The day she'd found out she was pregnant had, at the time, been the worst day of her life. Not because of the pregnancy—no, the day had been terrible before she'd even gone to the doctor, before her mother had even made the appointment for her. It'd started when Maeve had done what she'd been doing for weeks: cut out of school to see him.
She remembered that the trees and bushes had been budding—yellow forsythia and white dogwood, azaleas in sprays of red and pink—and even now, years later, she remembered the way she'd breathed in that bouquet as she'd waited on the corner where she always met him. That's how it'd started, anyway, beautifully, fragrantly. Sunshine and blue skies, crisp air and soft earth. And he'd picked her up and taken her to the pebbled river where all the teenagers swam in the summer, to a special inlet which he'd said no one else knew about. It was a secret place, he'd said. She'd put on a swimsuit he'd bought for her, a bikini her mother would've never let her wear, and he'd showered her with compliments, the sort that'd made her redden even as she'd grown used to his bluntness, his frequent comments about her physical appearance. The water had been cold, and he hadn't wanted to swim. Wouldn't swim, said he'd just wanted to watch her while he smoked, and when she had protested that it was too cold for her, too, he'd told her to do it anyway. Something hadn't quite seemed right about that, about any of it, about him--it hadn't seemed right ever, even from the beginning if she'd been honest, but he'd told her he loved her, that she belonged to him, that no one would ever take her from him. Wasn't that what every girl wanted from a man? Why he'd been interested in her, she'd been unable to figure out and had just given in to appreciating the fact. He wasn't some high school boy but a real man, twenty-five and gorgeous, had a real job and a nice car and could buy her anything she'd wanted. And he'd shown her so many things her parents had tried to hide from her by censoring everything she read and saw--he'd taught her the physical pleasure of touch and closeness, and even though sometimes there was pain, he'd reassured her that it was all a part of his love for her.
At some point, while she swam, he'd tossed his cigarette aside and gone off for a moment, told her to wait and then returned and told her to get out, and she'd listened. He'd told her to dry off, wrap a towel around herself, and follow him up onto the bank and into the woods. She'd obediently done all he'd asked, not wanting to upset him--never wanting to upset him--and after a few moments of walking, he'd stopped, told her to look down at something . . .
She'd wanted to run, tried to run, but he'd caught her, said they were in it together, now, that she was complicit. She'd go to jail, he'd said, maybe even be executed. He'd made her help him clean it up, "take care of it," he'd called their actions. And when she'd whimpered in protest, he'd hurt her, said she was upsetting him and shouldn't do that if she loved him--didn't she love him? he'd yelled. Didn't she? And didn't people help the ones they loved? If she didn't help, it meant she didn't love him. Of course she loved him, though, she'd assured him, as much out of fear as out of the idea that she thought she did.
He'd been terrifying when they were done, unlike she'd ever seen him, like all of what had just happened had only invigorated him, and he'd forced her up against a tree and taken out his confusion and rage and mania on her, not stopping no matter how she'd cried, until she'd just given in and let him do it to get it over with.
"Telling anyone will kill us both," he'd told her after, when he'd pulled up at a safe enough distance from her house to drop her off. He'd taken her face in his hand, kissed the tears from her cheeks, told her he loved her and only her, it would only ever be her. He'd said he was sorry he'd hurt her, that it was just that he loved her so much and couldn't help himself when she looked the way she did, and that when she finally left her parents he'd always take care of her.
Maeve had begun the few blocks' walk to her house, something she'd done often to hide their meetings from her parents, but she'd begun bleeding by the time she'd reached her door, and her mother had called the doctor.
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.