Finally--finally--she found her opportunity. It happened haphazardly, when she wasn't expecting it, which was usually about the way such things tended to occur. It was Wednesday, only a few nights since the old man's body had been found outside her house, and she was helping a similar old man (likely on the verge of dying, himself, though at least not in someone's backyard) make his way to the dining hall for dinner. He'd been complaining about something and she'd been responding as mildly and mindlessly as she could get away with, when suddenly, Maeve caught sight of Martha Heyward's floaty head of hair as they passed the recreation room.
The recreation room sounded more exciting than it was. Theoretically, it was a place for the old people to play games and craft and socialize, but most of what happened was people sat around and stared at things, lost in their own prisons of forgetfulness. While Maeve often tried to avoid the room for its depressing discordance--preferred to keep busy washing linens and transporting people--she made a sharp right turn into it when she saw Martha. Mr. Schuyler, her charge, didn't even seem to notice at first that they'd veered off the trek to the dining hall. Maeve rolled him to a group of other residents and parked him, then moved a little slowly, a little hesitantly, toward a window, where the old woman sat on a couch. She wasn't in a wheelchair today; she had a walker in front of her. But she was alone, no Pam in sight.
Martha was staring at nothing in particular, and even when Maeve sat down calmly next to her, hardly shifting the cushion, the old woman didn't seem to notice. Maeve hadn't been so close to her before, but now that she was, it was clear that while there was a strong resemblance to her mother, this person was not Luce. Still, Maeve couldn't ignore the uncanny sense that she was sitting next to someone who was, somehow, intensely familiar to her.
"Hi," she began, quietly, scanning the room for any other employee who may be wondering why she'd forgotten Mr. Schuyler. "My name is Maeve."
Nothing from the old woman. Not even a blink.
Maeve swallowed. "Martha, I want to ask you about . . . about your house. I heard there was a fire."
Several seconds passed with no change, and then, unexpectedly, one of the old woman's hands raised up off her lap and curled its fingers over Maeve's. Martha turned, slowly, and grinned, her wrinkled face a mask of something almost sinister. "No, dear. That was your house, not mine."
Maeve pulled her hand out of Martha's grasp. "Y-you're mistaken. My house is just fine."
Something entirely aware crept into Martha's eyes, dispelling any senility she'd appeared to possess. "Are you sure about that? Your past will always find you, Maeve."
Maeve leapt up from the couch, as much from the look Martha had given her as from the woman's words. Her heart pounded in her ears; she backed away several paces, her eyes on the old lady, and suddenly bumped into someone.
"Isn't Mr. Schuyler supposed to be eating? St. David's hall is down there, right now." It was Pam, or whatever her name was, and she looked irked. "You'd better go on, then."
Maeve was fine with the rebuke; she wanted nothing more than to get away from Martha Heyward, who was staring into space again, the way she'd been when Maeve had first approached. Taking hold of Mr. Schuyler's wheelchair, Maeve hurried him out of the recreation room, not looking back for anything. Whatever had just happened there made so little sense that Maeve was tempted to try to convince herself it hadn't happened at all.
She was always good at trying to pretend things hadn't happened, but she was seldom successful.
The rest of her shift passed uneventfully. Maeve breathed a little easier when she returned to the St. David hall and carried out her time there. At least there was no chance of seeing Martha again. Clearly, the old woman was suffering from some sort of dementia, as so many of them were; the cognizance she'd thought she'd seen in Martha's eyes hadn't really been there. Maeve's own paranoia had probably contributed to her interpretation of their conversation. She'd lived half of her life in confusion and fear; everything caused her worry.
She wished it weren't that way, but he'd ruined her. Well, maybe she'd always been subject to superstition. When she'd been young, an adolescent, she'd been more innocent than most teenagers. She'd loved fantasy and adventure and stories with happy endings. She'd had a perennial optimism and firm belief that everything would work out in her favor. If other people her age were off at dances and parties, if they were making out in the back seats of cars and smoking and drinking, even if they were good kids just going to movies and shopping at the mall--she knew little of it. Her mother hadn't let her go anywhere without adult supervision. Only by hanging out across the street with Alyssa did Maeve learn any worldliness. Sometimes, when she thought of her lost self--the girl who'd believed in dreams and the goodness of people--Maeve was ashamed to have been so stupid.
