Chapter 2 - The Sanctuary of Gwen’s Kitchen
The Buick’s heater took three miles to kick in, blowing lukewarm air across my bare shins. I hadn't brought a jacket. When I left our duplex that morning, the weather app had promised seventy-eight degrees and sunshine—an idyllic Midwestern afternoon for punch and lemon squares on Darlene’s stone patio.
Now, a low ceiling of charcoal clouds was rolling in from the west, spitting a greasy, fine drizzle against the windshield.
In the backseat, June stirred. She let out a small, mewling grunt—the sound she made when she was working through an air bubble—and then went quiet again.
“How’s the cheek?” Gwen asked, keeping both hands firmly at ten and two on the steering wheel.
I reached up and touched the skin just below my left eye. The initial fire had cooled into a dull, thumping ache that synchronized with the pulse behind my temples. When I pulled my fingers away, there was no blood, but my fingertips smelled faintly of Darlene’s lavender hand cream—an expensive French brand Wade bought her every year for Mother’s Day.
“It feels like she used a shoe,” I said.
“She’s got heavy hands,” Gwen said, her tone level, almost clinical. “Her father was the same way. Old Arthur Miller used to slap his sons in the church parking lot if they didn't have their ties straight before the second bell. Darlene grew up thinking love was something you beat into people until they stopped embarrassing you.”
“I’m not her son,” I said.
“No,” Gwen agreed, flicking her turn signal. “You’re the woman who took her favorite audience member away. That makes you far more dangerous.”
We pulled into the gravel drive of Gwen’s small, white-shingled bungalow on the south side of town. The house was tiny compared to Darlene’s four-thousand-square-foot brick monster in the hills, but it had an enclosed porch filled with spider plants and a kitchen that smelled permanently of toasted sourdough and cinnamon tea.
Gwen killed the engine. For a long moment, neither of us moved. The rain ticked against the Buick’s roof like a handful of tossed rice.
“What am I doing, Gwen?” I whispered, resting my forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window. “I have twenty dollars in my checking account until Friday. Wade handles the auto-draft for the nursery furniture. My name isn't even on the deed to the duplex because his uncle owned it and gave him a family discount on the lease.”
Gwen turned sideways in her seat, unbuckling her belt. She reached across the console and took both of my hands into hers. Her skin was dry, rough from decades of handling ledger paper, but warm.
“First thing you’re doing is nursing that baby,” Gwen said firmly. “Second thing you’re doing is eating a bowl of beef stew that’s been in my slow cooker since seven this morning. Third thing you’re doing is turning your phone on silent. Because by now, the chorus has started.”
As if on cue, my purse vibrated against my ankle. Then it vibrated again. A double buzz. A triple buzz.
*Wade: Maren, where did you go? Mom is hyperventilating.*
*Wade: You need to come back and talk to her. We can fix the cake. We can scrape the lettering off.*
*Wade: Celia saw Aunt Gwen threaten Mom. Do you have any idea how bad that looks?*
*Wade: Pick up the phone. She’s your daughter too, but she’s a Vance.*
I felt a cold drop of sweat trickle down the nape of my neck. *She’s a Vance.*
For four years, that phrase had been tossed around like a silver dollar. *Vances always spend Thanksgiving in Galena. Vances don’t buy foreign cars. Vances have naturally strong teeth.* It had seemed eccentric at first, maybe a little endearing—a family with an identity so rigid it felt like an ancient stone wall you could lean against when your own life was messy.
My own parents had died when I was nineteen—a highway accident on icy asphalt outside Dubuque—leaving me with Gwen, a modest life insurance payout that covered my state college tuition, and a deep, terrifying longing for a large, noisy family around a holiday table.
I had walked into the Vance family willingly. I had let Darlene pick out our wedding china. I had let Wade convince me that his mother’s daily drop-ins were just "Midwestern hospitality."
“Phone,” Gwen said, holding out an open palm.
I pulled the device from my purse and dropped it into her hand. She didn't turn it off; she simply toggled the switch on the side, slipped it into her cardigan pocket, and unlatched June’s car seat from the back.
Inside Gwen’s kitchen, the yellow light felt like a physical blanket. Gwen took June, expertly unswaddling her to check her diaper, while I collapsed onto the vinyl bench of the breakfast nook.
My reflection in the small mirror beside the pantry door was grotesque. My hair, which I had curled with trembling, postpartum fingers at six that morning, was limp from the drizzle. The left side of my face was swollen, a faint red crescent marking the line where Darlene’s sapphire had caught the skin over my cheekbone. My nursing dress—a floral print I had chosen because it hid spit-up—hung loose around my collarbones and tight across my leaking breasts.
“Sit,” Gwen commanded, setting a ceramic bowl of steaming brown stew and two thick slices of buttered bread in front of me. “Eat three bites before you unbutton that blouse. Your milk won't let down if your adrenaline is through the ceiling.”
