Page 59 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
Maggie stares listlessly out her window, watches as they leave their usual stretch of town, passing the run-down gas stations, the barbershops, and the check-cashing places.
“You’re going to be the one to ring the doorbells. Just in case someone answers. You’re less…” He looks at her again, his eyes roving over her body. Maggie wills herself not to move. “Threatening.”
“Of course,” he continues, talking more to himself than Maggie now, “we’re going to skip the houses with those fuckin’ doorbell cameras. Although those are probably the ones that have the good shit in them. Are you listening?”
Maggie nods, pretends to be interested in the scenery outside her window. They’re passing a heavily wooded area now, and the trees look like a green-brown blur as they speed by.
“I don’t think you are,” Dean says. “You’re not listening to a damn word I say.”
“I am,” Maggie insists.
“We’re in this together, Maggie. Me and you. Whether you like it or not. And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that we wouldn’t have to be doing any of this if it weren’t for you.”
Maggie wonders, not for the first time, how much of Dean’s insistence on robbing the houses of their wealthy neighbors is to pay off their debt to Mike and how much is because he enjoys the idea of it, the satisfaction it would bring him to take from those who have always had more than he has.
Dean rolls up to a red light, bringing the car to a stop. He pulls a small plastic bag from the pocket of his leather coat. Maggie pretends she can’t see him in her peripheral vision as he shakes a tiny mound of white powder onto the side of his hand and inhales it up his nose in one quick breath.
He exhales loudly as the drug courses through his veins, the high taking hold of him.
Maggie’s hands start to shake in her lap. “Do you want me to drive?” she asks.
Dean works his jaw, his teeth grinding together, and it makes Maggie’s skin crawl.
“You know, just so that you can get a better look at the houses,” Maggie says, forcing her face into a watery smile.
“Is there something wrong with the way I drive?”
Maggie feels the car accelerating, the tires of the Camaro spinning faster over the asphalt. She clasps her hands together, her fingers interlaced so tightly that her knuckles blanch. Dean does this sometimes—drives too fast, takes turns too sharply—because he knows it frightens her.
Maggie swallows hard, her throat still sore from where Dean had grabbed it. “No,” she says. “Sorry.” She hates the timidity she hears in her voice.
She wasn’t always this way, this meek little mouse of a person. She tries to remember who she was before. She knows she was stronger, more capable, but the memory feels so far away to her now. Dean has broken her down so completely that she hardly remembers that version of herself.It’s sad,she thinks. She feels it like a loss. The death of the person she should have been.
“What’s the matter, Maggie?” Dean asks, a taunting lilt to his voice. “Am I scaring you?” He pushes his boot down harder on the accelerator, and the Camaro jolts forward, barreling even faster down the empty stretch of road.
“N-no,” she stammers, but Dean laughs.
“Oh, good. Let’s go a little faster, then.”
The Camaro’s engine roars, the hood shaking as the pistons fire rapidly beneath it.
“Do you want me to slow down?” Dean asks.
Maggie doesn’t respond. She knows it doesn’t matter what she says. There is no right answer.
“I asked you a question, Maggie.”
The car begins to rattle, a metallic jangling, as Dean pushes it past its limits. Maggie squeezes her eyes shut, her stomach quaking.
“Look at me, Maggie.”
She doesn’t; she can’t. She’s so frightened that she can’t bring herself to open her eyes.
“I said look at me.” Dean is angry now, the words leaving his lips like thrown jabs.
Maggie forces her eyes open, her chin trembling as she turns to face him.
Dean is watching her intently, his head fully turned toward Maggie in the passenger seat. He’s not looking at the road.
