent painting.

Wasn’t this exactly what she’d wanted? Her husband’s undivided attention?

And now that she has it, Audrey feels herself withering under the intensity of it.

“Oh! It must have been from when you had your team here for drinks!” The lie springs lightly from her lips. “Someone must have lost it.”

“But that was weeks ago.”

“I know,” Audrey says, nodding as the narrative gains momentum. “But I can’t imagine where else it might have come from. I’ll have to talk to Naomi about cleaning under the furniture. She’s meant to be doing that, but I think she cuts corners sometimes.”

Seth hesitates a moment before dropping the tie clip into his pocket. “Yeah,” he says, sounding less than convinced. “Right, that must have been it.”

Audrey nearly sags with relief as the offending object disappears from view.

If Seth ever found out she was having an affair, Audrey doesn’t know what he’d do, but she knows it wouldn’t end well.

He’s a prideful man, her husband, hyper-concerned about appearances.

And the wife of the famous Seth Warrington sleeping with another man certainly doesn’t align with the public image he’s going for.

Audrey takes a long sip of her wine, hoping the slight tremor in her hand isn’t noticeable. Seth sits across from her, his eyes intent on his wife for the first time in as long as she can remember. He smiles, but there’s a falseness to it, a chill that makes Audrey’s blood run cold.