Page 37 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Mr. Russo:Yeah. He’s some kind of writer or something. I looked him up recently. Turns out his career is in the crapper. I read that he was asked to leave some fancy college talk he was giving in Rhode Island a few weeks back because he was all kinds of messed up. Guy must be going through the wringer.
Detective Olsen:And?
Mr. Russo:And did you know that he tried to off himself?
Detective Olsen:As in commit suicide?
Mr. Russo:Exactly. Suicide. I was up at their house to spray for the mosquitoes. With the woods around, the bugs can get pretty bad. But I gotta tell the residents before I spray. Make sure they keep pets and stuff indoors for thirty minutes after. Anyway, I knocked on the Warringtons’ door and there was no answer. Figured no one was home. Then, just as I was about to start spraying, I heard a car running in the garage. The closed garage. I pulled the door open, thinking maybe there was some kind of emergency, and there he was. Just sitting in his car.
Detective Olsen:And you’re sure he was attempting to take his own life?
Mr. Russo:Sure as I can be. He jumped up when he saw me, told me it had been an accident, that he was just making a quick phone call and had forgotten to open the door first. But I didn’t see any phone. When I’d opened that garage door, he was just sitting there, perfectly still, staring out the windshield. And on the passenger seat, there were all these pills. I don’t know what they were, but I assumed he either took some or was planning to. He was pretty out of it, now that I think about it. But maybe that was just from the fumes. Who knows.
Detective Olsen:Did Mr. Warrington say anything else to you?
Mr. Russo:Yeah: “Don’t tell my wife.”
One Week
Before
Halloween
25
Hannah
Hawthorne Lane
Hannah pulls to a stop in front of her house. The curtains she’d chosen are now hanging inside the windows; the doormat Mark picked out at the garden center,Home Sweet Homein looping cursive, is lying in front of the door; and the mums Libby recommended for the planters on the porch are blooming in shades of deep purple, burnt orange, and saffron yellow. This is Hannah’s home, and yet she’s afraid to let herself believe that it won’t all be snatched away from her in the blink of an eye.
She waits before turning into the driveway to let a woman about her age with a stroller pass by, a little boy trotting beside her. Hannah has seen the woman before. From what she understands, she’s a nanny for the family at the end of the block. Hannah smiles politely, lifts a hand in greeting. But the other woman’s eyes hardly meet hers before she hurries away. Hannah considers the sleek Mercedes rumbling beneath her, the big house in front of her, the flawless diamond glittering on her finger, and imagines how she looks to the other woman, wonders if she realizes that they aren’t as different as it might appear.
Hannah edges into her driveway and steps out of the car, hefting her canvas tote bag onto her shoulder as she closes the door. The bag is weighed down with books she borrowed from the children’s room at Sterling Valley Library, and she feels them bumping against her hip as she walks toward her house. She wants to get a head start on planning next month’s activities. Although Hannah is only anassistant in the children’s room, the head librarian asked for her input on upcoming events for the kids, and she was happy to help.
“You have a knack for this, you know,” her boss had said, and Hannah beamed with pride, her cheeks rising like two round apples high on her face.
Hannah loves her job and the children she works with. She likes the quiet kids who curl up with books in the library’s nooks and crannies; she likes the loud ones who bounce in their seats and can’t help but exclaim in excitement when the read-aloud story takes an unexpected turn; she likes the ones who come in wearing superhero capes or sparkly tutus because they know that they can be anyone they want to be inside the library walls. She wonders which of them her own future children, hers and Mark’s, will be like.
A pang of longing, regret, strikes her then, a physical stabbing pain in the center of her chest. She thinks of the texts she sometimes gets from Mark, baby names he thought of, photos of tiny blue booties and pink satin bows that he saw in shop windows. Hannah wants to start a family with him more desperately than she can put into words. It was the whole reason they bought this house on Hawthorne Lane with all of its empty bedrooms waiting to be filled. But how can she even consider a child now, with the past closing in on her like an ominous storm brewing on the horizon?
Liar. This isn’t over.The notes have unsettled Hannah to the point where she can’t sleep—the past revisits her every time she closes her eyes. But what do they mean? Is it possible that someone knows what she did? Hannah is used to living a life where she’s constantly having to look over her shoulder. Her mother taught her the importance of vigilance from a young age. But these notes—this feels different. She finds that the vague, cryptic threats from a distant, faceless enemy are much more frightening than the devil she’s always known.
Hannah digs her house keys from her bag and absently reaches into the mailbox as she does every day when she gets home from work, lost in her own thoughts. But today, all she’s met with is cold metal at her fingertips. It’s empty.
That’s strange.She looks out over the cul-de-sac, at the otherhouses, mailboxes brimming with catalogs and flyers. And then a thought occurs to her. A memory of her first night on Hawthorne Lane, when Doug, the mailman, had accidentally delivered Georgina’s mail to Hannah’s address. Perhaps he’s mixed up their house numbers again, given Georgina Hannah’s mail this time.
She lifts one hand, uses it to shield her eyes from the sun like a visor as she looks across the street. Georgina is outside, tending to her garden beds. Hannah hasn’t seen Georgina since the PTA auction two weeks ago, and she’s gotten the impression that the other woman is avoiding her. She sent a text asking Georgina to grab a cup of coffee in town but she got no response, and their paths conveniently haven’t crossed at all since. But checking for her mail would be a perfect excuse for Hannah to go over there.
Hannah bites at the cuticle on the edge of her thumb as she considers the idea. She understands that Georgina is probably embarrassed by what Hannah witnessed at the auction, and maybe she should just leave her alone, but despite everything Hannah is dealing with in her own life, she hasn’t been able to get it out of her head, that image of Colin with his fist clamped around his wife’s wrist, the look of twisted rage on his face. It strikes her as deeply unfair—Georgina shouldn’t have to hide and feel ashamed over her husband’s behavior.She’snot the one who did anything wrong. Hannah makes up her mind and drops her keys back into her purse.
She strides across the street and up Georgina’s front walk.
“Hey!” she says sunnily.
Georgina startles, her knees in the dirt, one hand gripping a spade. “Oh, Hannah, hi! I didn’t even hear you coming. I guess I was in my own little world for a moment there.” She smiles brightly from beneath her wide-brimmed hat. “How have you been?”
“Er, I’m…I’m good,” Hannah stutters. She’s thrown off by Georgina’s cheerfulness, her practiced, flawless smile. “I just came by to see if you’d gotten my mail by mistake. It seems Doug is at it again.”
