Page 24 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Audrey leans back in her seat, her head rocking gently with the movement of the train. It’s been a long day, but the new issue ofTop Castis finally ready to go to print. This issue had been a challenging one, with a slew of last-minute changes and additions, and that meant a lot of late nights spent in the office. Not that Audrey minded. Her office has always felt like a sanctuary to her. She loves the sleek glass desk, the framed special editions adorning the walls, the way the interns flock to bring her coffee in the mornings (Is there anything else I can get for you, Ms. Warrington?), and the way the junior editors jockey for a chance to work with her. She might be overlooked at home, but atTop Cast,Audrey is someone who matters.
Besides, work keeps her out of the house, a place that’s beginning to feel suffocating. Seth has been moping around in sweatpants for weeks, days-old stubble shadowing his face. At first, Audrey tried to cheer him up, but that only resulted in Seth snapping at her, so she eventually gave up. She sees the way he’s been looking at her lately as she dresses for work, pulling one of her many suits from her walk-in closet. She feels his eyes on her as she pushes her feet into her pumps and slings a purse over her shoulder while he skulks aimlessly around the house with nowhere to be. She can’t help but feel that her husband resents her, that he can’t stand to watch her star on the rise while his sinks. She knows he’s going through a hard time, and she wants to be there for him, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult.
It’s just so infuriatingly unfair. For the past ten years, ever since Seth signed his first major book deal, she’s been nothing but supportive of his success. She cheered him on from the sidelines as he toured the country without her, appeared on television talk shows, his face cropping up in all the major newspapers. She didn’t mind when he became so famous that he was occasionally stopped for autographs when they were out at dinner; she didn’t even mind when he stopped asking her to be the first one to read his early drafts. (Or maybe she’d stopped asking to read them. She can’t remember now.) No matter how successful Audrey became in her own right, she was always overshadowed by her husband’s accomplishments. It was something they’d both come to accept. But now it was Seth’s turn to take a back seat, to watch Audrey soar. And he couldn’t do that for her.
Seth isn’t the only man in her life who has been testing her limits either. To say that her former lover wasn’t exactly thrilled about her calling off their affair would be putting it lightly. He’d texted her, emailed her, left her voicemails demanding that they meet, that they talk about her unilateral decision to end things. He wasn’t taking no for an answer, and Audrey was over it. Who did he think she was? Certainly not someone who could be pushed around. But she’s held to her convictions, giving him the cold shoulder and ignoring all of his attempts to reach her. Looking back on things now, she can’t imagine what she’d ever seen in him. She’s hoping that as more time passes, he’ll run out of steam, lose interest, and the whole messy affair will just fade into the background. She’d made a mistake, admittedly a pretty big one, but she’d ended it, she’d done the right thing before anyone got hurt. Now she just needs him to see that, needs him to walk away before he ruins both of their lives.
A staticky automated announcement crackles through the train’s speakers: “Next stop, Sterling Valley.”
—
Audrey pushes open the frontdoor of her house, her keys jangling in the lock.
“Hello?” she calls. The house is dark, the air still and heavy. Shecatches a faint whiff of something sour, and she vaguely wonders if Seth has gotten to the point where he’s given up on showering.
“Seth?”
There’s no reply. Audrey lets the door close behind her with a thud. She sets her bag on the entry table beside the front door and steps out of her heels. She flexes her toes, stretches the arches of her feet. But when she flicks on the light, she feels as though the air has been stolen from her lungs. She’s not alone. There’s someone else in the house, his hard eyes fixed on her. She gasps, a sharp intake of air.
“Jesus, Seth,” she says, her heart hammering in her chest. “What the hell are you doing sitting in the dark, and why didn’t you answer me?”
“I was waiting for you to come home.” His words are sharp, pointed things, as though he’s been whittling away at them in the dark. “Where were you?”
“At work,” Audrey replies, still feeling rattled. She spies the glass on the coffee table, sitting beside a half-empty bottle of bourbon and a scatter of white pills. “What’s all this?”
“Just taking the edge off.”
“What are those pills, Seth?”
He swipes the glass off the table and takes a swig from it. A small rivulet of liquid leaks down his chin and splashes onto his shirt; a dark gray patch blooms on his chest.
“Left over from my knee surgery a few years back. It was acting up today.”
“Seth, I don’t know if—”
“Another late night for you, then, huh?” Seth cuts her off, a dizzying change of direction.
Audrey can sense the sarcasm peeling off him in curling tendrils. “Yes. I told you what’s been going on with the new issue, but—”
“Hmm,” he grumbles. “Right, your all-important job running puff pieces on celebrity gossip and the latest makeup trends.”
Audrey feels a spike of rage pierce through her at the insult, but she forces herself to shove it down. Seth has never spoken about her job that way, even if she’s secretly always suspected that he thought her work was beneath him. And there’s something so pathetic aboutthe sight of him right now: his stained shirt, his thinning hair uncombed, his unshaven face. She decides to let it pass. Whereas once they would have argued as passionately as they did everything else—glasses thrown, insults slung—it now feels like all the energy has been drained from their marriage. She wonders when they’d stopped fighting for each other and simply given up. “I know you’re going through something right now, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak to me that way. There’s no need to be condescending.”
Seth scoffs disgustedly as he takes another pull from his glass.
Audrey crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, since you’re obviously in no state to have a conversation, I think I’ll just go upstairs and get changed.” She turns on her heel, her long, dark hair fanning out behind her.
“Something came for you.”
Audrey hears his words slink over her shoulder.
“In the kitchen,” he mutters into his glass.
A wave of dizziness washes over her. “What is it?”
“Why don’t you go see for yourself?”
She hates this, hates feeling like she’s walking into a trap, like she’s powerless to stop whatever will happen next. And yet she has no choice but to go. She feels Seth’s hard, scrutinizing eyes following her as she pads out of the room and into the kitchen.
