Page 55 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Hannah winces at the cold jab of truth in his words. Theyweresupposed to be starting a family. It’s what they’d both wanted. But things have changed for Hannah and she can’t tell Mark why. She can’t explain how terrified she is to bring a child into their lives when her past is hanging over her head like a swinging blade. She can’t explain how much she wants this, how every time she walks past an empty bedroom in their house, she imagines the nursery it could someday be and how having this dream, this baby, ripped from her arms feels like her punishment for all the mistakes she’s made. She can’t tell her husband that every time he reaches for her in the dark, her mind is somewhere else. How when she closes her eyes, she feels not his hands on her but her own hands on skin slicked with warm blood, her fingers fumbling for a pulse she already knows she won’t find. She can’t tell Mark any of it. Not without telling him all of it.
“I’m sorry,” she says. Because it’s all she can say. And sheissorry. Desperately sorry that she dragged him down into the dark well of her past. She’d thought she could outrun it, that marrying Mark was her chance at a fresh start. But she should’ve known that it would catch up with her eventually and that when it did, it would drown them both.
Mark watches her as if waiting, hoping, for more, but it doesn’t come. He nods, and there’s a new heaviness to it, his gaze drifting away from Hannah as he stands. “I’m going to take a shower,” he says. “When you’re ready to let me in, you know where to find me.”
Hannah leans back into the couch, the sound of her husband walking away from her causing tears to prickle at the backs of her eyes. She’s done this to them. To him. She hates herself for it.
Outside the window, morning sun shines on another day on Hawthorne Lane. Birds twitter in the trees, which are resplendent in their autumnal palette—splashes of fiery reds, vivid oranges, golden yellows. Porches have been festooned with hand-carved pumpkins and bumpy, curling gourds, and crisp brown leaves dot the paved sidewalks. The bucolic scene clashes so harshly with the gray gloom that hovers over Hannah’s living room that she stands up and goes to pull the curtains closed, ready to shut herself away from it. But as her fingers curl around the fabric, she sees something that gives her pause.
Georgina.She jogs lightly down her front steps in sneakers and black Lycra pants with a matching quarter-zip top, and her long red hair has been pulled back into a shiny ponytail that swishes behind her as she moves. Oversize sunglasses hide her eyes, but from what Hannah can see, her face looks as flawless as ever, no trace of the swelling Hannah had noticed days earlier.
Hannah feels her muscles coiling beneath her skin, anger clouding her vision. Georgina reminds her so much of her own mother. The way she’d dab at her face with foundation and concealers, wincing as the blending brushes dusted over her broken skin. The way she’d avoid her friends, their neighbors, blaming chronic migraines for her absences. Hannah had felt so powerless then. Much the way she feels now, her marriage on the verge of implosion with no means to stop it. But Georgina. Georgina she can do something about. It might be too late for Hannah to divert the course of her own life, but maybe it’s not too late for her to help Georgina.
Hannah quickly pulls on a pair of sneakers, shrugs a jacket over her T-shirt, and runs outside just in time to fall in step with Georgina as she passes the driveway.
“Good morning,” Hannah says.
Georgina slows, jogs in place. “Good morning! I was just heading out for a run.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Er…” Georgina looks uncertain. Hannah can see an internal battle playing out across her face, but in the end, politeness wins, as Hannah hoped it would. “Of course. I didn’t realize you were a runner.”
Hannah looks down at her ensemble. Bright white sneakers, a bulky jacket. “I’m not, usually. But I’m trying to get into it.”
“All right, well, I’m just headed up to the jogging path if you’d like to come along.” She nods toward the entrance to the woods that surrounds their cul-de-sac.
“Great!” Hannah chirps, though she’s not certain she’ll be able to keep up with Georgina. Just looking at her, at the lean, toned muscles of her body, her expensive athletic wear, Hannah can tell that she’s outmatched.
Georgina sets off, her strides long and graceful, and Hannah clumsily trots along at her side like a puppy.
“Do you…run…often?” Hannah asks as they approach the entrance to the jogging path. She’s embarrassingly out of breath already.
“I try to. Whenever I find the time.” Georgina’s words effortlessly float from her lips, as weightless as clouds. Hannah makes a resolution to start doing this sort of thing more often.
They turn off the sidewalk and onto the paved path through the woods. Hannah has walked by this place so many times, but she asks herself now why she never made the time to explore it. She feels like she’s entered a different world. In the woods, the autumn trees form a kaleidoscopic canopy, a collage of vibrant colors and rich textures that arch over their heads. The air feels fuller here, saturated with the scent of morning dew and fresh soil. There’s something almost sacred about it, the way that the spongy ground, the soft bark of the trees, has created a lush silence around them. If she didn’t know better, she would think they were a million miles away from their neat suburban town. Hannah jogs beside Georgina for a while, savoring the solitude of this place, the fresh air filling and expanding her lungs, and suddenly she finds that her breathing is not as labored, her legs not as tired. As if just being here in these woods has transformed her into someone new.
“I’m sorry, you know,” Hannah starts, her voice small against the vastness of the forest around them. “About the other day. I shouldn’t have approached you at your house like that.”
“It’s all right,” Georgina tells her. “It’s already forgotten.”
“It’s just…” Hannah pushes herself forward, striving to keep up with Georgina. “I know what you’re going through. And I know how lonely it can feel and—”
“I appreciate the concern,” Georgina says. “But, really, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“My mom used to say the same thing.” The words ring out among the quiet trees. “Her name was Julie.” There’s something freeing in saying it aloud, in releasing her memory here in the wilderness.
Georgina’s pace slows and Hannah hopes that means that she has her attention, that she’s willing to listen. “My father. He was like Colin. Well, in a lot of ways he wasn’t. He was broke, he drank too much and worked too little, but he was like him in other ways. He was controlling, always putting down my mother. And he’d…hurt her. She thought I didn’t know, thought that she was hiding it from me, but she wasn’t.”
Georgina stops, turns to face Hannah. “I’m so sorry you went through all that. Truly, I am. It sounds like it was terrible. But my marriage, it’s nothing like that.”
Hannah’s heart sinks. For a moment there she’d thought she was getting through to Georgina, but it seems that she’s still beyond reach.
“And even if it was,” Georgina continues, her voice uncertain as she resumes a slow jog, “even if you were right about Colin, there’s nothing you or anyone else could do to stop it.”
“Maybe I can’t,” Hannah says, following behind Georgina as they round the next bend, turning out of the woods and back onto Hawthorne Lane, “but you don’t have to go through it alone. There are places you can go, you—”
“Please,” Georgina begs. “Just let this go.”
