Chapter 26. Maggie
MAGGIE
Maggie was lying in bed when she grabbed her phone and opened her work calendar.
She’d been avoiding reading the invite from Cunningham out of fear that it might mention Sarah, but after all the surprises that day, the uncertainty was almost worse.
The Wi-Fi connection at the Folly was terrible, but there it was.
She knew—well, she’d hoped—Cunningham would provide context, and she found just that.
Meeting between Maggie Ryan and Headmaster Cunningham
Headmaster Cunningham’s office
Topic for discussion: Chair position for the English department
She placed the phone on her chest and closed her eyes. Instead of immediate relief, she felt a deep sense of regret, again, at how she’d put herself in such a position that she even had to worry about losing her job.
When Isabel returned to the room from brushing her teeth, Maggie handed her the phone.
“I don’t think I’m getting fired.”
Isabel read the email, then handed the phone back. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“I guess,” Maggie said. “Yes, of course it is. I just have a lot hitting me at once.”
Isabel nodded. She picked up Anna Karenina off the bedside table and noted the paperclip Maggie had used as a bookmark. “You’ve already read a hundred pages?” she said. Maggie shrugged. Isabel placed the book back on the table. “I didn’t think you were. Getting fired, I mean.”
“You didn’t?”
“I doubted Frank would go running to the school board about his wife having an affair with a woman. I wouldn’t.”
Somehow, the answer disappointed Maggie. Isabel might have mentioned how she was beloved and had been named Teacher of the Year four out of the seven years of her tenure. But maybe that wasn’t fair.
She watched Isabel brush her hair into a ponytail and sit on the far end of the bed.
She ached to hold her, to be held by her.
She didn’t want to misinterpret Isabel’s staying as anything beyond logistics—the trains were still out of service—or, she supposed, kindness.
Was she really going to leave while Maggie’s nephew was in the hospital?
She was about to ask if she wanted to pick up where they’d left off in their conversation on the train when Isabel posed her own question.
“How was Topher a liar?” she asked. “That was the word you chose for him yesterday in the car. What did you mean by that?”
Was that really only yesterday?
Maggie sat up. “Well, he was always lying,” she said. “Mostly small stuff, but still, the last thing he ever told me was a lie, and it was a big one.”
“What’d he tell you?”
Maggie pulled her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“He dropped me off at the dentist and told me that he’d come pick me up after the procedure and we’d get ice cream,” she said.
“Like it was nothing. For years, I beat myself up because I didn’t notice that anything was off about him that morning, but there wasn’t. There really wasn’t.”
“I believe you,” Isabel said. Then, “Maybe he meant to come back. Maybe he didn’t know he was lying?”
Maggie had never considered that possibility. But what did it change? He hadn’t come back. Either way, he’d lied.
Isabel’s question brought up the other question that had troubled her since his death—why had he chosen her to be the one to find him?—but the question emerged as something different now: Why not her?
Cait and Alice had both been living in the city at the time.
Who else would have been there to find him?
Their parents. Most likely, their mother.
Given that option, Maggie would never have wanted to trade places with her.
And then there was the more difficult thought: that he had no choice—that he was in so much pain that he couldn’t stand it a moment longer and it didn’t matter who found him.
“Maybe his word is haunted ,” Maggie said to Isabel.
Isabel nodded. “That sounds right.”
Maggie shifted to Isabel’s side of the bed and reached for her hand, pressing her knuckles to her lips. “Do you still want to leave?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Isabel said. “What do you want?”
“For you to stay,” Maggie said. She wished Isabel would curl up next to her and say that’s what she wanted, too, but she stayed put, so Maggie continued.
“I want never to have met Sarah. To have never gone to her house in Boston last weekend. I want not to have ruined things with you. Like the text thread, I just want to erase it all. That’s what I want.
But I can’t have that. I can’t do that.”
“You can’t,” Isabel said. “Besides, that would be like erasing yourself.”
Would it? Maggie wasn’t sure.
“I should have told you about her,” she said. “About everything. But I was ashamed and wanted to forget it ever happened.”
Isabel leaned against the wooden bed frame and picked at the green polish on her nails. “That’s kind of your family’s thing, isn’t it?” she said finally. “Pretend everything’s okay, even when it’s not.”
“Isn’t that every family’s thing?”
“Maybe, but it’s not my thing. And it doesn’t have to be yours. Imagine if we had to keep pretending that I had had some family emergency like you tried to tell your mom earlier. How weird would that be now?”
Maggie felt her defenses rise. “I didn’t want to make things worse.”
“Don’t you see that doesn’t work?” Isabel asked, exasperated. “The lying and avoiding are what make things worse.”
Maggie stared out the window, the bottom corners covered in snow.
She remembered one summer night when she was younger and she and Topher stood on the back porch watching a sailboat try to make its way back to shore during a storm.
Lightning flashed around the bay, and Maggie worried it would hit the boat even though Topher assured her they probably had some kind of grounding conductor.
Besides, he said, the weather report had warned of storms, so the sailor should’ve known better.
He lost interest soon after, but Maggie couldn’t turn away until the boat finally reached the dock.
After Daniel’s accident, she recalled that sailboat and Topher’s comment and thought, Why hadn’t you known better?
And later, of course: Why hadn’t we known better?
Maybe Isabel was right. Pretend everything’s okay, even when it’s not.
But who had been the one pretending? Topher? Their family? All of them?
She knew Isabel was offering her a warning here, and that it was her choice to listen or ignore it.
“I do see,” Maggie said.
Isabel looked at her. Flecks of gold speckled her brown eyes. “If we’re going to be together,” she said, “you have to open up. You have to share yourself. Your whole self, you know? Otherwise, this won’t work. We won’t work.”
“That sounds true enough,” Maggie said, “though I’m not sure I actually know how to do that.”
For a moment, Isabel was very still. Then she offered a shrug and a small, surprising smile. “Well,” she said, “I guess that’s a good place to start, right?”