Page 23 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
She awakens with a start, her hands grabbing at her throat as she sucks in big gulps of air.I’m okay. It was just a dream.She sits up in bed as rain patters on the roof above her head and looks over at Mark, who is still dozing, peacefully unaware, beside her.
Not for the first time, Hannah is struck with the guilt. Over all the things she hasn’t told him, about the terrible thing she’d done. She wonders if he could still love her if he knew. Somehow she doubts it.
Mark claims to remember the first time he saw Hannah. He says he knew even then that he would love her. They’d met at the coffee shop in Manhattan where she worked. He was one of the regulars, always ordered the same thing: a hot black coffee with one sugar. He says that Hannah was the reason he came into the shop so often, even though there were plenty of other coffee places near his office to choose from. That when she smiled at him, he knew she was the one, and it had just taken him some time to work up the courage to ask her out. But Hannah remembers it differently. There was no meet-cute moment, no love-at-first-sight Hollywood scene where their eyes met and she just “knew.” It felt to her like she gradually awakened to Mark, like one day she looked up and was suddenly aware that he’d always been there, as if she’d known him all along.
Their relationship had progressed in much the same way. After Mark finally asked her to dinner, they were almost never apart again. Their lives blended together so seamlessly that it felt to Hannah like meeting him had been an inevitability. They’d watch television at his apartment, her feet in his lap, and run errands together, Mark carrying her groceries. At times she’d catch him looking at her like he couldn’t believe she was real, like he was surprised to find her standing next to him. She knew how he felt. She couldn’t pinpoint when she’d fallen in love with Mark; she just knew that she had. She’d never known things could be this simple, that love could be this solid, unassuming thing that grew where you least expected it.
Mark’s mother had wanted them to have a big wedding at her country club. She’d wanted to invite all her friends and relatives, to deck out the ballroom with tulle and a five-tiered wedding cake. But that wasn’t Hannah and Mark. They’d insisted on a small, private ceremony followed by dinner at a restaurant with only their closest family and friends. Mark wore a black suit, and Hannah wore a plain silk dress in the loveliest shade of cream. Their wedding day was a reflection of exactly how Hannah hoped the rest of their marriage would be: simple and unassuming but full of deep love.
She hadn’t planned to lie to Mark, to keep secrets from him. At least not at first. She wanted to tell him, she really did, but she never found the words. She knew once she said them that it would change everything. That once he saw the dark stain of her past, he’d never look at her the same way again. And it killed her to imagine that. The dimming of her in his eyes, Mark’s light turning away from her. With him, Hannah was someone new. A better version of herself than she’d been before. And she wanted that so badly. A fresh start. A clean slate. Everyone is guilty of it, aren’t they? People hide away their jagged edges, their ugliest thoughts. Show the world the versions of themselves that they wish were real. But, Hannah knows, those small vicious things are part of who you are, whether you like it or not.
Still feeling shaken, Hannah climbs out of bed and heads downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water. There’s a pile of mail on the counter, a rain-soaked stack of newspapers and bills that Mark must have brought in and then forgotten about. She sorts through itnow, gently peeling apart the waterlogged pages. But when she reaches the center of the pile, she sees it. An envelope addressed toMr. and Mrs. Wilsonat their old place in the city. She almost throws it away. A voice in her head screams at her not to open it, that once she sees what’s inside, there’s no turning back. But she has to. She knows that. She has to know what’s coming for her if she has any chance of outrunning it.
She slides open the back flap of the envelope and pulls out a single sheet of white paper, a familiar hint of garish red leaking through the page. She unfolds the message with shaking hands.
The ink has started to run, bloody splotches staining the page, but the words are unmistakable:
THIS ISN’T OVER
For a moment Hannah is too stunned to process what she’s seeing. This note feels more threatening than the last, like something is bearing down on her, circling the life she’s built like a predator.
She hears her mother’s voice again, an echo of the past:It’s time to go.
But no.It feels like such a fragile thing to her, the happiness she’s found with Mark. As if it’s made of blown glass, beautiful and glittering, delicate in her hands. She knows then that she’ll do whatever it takes to protect it.
Hannah crumples the note and shoves it down the garbage disposal. She flicks a switch, and the steely blades begin to spin, grinding the threatening words to a harmless pulp. Hannah no longer has the kind of life she’s willing to run from.
As she watches the last traces of it swirling out of sight, she sees something, movement outside her window, that stops her in her tracks. Suddenly Hannah realizes how exposed she is in this big house with its tall windows and open spaces, illuminated as if she’s under a spotlight. When she tries to get a better look at the figure outside, all she can see is her own reflection staring back at her, wide-eyed and pale.
She shuts off the overhead lights, throwing her house intodarkness. At first, all seems quiet on Hawthorne Lane. Hannah begins to wonder if she imagined it, the figure nothing more than a trick of the light and her jangled nerves getting the best of her. But then she sees it again, someone creeping across her neighbor’s lawn. And not just anyone’s lawn, Georgina’s.
Hannah scampers up the stairs, hoping she’ll have a better vantage point from there. She rushes to her bedroom window, presses her hands against the cold glass. Rain pours over the panes in rivers, making the outside world look distorted and blurry.
“Han?” Mark rouses, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Everything okay?”
“I thought…” Hannah scans the street, but there’s no sign of the figure she’d seen before. “I thought I saw someone outside.”
Mark swings his legs over the side of the bed, pushes himself up. He joins her by the window and peers over her shoulder at the dark street below. “I don’t see anyone. You sure it was a person? We live out in the ’burbs now. I hear the raccoons are as big as Dobermans.”
“Mark, I think I can tell the difference between a raccoon and a human being.” She doesn’t mean to be sharp with him, but she’s shaken and the words come out more pointed than she intended.
He takes her in his arms. “I’m sorry, hun. I didn’t mean to make light of the situation. I know you probably had a scare, but this is a good neighborhood. I’m sure it was just someone taking their poodle out for a late-night stroll.”
“Yeah…” Hannah replies. “Maybe. But it looked like the guy was on Georgina and Colin’s property. Maybe I should let her know? Just in case?”
“Whatever you think is best,” Mark tells her as he climbs back into bed. “But like I said, I’m sure it’s nothing worth waking the neighbors over.”
Hannah walks back to her own side of the bed and sits on the edge with her phone in her hand. She debates whether she should send a text to Georgina. She doesn’t want to alarm her; after all, she’s not exactly sure what she saw. But something about the idea of a person in the dark lurking on their quiet cul-de-sac has set off alarm bells in her head.
Hey. Sorry if I’m waking you, but I wanted to let you know that I was looking out the window a few minutes ago and I thought I saw someone outside your house. Just thought you should know.
Three little dots appear on the screen, as if Georgina is composing a reply, but they vanish as quickly as they’d appeared.
16
Audrey
Hawthorne Lane
