Page 26 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
That’s why she’s driven here tonight. She was home earlier, all alone, Lucas having stayed over at Justin’s house, letting her imagination run wild, and eventually she couldn’t take it anymore. The not knowing. She’s grown so accustomed to knowing everything about Bill. She knows his favorite brand of socks, that he never eats the last bite of a banana, and that sometimes his left knee hurts when it rains, a holdover from a car accident he’d been involved in years ago. And now they weren’t even speaking to each other. They hadn’t exchanged one single word since their argument. Libby hated the idea that she didn’t know this most basic thing about him now—if he was living with someone new. It was a glaring reminder of how much of him she was losing. She told herself that if she justknew,she could learn to live with it. Anything had to be better than dwelling on themaybes andwhat-ifs. And so Libby grabbed her keys, slid her feet into a pair of sneakers, drove across town, and parked outside Bill’s town house, ready to find out the truth one way or another.
But now that she’s here, the insanity of the situation is dawning on her. She knows she has absolutely no business being here. And yet…and yet, she can’t help but stare up at Bill’s window, waiting to catch sight of something she’s not sure she wants to see.
Libby bites at the skin on the edge of her thumb. It frightens her a little, the sense that she’s losing control. She wishes she were a different kind of person. She wishes she didn’t feel things as intensely as she does; she wishes she could focus her thoughts on anything but Bill and Heather. But she can’t. No matter what she does, her mind always finds its way back to the other woman. Libby hopes that if she sees for herself that Bill has chosen Heather, that he’s really and truly moved on from their marriage, it will set her free, maybe allow her to do the same. But so far, all Libby has seen is the glowing lights of his living room, the occasional flicker of a nearby television.
She shifts in her seat, her lower back aching as she does. It’s just another reminder that she’s getting old. That she’s no longer the fun, youthful version of herself she was when she first met Bill. That she’s not Heather.
Maybe she should just go home. It was a mistake to come here in the first place. What if Bill happens to look through the window and spots her car? Libby feels a clawing heat rising up her neck at the thought. She really needs to get herself under control.
She turns the key in the ignition, and her Chevy Traverse rumbles to life beneath her. She casts one last look at Bill’s window as she grips the gearshift, and that’s when something catches her eye. The flickering lights of the television suddenly stop. Libby takes her hand off the shifter and sits up taller in the driver’s seat. She watches the window, waiting, her breath held in her throat. She watches as Bill walks in front of the glass, stretching, his arms lifted over his head, and she feels a tiny thrill that something is finally happening. With the lights on inside his house, she can see him only in silhouette, but it doesn’t matter. She’d know her husband anywhere. And then she seesher.A woman, petite and slim, stepping into the light.
Libby watches as her husband, the love of her life, wraps his arms around another woman. She watches as he kisses her, his hand sliding up the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. It looks so familiar that Libby lifts her hand, touches the back of her ownhead. She can almost feel Bill’s fingers there, the way he’d bury them in her curls. And then she watches as he lifts the woman into the air, her shapely legs wrapping around his waist, and Libby feels something inside her changing. The soft vulnerability of her broken heart hardening into a granite anger. Libby feels this new thing flooding through her veins like fire. She lets it wash over her, basks in the warmth of it. She lets the rage fill her, burning away the sadness that has weighed her down for the past nine months, reducing it to smoldering ash.
Libby doesn’t know how she’s supposed to contain it, this roaring, destructive thing that now sits in her chest like a ball of fire, and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t know that she wants to. For as long as she can remember, Libby has bent and contorted herself to fit the needs of others, especially her husband. She held herself back, made herself smaller, shrank from conflict, and put everyone before herself. And where has that gotten her? Here. That’s where. Alone in her car in the middle of the night, watching her husband grope her replacement. No, Libby is done being a doormat. She’s done standing idly by and watching some other woman live the life that was supposed to be hers.
18
Maggie
Benton Avenue
Dean paces the length of the living room like a tiger in a cage, and Maggie watches him, her eyes cautiously tracking his movements.
“Fuck that guy!” he shouts for the umpteenth time.
Maggie winces at the rage in his voice.
“Motherfucker got me fired over a damn spark plug! Like he couldn’t afford the repairs, like it wasn’t pocket change to him. And Ernie just believed him that I’d messed with his car, that I’d fucked up his engine on purpose! Let me go like that.” Dean snaps his fingers, the pop of it cracking through the silent house.
Maggie sits anxiously on the edge of the couch, not daring to make a sound.
“It’s such bullshit,” he hisses.
Maggie wishes he wouldn’t use that kind of language. He never did when they first got together, but it feels like everything that comes out of Dean’s mouth lately is foul. She finds it hard to see the man she loved in him anymore. She once thought him so beautiful, but now everything about him is hard for Maggie to look at. It’s like one of those optical illusions she’d seen in a book as a child, an image of two angels that shows the devil in the negative spaces. And once you see it there, it’s all you can see.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie says, because she doesn’t know what else to say, but she knows that she has to saysomething,and pointing out that Dean brought this on himself is out of the question.
“You’re sorry,” Dean spits. “Lot of good that does.”
He digs into his pocket, pulls out a small clear bag of white powder, and shakes some out onto the coffee table. Maggie watches as he leans over and inhales it into his nose in one quick motion.
Maggie’s hands quake nervously in her lap as she watches him, the tip of his nose twitching, his pupils dilating as the high hits, a trace of cocaine still dusting his nostrils.
She hadn’t known about the drugs. Not at first. He’d hidden it so well; until he stopped caring what Maggie thought.
“I needed that job,” Dean mutters more to himself than to Maggie.
“It’ll be okay. You’ll find another job. I’m sure of it,” Maggie tells him, even though she’s not certain she believes it. The bills have been piling up in their mailbox, and debt collectors hound them over the phone. Her income alone won’t stretch far enough to keep them afloat.
Dean huffs. “Sure. Let’s say I get another job tomorrow. It’s just going to be the same shit in another place. How the fuck is anyone supposed to get ahead? How is it that people like us—me and you—we’re always in the red?”
Maggie blinks at him, uncertain how to respond. She can’t mention that Dean squanders any money they manage to save, letting it run through his fingers like water. The drinking, the drugs, the gambling.
Dean continues, the words leaping manically off his tongue, without waiting for her response. “I work my ass off and I have nothing to show for it.”
Maggie nods agreeably. Dean gets like this when he’s high, he hyper-fixates on a topic, and Maggie knows there’s nothing she can do but wait it out.
“Meanwhile, that rich prick with his Porsche—”
