Hilltop House

Maeve, Ten

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.