Page 95 of The Banned Books Club

“Did that come in the mail, Mommy?” Greydon asked from the back seat, where he was watching a movie on her iPad with his brother. “What is it?”

Margot set the torn envelope on the empty passenger seat. She’d rented a PO Box on the other side of LA and had the documents sent there. She wasn’t about to give anyone she didn’t know the address of their motel, and she certainly wasn’t about to meet a stranger in person, especially one involved in illegal activity. She didn’t have anyone to watch the boys and couldn’t risk taking them into a potentially dangerous situation. So she’d had to trust that the person she’d paid would actually send the items she’d purchased and, after driving in two hours of traffic for three days straight and finding nothing, was infinitely relieved that he’d finally followed through. “It’s what I need to be able to get us into an apartment,” she told him. “Won’t that be nice?”

“What’s an apartment?” he asked.

“It’s sort of like the motels where we’ve been staying,” she told him.

He clapped his hands together. “Can we get one with a pool?”

“Maybe,” she said. “We’ll have to see what’s available.”

Greydon went back to the movie while she continued to marvel at the quality of her new documents. “Margaret Lane...” she said aloud in an effort to get used to her new name. “MargaretLane... Hello, I’m Margaret Lane... This is Margaret Lane. I’m not available right now, but please leave your number at the beep.”

“Why are you saying ‘Margaret Lane’ over and over again?” Matthew asked.

“I’ve decided to go back to Margaret,” she told him.

“Gobackto Margaret?” he repeated, obviously confused.

“That’s my real name. Margot was just a nickname.” She’d chosen her new last name from Lois Lane in theSupermanmovies. Not only did she like the way the two names rolled off her tongue, “Lane” was short and easy to spell.

“Oh,” he said as if it wasn’t particularly remarkable—and that was it as far as probing questions from her children.

She smiled. Kids were so flexible. She felt she’d gotten away from Sheldon just in time, before the boys were old enough to know what she was doing and to tell other people about it.

She dug deeper into the file she’d taken from the envelope and found the three birth certificates she’d also purchased. One was for her, in case she ever needed it. There was no way she wanted to have to go onto the dark web again. The other two were for the boys, so their last name would still match hers. They’d need birth certificates when she enrolled them in school. She didn’t think there was any way Sheldon, his family or even the cops could track every child who went to public school. There was no big repository of information on all American students, no computer search that could be done, so she could’ve let them keep Sheldon’s name and simply explained to anyone who asked that she was divorced and was using her maiden name.

But it would be so much more difficult to change their surname when they got older, if she wanted to, that she’d decided to make the switch now and keep it clean and consistent. With enough time, they probably wouldn’t even remember that anything had changed. She’d let them keep their first names, which was about all they identified with at this point. Changing those would be far more impactful.

With a relieved sigh, she put the documents back into the file and set it on the passenger seat on top of the envelope. Then she adjusted her rearview mirror to be able to see her children in the back seat. “You boys still buckled up?”

“Yep,” they said, and she put the Subaru in Drive.

“Who’s hungry?” she asked as she pulled out of the post office. “Should we get some lunch before we drive back to the other side of town?”

“Can we have pizza?” Greydon asked.

“I don’t see why not. And after that we can go look at a few apartments.”

They didn’t respond. The movie must’ve hit a high point because they were both glued to the iPad. They’d had way too much screen time lately. She had to get them back in school, hated that they’d already missed two weeks. But she had what she needed, so she’d get on top of everything.

It was only a matter of time.

25

The next week passed slowly, mostly because Gia had to fight herself on contacting Cormac every day. She’d never been in this situation, where she missed a man and longed to hear from him. It was especially annoying that she’d gotten hung up on Mr. Hart’s son. But she supposed she was struggling because this was the first time someone had walked away fromher.

“I just want what I can’t have,” she kept telling herself. “And I’m getting bored because I can’t work at anything more mentally challenging than cooking and cleaning.” She didn’t mind helping her folks and was glad it had set Margot free. But the fact that she wasn’t always busy, like she was at home, made it so much more difficult to cope with wanting someone who seemed to have turned his back on her. Cormac came to his window almost every night and looked down into her folks’ yard, but she’d quit going to the hot tub. She didn’t want him to think she was hoping he’d come out again—even though, deep down, she knew she would be. She also didn’t want to put herself in the position of wanting him to come out and having him not do so.

Besides wrestling with herself over Cormac and trying to put the two nights she’d shared with him behind her, she continued to hope that Margot would check in. Ida kept asking her if she’d heard anything. But there were no more beach pictures or calls from blocked numbers. The only person who kept trying to reach them was Sheldon. Several things had come to light that he hadn’t expected—namely, the reaction of the police. They’d told him that since there was no divorce pending, Margot could leave the state and take the boys with her, and they weren’t even going to look for her. An attorney confirmed their response. He’d said that until there was a court-ordered plan, Margot could do whatever she wanted, which had sent Sheldon off the deep end. He’d gotten so nasty that she and her parents had stopped answering their phones. He behaved even worse when he was drinking.

It got to the point that Gia finally blocked him from contacting her parents. They needed a break from the constant upset. She would’ve blocked him from contacting her, too, except she felt it might be important to hear his rambling, angry messages. Then if Margot checked in, she might be able to tell her what to watch out for.

While Gia was sitting on her bed, surfing through Instagram, she noticed that the lights had gone on at Cormac’s. Unable to stop herself, she got up and went to the window. She was standing to one side of it, hoping to catch a glimpse of him when her phone lit up—once again—with her brother-in-law’s name and number.

She almost answered. The phone was already in her hand. But she decided not to. She had nothing more to tell Sheldon. Why continue to take his abuse?

Once the call transferred to voicemail, she could see that he’d left a message, so she played it back.

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