Yes, he'd ruined her. She may have been ripe for ruining (courtesy of her parents and her own unsophistication), but she could have been someone else entirely if a different person had shown interest in her, or maybe if she'd been allowed to discover more of herself before he'd come into the picture. She hadn't been with anyone else. He'd been the only one, not for love but for fear.
Maeve had thought more than once about what Nettie, her old childhood neighbor, had said at Luce's funeral: "I haven't talked to my Lyssa in months. Last I heard, she's seeing that man, now, that one you knew." It'd been a couple of years since her mother's death, and though she should've been relieved to hear he'd moved on--even if it was to a former friend--Maeve hadn't for a moment believed he was done with her. He'd never be done with her. She knew it not because of some self-centered notion that he loved her; she knew it because she knew him . . . his inability to let her be, his possessiveness, his desire to break her down. If he knew of Cora's existence--and whether or not he did, Maeve was unsure--he'd no doubt want to harm the girl just to punish Maeve. That's who he was.
Maybe it was time she tell her daughter some things. Mr. George's death, Martha Heyward's weird comments--they surely meant nothing, and yet they'd unsettled Maeve. If Cora understood the reasons her mother was so concerned for her safety, if she had more insight into why they'd moved, wouldn't the girl be better equipped to deal with him if and when he did show up? Wasn't it the right thing to do?
Still . . . Maeve was unsure she was capable of revealing her past to her daughter. Even if Cora hated her, the hatred was better than the disgust the girl would feel if she knew the truth about her mother's pathetic weakness. Cora was, after all, still so vulnerable herself. She might have more information than Maeve had had at her age, be better able to think for herself, but she was such a young eighteen. The way the girl still secluded herself in her room to write poetry, listened to her music box and tried on her jewelry, waltzed around in frilly pajamas and furry slipper boots, doodled on her walls, mooned over the boy down the street . . . all of it showed her inexperience, her childishness. Maybe Maeve hadn't done her any favors by trying to keep her daughter close; maybe she'd been as bad as her own mother.
There'd been a time when Maeve hadn't kept as tight a hold on Cora. Right after she'd taken her from Luce, Maeve had been too overworked and unused to having a child to pay close enough attention to her, but with the old woman's advice and after cutting alcohol out of her life, Maeve had managed to barely hang on.
But now Luce was dead, and the alcohol had made a roaring comeback, not to mention the pills. She was grateful to have found someone who'd been able to procure them for her.
Wasn't it only fair that she have some peace of mind from time to time, after all she'd been through?
Her break arrived. In spite of the cold rain, Maeve stepped out of the building, off to the side where she wouldn't be seen, and stood under an overhang so as to avoid getting wet. The weather was gross. It was coming up on December, and rather than any sort of soft pretty snow or even a sparkly frost, the days had been gray and wet and utterly chilling. She withdrew a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from her bag, lit one, and leaned back against the brick wall, closed her eyes. She hadn't been sleeping much at all, lately. Between the memories and the ants, the constant sensation that they were always with her in that room even if she couldn't see them, Maeve slept on the couch in the living room more often than not, and as decent as it was to sit on, it wasn't really long enough to comfortably sleep on.
Standing there, breathing in the cold air, trying to ignore the chill and appreciate the calm the habit of the cigarette brought, Maeve's mind seemed to settle a bit. Focus only on the moment, she told herself. One at a time. Nothing about the past could be changed; it was better to bury it deep, deep into the darkness of her heart. So much could be ignored.
Yet even in her attempt at repression, an image fluttered into her thoughts, played behind her eyelids, impervious to her willpower. She'd dreamt of the small thing. She'd dreamt of it in its shallow grave in the woods; she'd dreamt of it beneath the floorboards in the house. After all these years . . . its staring amber eyes, its curling fingers and toes, its paper-white skin dotted with moving black specks. And hadn't she heard it cry? At night, in her dreams, during those few moments of blessed oblivion she could find . . . a baby's cries . . .
Maeve's eyes snapped open. The cigarette fell from her trembling fingers. One word, one name, hovered on her lips: Paul.