Hilltop House

Maeve, Ten

The rest was dominos. The doctor had brought up words like "rape" and "abortion" but Maeve had insisted the first hadn't happened and the second wouldn't happen. Her parents had pulled her out of school and sent her away, though, to a home for troubled youth, where she'd earned her GED while she'd carried and given birth to her daughter. There'd been no contact with the outside world during that time--a time of intense boredom and rest and sadness, of bitterness and silence. Her only joy had been her daughter, and she'd passed nearly a year and a half before her mother had come to take them both back.

Only more sadness had followed when she'd admitted the best thing to do would be to leave her baby, because Maeve was terrified to think about what might happen if he realized she'd had his child, his daughter.

Cora knew nothing about her father, and Maeve intended to keep it that way. No doubt the girl had asked Luce as she'd grown up, and as far as Maeve knew, her mother had always deflected the questions. When she'd come back to get Cora, Maeve had shut down conversation by claiming it'd been a one-night mistake, that she hadn't even known herself who the father was but that he'd died some time after, and then she'd gone into a talk about sex and protection and morality and Cora had shut her out and never asked about her father again.

Seeing that old man's dead body had pushed Maeve to the edge, again, though. Wasn't it the sort of thing he'd do—leave a dead body in her yard as a warning? Had he found them? But no, she told herself. Mr. George had been old and mentally unwell. It wasn't a surprise that he'd died. It was just unfortunate and weird that it'd been outside her house. She was getting paranoid, that was all. It wasn't as if that was anything new. The past eighteen years had been nothing but paranoia. There was no rush to pack up and move, not just yet, anyway. If she could just get Cora through her last year of high school, maybe they could leave the country. Or she could at least try to get Cora out of the country. There were universities all over, and the girl's grades were surprisingly excellent. Scholarships weren't unthinkable, and Maeve had already been looking into opportunities abroad. She hadn't told her daughter that, yet, but at some point, she would.

Oh, at some point, at some point—everything was at some point. Push it all off to a nonspecific date.

Her heart was racing; her anxiety was beginning to skyrocket. She had to go into work at some point, but this some point had a definite time: three o'clock. Mr George wasn't even twenty-four hours dead, Cora had gone somewhere with the boy down the street, no one had explained the mystery of the car out front, but the damned convenience store wouldn't wait. The manager would be angry if she was late; he wouldn't care if it'd been his own mother who'd died or his own daughter who'd run off with a near-stranger (if he even had a mother or a daughter).

Maeve went to the kitchen and opened the cabinet directly above the sink, where she kept medications, as the too-small bathroom closet was overflowing with her and Cora's hair products and makeup. She pulled down a fat bottle, untwisted its lid, and shook a few pills into her palm. Absently, she opened the cabinet to the left of the sink--in their last house, it was where they'd kept cups--and the empty shelves inside immediately fell, causing such a noise that Maeve screamed a little and dropped her medicine. Twisting around, she upset the open bottle on the counter, and chalky oblong pills scattered across the floor.

Tears forming in her eyes, the woman roared in frustration, and she fell to her knees to begin sweeping the pills into a pile toward her. Her sobs were born of the self-hatred that always came after remembering so much, the loathing that years later was still as potent as it'd been then, the shame that she could never seem to escape. Even when she'd returned with her infant, when Luce had wanted to put her in therapy, Maeve had refused, had let her parents pay for her to attend a pharmacy school out of state while they took care of the baby, and for a while, she'd been all right. She'd done well, until her father had died. When she'd come home for the funeral, all signs indicated that he'd found her again.

He'd always find her again. It was only a matter of time.

Maybe there'd be relief in that, in his return. It'd be the end, this time, whenever he did come back. She knew she couldn't run anymore. She was too tired, now. In fact, if Cora hadn't been part of the picture, she'd have given up long ago.

Where was Cora, anyway? Maeve didn't like her daughter going off with this Brian. Her daughter hadn't told her anything before running out the door except that she'd be back later that night, not that it mattered; Maeve wouldn't be home anyway. But what were that boy's intentions? He couldn't be trusted. No man of any age could be trusted. Cora was so young; she had life ahead of her. She didn't need to go screwing that up by repeating her mother's mistakes.

The sobs were beginning to subside, to metamorphose into softer waves, then sniffles. Maeve scooped the pills back into the bottle, stood, swallowed two by cupping her hands under the running tap water for a drink, and went to sit on the sofa. Something in her felt too old for all of this, felt as if she should have better control of herself at this point, and yet at her core, she was still—had always been—that timorous adolescent, blushing beneath a compliment, gratified by any attention, excited to discover a world she'd been led to believe held beautiful things for her. Everything about her was pathetic. And she'd like to have blamed him for her state, but the reality was that she'd done it all to herself. Maybe she could've been forgiven for what'd happened in the beginning. She'd been so young. But what about the times she'd gone back to him when he'd found her? Hadn't she made those choices?

Oh, she wanted a glass of something, but it was too early to drink, and besides, she'd be leaving soon enough; she had to be good to drive. Her bare toes rubbed into the shag carpet beneath them. Maeve appreciated the fact that she'd kept the ugly thing. Cora liked it, too. They'd have to take it with them if and when they moved. Maeve breathed deeply, listened to her own heartbeat for several moments. Almost without realizing it, she said aloud, "I'll keep you safe, Cora. We'll get out of here the minute we have to."

Her eyes glazed. The woman's thoughts clouded into a fog as the medication began to take its soothing effect. But the longer she sat there, the more she began to feel that something was just a little . . . off.

Maeve blinked back to attention. There hadn't been any noise, any movement, and yet . . . she had the distinct, uncanny sensation that she was being watched and that whatever or whoever was watching her was doing so with a sort of hostility. Her shoulders prickled, and she recalled feeling such a way when she was a teenager, when her parents had sat her down to assure her of their disappointment or anger. Maeve looked side to side, swallowed, and stood up. She'd text Cora, make sure her daughter kept in touch about her whereabouts, and then she'd get out of the house. Even going to work early seemed preferable to continuing to sit there, where something unnamable seemed to hover over her.