Page 69 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
“What are you doing?” Christina screeches as she reaches for Lucas, her glasses clattering to the ground, the lenses cracking on the asphalt.
But Lucas is quick to jump to his feet, and he shoves Sebastian hard in the chest. “Keep your hands off me,” he growls.
“I thought you would have learned your lesson by now,” Sebastian retorts, his eyes narrowing on the other boy. “Don’t want to have to send you crying to Mommy again.”
Lucas’s hand curls into a fist. “Try it.”
Georgina grabs Sebastian’s arm. “Sebastian, don’t!” she yells just as Lucas’s fist collides with the side of Sebastian’s jaw.
Sebastian flings his mother off his arm as easily as if she were arag doll. She watches in horror from the ground as her son swells with rage, his chest puffed out, a trickle of blood trailing over his lower lip. He clenches his hands into fists, and Georgina scuttles away from him.
“Sebastian! Don’t!” she cries again. She is terrified to find out how far her son is willing to go. She has the awful feeling that if he lets fly that anger inside him, he won’t be able to rein it in again.
And then suddenly Colin is there, standing between the two boys. For a moment Georgina is relieved, thinking he’s come to end the fight, but instead he grabs Lucas by the collar of his shirt, twists it in his fist, and lifts him off the ground.
Lucas clutches at his neck, kicking and thrashing, as Sebastian steps up next to his father. Seeing them like that, side by side, mirror images of each other, brings on a bout of nausea in Georgina.
Christina starts to cry, fat tears rolling down her face as she pleads with Colin to let the boy go. “Daddy, please!” she cries. “Please!”
But Colin is unfazed by his daughter’s distress. “Shut up,” he barks. “I’ll deal withyoulater.”
Christina startles. She doesn’t understand it yet, but Georgina does. She knows that look in Colin’s eyes, that singular focus—Christina’s father, the man she has always known him to be, is gone. Georgina tried so hard to keep this version of Colin from her children. She’d sacrificed so much of herself to spare Christina from seeing the kind of violence that’s playing out before her eyes, and Georgina understands now that there’s nothing more she can do. She can’t protect her child from the world. Maybe she never should have tried.
A crowd has started to gather, and Georgina scrambles to her feet and shields her crying daughter. “Colin!” she shouts. She grabs her husband’s arm, digging her nails into his skin and shaking him as if she’s trying to wake him from a trance. “Stop!” she commands. “Get your hands off that boy! You’re out of line, Colin!”
Colin drops Lucas’s collar, and Georgina hears the sharp intake of air filling Lucas’s lungs as his feet land back on the pavement. But Colin isn’t looking at him; his eyes are locked on Georgina, cold, hard, and unforgiving.
Georgina can feel the stares of the crowd, the eyes boring into her back, but she looks only at Colin, her chin held high, righteous and defiant. She knows there will be a price to pay for what she just did, but it doesn’t matter. She did what she had to do. Let him take his anger out on her, as long as he spares her children.
42
Libby
Hawthorne Lane
Libby has finally reached the front of the line for mulled wine. Maybe it’s her imagination, but it feels like the whole town has crowded onto Hawthorne Lane for the fall festival this year. Georgina really has done a fabulous job of it, she can’t deny that. The streetlights are wrapped with fall garlands, and a hand-painted banner stretches across the length of road leading into the rounded cul-de-sac. Each house has taken care to decorate its porch with fat, round pumpkins and stalks of multicolored corn. The smell of buttery popcorn and melting sugar wafts from the vendor stands, and families slowly walk through the closed-off street pulling red wagons full of costumed children with sticky hands and smiling faces.
“One cup, please,” Libby tells the woman working the wine stand as she fishes for her wallet in her purse.
“Make that two,” a familiar voice calls over her shoulder.
“Just the one,” Libby tells the woman, handing over the cash before turning to address her soon-to-be-ex-husband. “Hello, Bill.”
“Hey, Libs.” He loops his thumbs into his pockets, rocks back on his heels, and offers her a disarming smile. “How’ve you been?”
“Just peachy,” she deadpans. “What do you want, Bill?”
A few weeks ago, Libby would have been elated to see him standing here outside the house they once shared. She would have taken this as a sign that there could still be something between them. But now all she feels is mild curiosity about what brought him to her doorstep and a twinge of annoyance that he hadn’t bothered to tellher he was coming.Typical,Libby thinks. Of course he’d assume that she’d be eager and available to see him whenever he felt like waltzing back into her life. Not that she can really blame him for that. Libby has always molded her life around Bill and his needs. But he doesn’t see that something’s changed in her. That she’s doing her best to move on from him, that she’s actually invited Peter here today. Libby looks out over the crowd. He hasn’t arrived yet, but he should be along any minute now.
“Nothing,” Bill says.
“Then why the hell are you here?”
“Lucas asked me to come,” Bill replies. “He was supposed to spend the night at my place, but he insisted he wanted to stay for the festival. I suppose there’s a reason for that?” He raises one eyebrow, breaks into an off-kilter grin.
“Her name is Christina.” Libby assumed Bill already knew about Lucas’s new girlfriend. She’s all he can talk about at home with Libby. Libby can’t deny the small thrill of satisfaction she feels that their son has confided in her and not his father, but she quickly pushes it away. She’d thought for sure that Lucas would have mentioned his new relationship to Bill, especially after the altercation between him and Sebastian. God, Libby had been furious when Lucas came home with his face a bloody mess. Maybe she should have called Bill then, told him what happened herself, but she assumed Lucas would tell him. And besides, she’d handled the situation. She immediately called Georgina, who assured her that she would straighten out her vicious thug of a son. Libby could tell something was off about that boy even when the kids were small. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was always a coldness about him that made her wary.
“Ah, a girl.” Bill sighs theatrically. “I should have known. It’s always a girl.”