I picked up the spoon. My hand was shaking so violently the broth sloshed over the rim.
“He didn't hit me,” I whispered, staring into the carrots and potatoes. “Wade didn't touch me. But Gwen... he held my arm so she could look at me while she screamed.”
“I saw what he did,” Gwen said, sitting down across from me with June cradled against her shoulder, patting the baby’s back with rhythmic, hollow thumps. “He held you like a goat tied to a stake so the tiger wouldn't come after him. He’s been doing that since he was seven years old. When Arthur died, Darlene didn't mourn; she recruited. She turned Wade into her deputy and Bethany into her mirror.”
“Bethany walked out,” I said, remembering the sound of the screen door. “I’ve never seen her look at Darlene like that.”
“Bethany is thirty-one years old and she’s been buried alive for three of them,” Gwen said grimly. “When that little girl died of meningitis, Darlene took that grief and built an entire museum out of it. She became the Grand Matron of Sorrow in this county. She’s raised twenty thousand dollars for that ‘Lucy Miller Vance Playground’ down by the river, and not one penny of it has gone into the ground because Darlene can’t get the city council to approve a six-foot bronze statue of Lucy with Darlene holding her hand.”
I dropped my spoon. “What?”
“You think Darlene wanted Lucy’s name on that cake for Bethany?” Gwen laughed—a sharp, barking sound without humor. “Darlene doesn't give a damn about Bethany’s healing. If Bethany heals, Bethany moves to Minneapolis with that graphic designer she’s been seeing secretly for six months.”
I blinked, my brain struggling to process the information. “Bethany is seeing someone?”
“Of course she is. A lovely boy named Marcus. But she meets him in hotels thirty miles out of town because if Darlene finds out Bethany is laughing again, the widow’s weeds come off and Darlene stops being the mother of the tragic saint.”
Before I could answer, the front screen door rattled.
A sharp, two-beat knock followed. Not the heavy, masculine thump of Wade’s fist, but a rapid, nervous tapping.
Gwen didn't flinch. She shifted June to the crook of her left arm, walked to the hallway, and peered through the lace curtains.
“Well,” Gwen murmured. “The second act is early.”
She turned the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
Bethany stood on the porch. She had an oversized gray hooded sweatshirt pulled over her sundress, the hood yanked low over her forehead. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, pale and mottled around the eyes. Her breath hung in faint white puffs in the damp evening air.
“Is she here?” Bethany asked, her voice raw.
“She’s in the kitchen,” Gwen said, stepping back to let her enter. “Take your shoes off. I just waxed the linoleum.”
Bethany kicked off her damp leather sandals and walked into the kitchen. She didn't look at the stew, and she didn't look at Gwen. She walked straight to the breakfast nook, pulled out the chair opposite me, and sat down.
For a full minute, neither of us spoke. June let out a soft sigh from the bassinet basket Gwen had fetched from the spare bedroom, her little fists twitching in her sleep.
Bethany reached out. Her fingers were long and thin, the nails bitten down to the quick. She hovered her hand two inches above my bruised cheek, her eyes tracing the purple outline of her mother’s ring.
“She hit you with the sapphire,” Bethany said. It wasn't a question.
“Yes,” I said.
“I have a scar,” Bethany said, her voice dropping to a whisper. She pulled back her hair behind her left ear, revealing a tiny, pale white line along the curve of her jaw. “Sixteen. I told her I wanted to go to school in Chicago instead of the community college down the road. She told me I was ungrateful. She had the diamond cluster on that day.”
I felt the room tilt slightly. “Bethany, why didn't you ever say anything to Wade?”
Bethany let out a short, cracked sob that she immediately smothered with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“Say something to Wade?” She looked at me, her eyes hollow with an exhaustion so deep it looked like illness. “Maren, who do you think took the pictures of my jaw to show the doctor when we told them I fell off the barn ladder? Wade was fourteen. He stood there with the disposable camera, crying, while she told him that if the state took her away, he’d end up in a boys’ home in Rockford. He’s been her accomplice his whole life. He doesn't know how to exist without her permission.”
She reached into the pocket of her oversized hoodie and pulled out an manila envelope, folded into thirds and creased down the middle. She dropped it on the table between my bowl of stew and the salt shaker.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s the mail from this morning,” Bethany said. “I stopped by the house on Thursday to drop off the party napkins. Mom had left her desk open. She doesn't think I can read her handwriting, or maybe she just thinks I’m too dead to care.”
I reached out, my fingers brushing the stiff paper.
May you like
“Open it,” Bethany whispered. “Open it before Wade comes looking for you. Because he will come, Maren. And he’s not coming to bring you home. He’s coming to make sure you haven't talked to the police.”
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