Hilltop House

Maeve, Seventeen

Paul took her inside, a total gentleman as he guided her down Dottie's dark hall and into a room at the back of the house, where enough moonlight shone in to cast them in a sort of powdery pale blue light. He gestured to an old floral-patterned sofa, and Maeve, hardly able to stand, felt some guilty relief to be able to sit, to know that it'd all happened, finally, and whatever came of it all, the hiding was over.

He stood at the entrance to the room, back against the wall, and Maeve saw her gun in his hand and hardly understood how he'd come to have it. They stayed like that for some moments, contemplating one another, the things that stood between them thick and invisible. Maeve tried to turn her thoughts away from all of the memories, the many things she'd twisted and screwed into the shadowy places of her skull, hoping to never address them again. She looked at the ugly things in the room, the stacks of papers and magazines and books, the dead plants, the plates and mugs and innumerable knick knacks that most old people seemed to own. The house was permeated with the stench of cats--cat food, cat litter, cat feces, cat hair--though Maeve saw no cats, heard no cats, and a sudden sick knot formed in her gut.

At last he spoke, and when he did, Maeve was sad at the ease with which his words touched her ears. Whatever she'd tried to tell herself about him, about her feelings toward him, the reality was that she'd always fall back into him. There was something wrong inside of her; she knew it, and she despised herself for it.

"You've been avoiding me."

The mellow smoothness of his tone, his subtle sarcasm--she had to remind herself of her daughter and decided she wasn't ready to speak to him.

Paul watched her, narrowed his piercing eyes (so like his daughter's). For a middle-aged man, he seemed perpetually youthful, partially for his clean-shaven face and longish black hair but also because, in spite of his strength and stature, he retained a sort of playfulness. Maeve had been attracted to that, long ago, until she'd understood that Paul's jests, his mirth were often prelude to his anger.

Had she been looking at him (but she couldn't bring herself to) she would have noticed his nostrils flare as he attempted to quell his irritation. The man wouldn't move his eyes off of Maeve; why wouldn't he stop staring at her? She felt his gaze even without seeing it. "What do you want?" she asked stupidly, pretty sure she knew what he wanted, knew it wasn't anything good, hoped only--impossibly--that somehow he didn't know that Cora was his, that maybe whatever he'd heard, it wasn't quite the truth.

"What I've always wanted, Maeve."

She took a breath, couldn't keep herself from asking, "Have you been pretending to be my mother?"

Paul gave a half-laugh. "Your mother's dead."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Closed casket, wasn't it?"

In spite of herself, Maeve was caught off guard. "Yes, but how would you--"

"She was nothing but a charred, melting pile by the time I left her."

Maeve rose unsteadily.

"She lit up fast, burned bright, like one of those cheap Chinese fireworks."

"You--my mother--"

"No real loss, Maeve," He kept on as nonchalantly as if he were speaking about his breakfast. "You hated her as much as I did."

"No, I--but . . . why? Why would you--"

"Because she lied to me." Paul didn't move, and yet he seemed to Maeve to grow larger, to take up the entire room. "All I asked for was the truth, that's it . . . and she wouldn't give it to me."