Page 52 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Dean is out of breath when he’s finally through, panting as he bends over, bracing his hands on his knees to glare down at Maggie, bloodied on the floor at his feet.
“Look at me,” he demands.
Maggie turns her head with great effort, her vision unfocused, blood and tears stinging her eyes as she looks up into Dean’s glowering face.How can I ever have thought he was beautiful?
“You will never lie to me again,” he says, the words curling out from between his clenched teeth. “Now, is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“I’m…leaving you,” Maggie manages, her voice nothing more than a breathy whisper but there nonetheless. She hates that it took her so long to find it that she barely has one left to use.
Dean turns. He rummages through a drawer for a moment, then pulls something from it, holding it out for Maggie to see.
Maggie blinks slowly, fighting for consciousness as her mind struggles to process what Dean is holding: an empty jam jar.
A rictus grin creaks slowly across his face like cracking ice. “You have nowhere to go.”
Halloween Night
Transcript of anonymous call
October 31, 2024
Anonymous caller:Uh, hi, I wanted to report something that I saw on Hawthorne Lane? I, uh, I don’t know if it has anything to do with what happened there tonight, but I thought maybe I should call just in case.
Detective Olsen:May I ask who this is?
Anonymous caller:I’d rather not say, if that’s okay?
Detective Olsen:All right. Let’s just start by you telling me what you saw. Any information is helpful in a case like this.
Anonymous caller:There was this man wandering around the block. And he just, I don’t know, something felt off about him. For one thing, he was alone. No family or kids or anything. That’s what caught my attention at first. And the fact that I didn’t recognize him from the neighborhood. He was just walking around slowly, looking at all the houses like he was casing them or something. He just seemed very suspicious to me.
Detective Olsen:Can you describe what this man looked like?
Anonymous caller:Good-looking guy, in his thirties, maybe.
Detective Olsen:That’s very helpful, thank you. Now, if you’re comfortable giving me your name, we could—
*Call ended*
Two Days
Before
Halloween
31
Libby
Hawthorne Lane
Libby’s side aches as she picks up the cloth napkin in her lap, dabs at the corners of her eyes. She can’t remember the last time she laughed like this. The last time she felt so light.
“You don’t know how much I needed that,” she tells Peter.
He beams at her over the table, the rounded tops of his cheeks rising to meet the frames of his glasses. “Happy to be of service,” he replies.
Libby can tell that he means it too. That he’s happy simply because he made her happy. Maybe she was wrong, maybe this dating thing doesn’t have to be complicated at all. She’d made it out to be this looming, frightening obstacle in her head, but in reality, it’s rather nice to be sitting here in this quaint little restaurant with such pleasant company. The problem, she realizes, is that she was looking at this all wrong—she’d looked at dating someone new as the end of a chapter of her life, the final nail in the coffin of her dying marriage, but she sees now that it’s not an end, it’s a beginning. The beginning of something that feels as airy and unencumbered as champagne bubbles.
