Page 73 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
It’s just like the last time she left him behind, only that time, she knew he couldn’t follow her. Maggie ran then too. Ran until her legs gave out. She hadn’t realized where she was heading until she came to rest under a streetlight, doubling over to catch her breath, coughing and sputtering, blood still flowing from her nose and lips. She looked up then and saw where she’d ended up. Without realizing it, she’d run to the one person she’d always known she could come back to: Sam.
Maggie knocked on his door, the effort of lifting her arm almost more than she could manage. When Sam opened it, he took one look at her and caught her in his arms just as she collapsed.
When Maggie came to, she was lying on Sam’s couch, an ice pack on her swollen wrist, a wet rag on her forehead. She blinked, and his face slowly came into focus over her, his eyes brimming with worry.
“Thank God,” he breathed. “What happened? Was it Dean? Did he do this to you?”
And Maggie slowly but surely told Sam everything. She started from the beginning. She told him that when she aged out of fostercare at eighteen, she didn’t know how she was going to survive. She was all alone in the world, without her mother, without Sam, who was away at college by then. She struggled every day just to make ends meet, just to keep her head above water. She was so scared, always worried about her next meal, the next bill she’d have to pay. And then there was Dean. When he waltzed into the diner that first night, he seemed like a dream come true. Here was someone who could love her, someone who wanted to build a life with her. And suddenly she didn’t feel so alone anymore. Suddenly, and for the first time since cancer took her mother from her, Maggie was truly happy.
Until the abuse started. Maggie couldn’t look Sam in the eye as she told him about that part. She explained how it had started so small—an insult from Dean when he was having a bad day, a shove that could have been an accident. But it escalated as the months and years passed. Escalated to the point where Maggie feared for her life.
She told Sam about the money Dean owed, about the drugs and the gambling and the jam jar. She told him about Dean’s plan for Halloween and the accident she’d caused, and finally, she told him about how Dean had died in a ditch that night because she’d chosen to let him.
“You’re safe now, Maggie.” It was all Sam said as he took her hand in his. “No one is ever going to hurt you again. I just wish you had told me what was going on sooner. I would have helped you.”
“I knew you didn’t want to speak to me. Not after the way I’d treated you. And I understood, I really did. It wouldn’t have been fair to call and dump all this on you when—”
“What do you mean, I didn’t want to speak to you?”
“I called you. The day after we had that argument. I wanted to apologize, but you never called me back.”
“Maggie, I did. So many times. I called, I texted…when you didn’t answer, I thought thatyouwere the one who didn’t want to speak tome.”
“Dean.” Realization dawned on Maggie then. “He must have blocked your number in my phone. I never got any of your messages.”
Sam scowled. “Is it too soon to say I’m glad he’s gone?”
Maggie dropped her head into her hands. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”
“We’ll call the police,” Sam said, sturdy and assured. “We’ll tell them what happened. Dean was on drugs, he was being reckless, the accident was his fault, not yours.”
Maggie shook her head. “But I left the scene of an accident. I left him there to die.”
“They’ll understand. When you tell them what you told me, they’ll understand why you were scared, why you ran.”
“I didn’t just run,” she insisted. “I stood there and watched him die. Iwantedhim to die, Sam.”
“No one else has to know about that.”
“The police aren’t the only ones I have to worry about, though,” Maggie reminded him. “Dean got us involved with some pretty bad people. Even if the police don’t come after me, those guys are going to.”
“I won’t let anyone touch you,” Sam said, holding her hand even tighter. “No one will find you here.”
“And what if they do?” Maggie struggled to sit up. “What if they do and something happens to you because of it?”
“I don’t care what happens to me.”
“But I do. I couldn’t live with myself.”
“What doyouwant to do, Maggie?”
Maggie was quiet for a moment. It had been so long since someone had asked her that, since someone had cared what she wanted. “I think it would be best if I…if I disappeared.”
“You can’t, you—”
“I can, Sam. I’ve done it before. With my mom, after we escaped from my father. He…he was like Dean. But she was braver than I was. She got us out of there, and we disappeared. We spent the rest of the time we had together hiding from him. Using fake names, moving from place to place whenever Mom thought there was a chance he might find us.”
Maggie thought back to those years, the back seat of her mother’s Buick stuffed with their belongings, bags they never fullyunpacked, shuttling between sketchy motels and cheap rental apartments. There were some stretches of time, like when she’d lived next door to Sam, that they thought they were safe enough to settle down, to call someplace home. But inevitably, Maggie’s father would track them down again and they’d have to move without so much as a goodbye. Sam was the only person she’d kept in touch with through each move, the one thing she couldn’t give up. Until Dean forced them apart.
