Page 74 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
“Is that why you left so suddenly? Back then, I mean?”
“Yes. It was.”Come on, baby, it’s time to go. He found us.
“I…I had no idea.” He paused then, as if absorbing this new reality. “What was your name? Before you were Maggie.”
“Melody.” The name felt strange and misshapen in her mouth, withered with disuse. It had been so long since she’d spoken it aloud.
“Melody,” Sam repeated, rolling the name on his tongue. “I can’t believe this. All this time, and I never knew.”
“Because you couldn’t. Because it didn’t matter. I wasn’t that person anymore. I haven’t been for a very long time. It’s part of the reason I can’t call the police now, I can’t have them digging into my past. I’m pretty sure what my mom and I did wasn’t exactly legal. But now I need to do it again. I need to become someone new. My mom taught me how, but I’m going to need your help.”
Sam looked at her, tears gathering in his eyes. They both knew this was goodbye, but they also knew that he’d help her anyway.
Sam reached out to some of his less-than-savory contacts, people with the resources to repay the favor they owed him when he was arrested for stealing a car they had taken. They’d gotten Maggie a new ID, a new name. She didn’t ask where they’d gotten it, and she didn’t want to know.
On their last day together, Maggie stood in Sam’s doorway, a duffel bag full of new clothes strapped over her shoulder, a fake driver’s license—her photo above her new name—in her pocket.
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you for all of this,” she said, adjusting the nylon strap on her shoulder. “You’re giving me a chance at a fresh start.”
“You don’t need to,” Sam replied. “This is what friends are for.”
“Committing identity fraud? Evading the police?” Maggie joked, tears already forming in the corners of her eyes over the goodbye she knew was coming.
“Okay, maybe this is a little beyond the call of duty, but I still have one last thing to give you.” He held out a slim manila folder, offering it to Maggie. “I know you promised your mother that you’d never go digging into the past…”
Maggie remembers the words her mother had made her repeat like a solemn vow—Never look back—as she took the file from Sam’s hand.
“But I did some research. If you ever want answers, the closure you deserve after everything you’ve been through, it’s all in there.”
Maggie rose onto her toes and kissed her best friend on the cheek, her lips lingering against the rough stubble a beat too long. “Thank you, Sam. For everything.”
As his front door closed on a tearful goodbye, Maggie knew that if this was going to work, she’d have to close the door on her past for the very last time. And so, after so many years of running, Maggie broke the vow she’d made to her mother and opened the folder Sam had given her.
She read the documents Sam had acquired, learned about how her father had died, alone in the house he’d once shared with Maggie and her mother, two years prior. Maggie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel in that moment—relief, sadness—but what she did feel was hope. Hope that she could really do this. Her mother’s plan had worked; they’d outrun the demons of their past—they’d won. And now she could do it again; she could have a second chance after Dean and all the darkness he’d brought into her life. Maggie closed the folder, placed it neatly in Sam’s mailbox. What was in that file was part of someone else’s story. She was Hannah now.
45
Christina
Hawthorne Lane
Where are you?
Christina stares down at her phone screen, glowing white in the darkness of the woods. It’s a brisk October night, the kind that smells faintly of burning wood and decaying leaves, where the air is just cold enough to remind you that winter is lingering somewhere on the ever-nearing horizon. She’s well beyond the streetlights now, and the sounds of the festival fade to a murmur as she ventures farther down the paved path.
Took a walk with my dad. Almost home now.
Christina squints down at the phone, struggling to read the message without her glasses, and then sighs with relief that Lucas actually answered her. She wasn’t sure if he would. Not after what her dad and Sebastian had pulled today. That was bad. Like, really bad. Christina was completely humiliated in front of basically the entire town, and she wouldn’t blame Lucas if he never wanted to see her again. She can still picture her father’s fist gripping Lucas’s shirt, the fear in Lucas’s eyes as he fought to breathe. She’d never seen her father like that before. It was like someone she didn’t recognize had slid into the driver’s seat and taken control of him. The father she knows would never have shown his true colors in public. He’susually far more careful about keeping up appearances, making sure that his rage is contained behind closed doors. No, Christina was not surprised by her father’s capacity for violence, only that he’d forgotten to hide it.
She thinks of her mother. Of the storm they all know is coming. Christina isn’t stupid. She’s seen the bruises over the years, heard about her mother’s “accidents.” She’s listened to the shouting through the walls, her mother’s whimpered cries. When Christina was small, she’d cry too. She’d bury her head under her pillow, waiting for it to be over, tears soaking her sheets.
But the next morning, her mother would pretend everything was fine. Christina would find her in their spotless kitchen mixing up waffle batter or slicing fresh strawberries, always with a smile on her face. It was all picture-perfect, just as her mother wanted it to be. And so Christina would pretend too.
After a while, all they did was pretend. They pretended that Mom was okay, that Christina didn’t know the truth, and that her father wasn’t a monster. Reality, at least inside their house, became this strange, plastic thing for Christina. Warped and stretched until it became unrecognizable. At some point along the way, she could no longer tell what was real and what was pretend. Which of her mother’s smiles were genuine and which were put on. It made it impossible to truly know her.
She looks down at her phone again, types out another message:
I’m so sorry about what happened. Can we meet at our spot? Talk?
