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“What about green?”
Susan turns to look at Anne and the paint sample she’s holding up. They’re out shopping for the cottage.
“For the bedroom?” Susan asks.
“If you like it, yes. It’s supposed to be relaxing, I think.”
Susan considers it for a second before nodding to herself, and reaching out to take it. “Then red for Max and blue for Billy. And yellow for the nursery.”
Anne smiles a wistful little smile. “Blue like the sea. He always loved going out to the beach with me. I’m guessing that didn’t change?”
Susan shakes her head. “Do you miss it? The ocean?”
“Sometimes. I... I miss looking for seashells with him. Julie bought me a bunch when we moved in together. I still have them, lined up on the windowsills.”
They move further down the store, grabbing large sheets of paper and plastic to cover the floor with while they paint.
“I like that. Seashells on the windowsill.”
—
They finish painting Billy’s room first. Afterwards, Anne gets into the pickup truck she’s rented, and together they go to buy new furniture.
Billy never had any actual, real furniture, and Anne insists on paying for it, so Susan only has to pay for the new couch, and her own new bed. She refuses to sleep one more night in the one she shared with Neil. They dining table, and the chairs, those were Susan’s from before she moved in with Neil, so she keeps them.
But they find more furniture, more things Susan thinks would look good in this new place she’s trying to make a home, and she only has so much money, so when Anne catches her looking and says she’ll buy it ‘because Billy will probably like it’, Susan doesn’t say anything. They can both tell it’s a barely hidden white little lie, and Susan isn’t certain why Anne is doing it. Had it been Neil, or maybe even Sam, Susan would have seem it for what it was; a ploy to make her indebted and dependant on them, but Anne certainly doesn’t seem interested in anything like that. And she’s been married to Neil, she knows what he’s like probably even more than Susan does, based on the small scars spread out on her skin, so Susan doubts she’s even capable on trying to control someone like that. It’s just a gift, is what it is. Kindness.
While Anne goes up to unpack Billy’s boxes and put them in their correct place in his new room, Susan sets out to the kitchen to prepare a light little lunch for them. Sandwiches and juice.
When she steps into the room she finds Anne on the floor, open boxes around her, clothing something to her chest. She looks up when Susan enters, and Susan sees she’s got tears streaming down her cheeks.
But there’s no sound. Not unless Susan concentrates on hearing it, anyway. She’s crying quietly, the way people who have had to learn to be silent do. The way Susan has sometimes seen Billy do.
She puts her tray away on Billy’s new drawer, and slowly lowers herself to the floor to sit in front of Anne.
“What is it? What happened?”
Anne bites her lip and uncurls her hands so Susan can see what she’s holding.
It’s the old, round jar Billy keeps his rings in.
Susan frowns and looks back up at Anne.
“It’s mine,” Anne whispers. “I guess... I mean, I... he told me, at the hospital, he knew I was there before he even opened his eyes. Because he recognised my perfume. And I think... I used to put this cream on my hands to make them soft, and... well, you know how the smell usually stays for a while, even if it’s empty? I think he must have taken it when I left, and pulled the label off so Neil didn’t see, because this is that exact same jar as that cream used to come in. And he’s kept it all these years.” Her voice breaks in a sob at the end, and Susan reaches out and puts her hand around Anne’s on the jar.
—
The next day is happier.
They’ve finished Max’s room, and are working on the Master bedroom when Anne goes to get the radio, and then starts dancing while moving around the room, painting the walls green. Susan helps her, painting the middle of the wall because Anne told her not to bend down or go stand on the chair they use to be able to paint the top, close to the ceiling.
Anne’s standing on the chair when the song changes, and she emits a sound that Susan can only describe as a squeal. Susan turns to look up at her with raised eyebrows.
“I love this song!” Anne shouts, and Susan can’t help but start to laugh. Anne smiles back and hops off the chair. She starts dancing around the room, swaying her hips, before approaching Susan with her arms outstretched in front of her. “Susan! Dance with me!” She’s still got her paintbrush in one hand.
Susan laughs again. “I’m not going to dance with you.”
“Come on! Song’s almost finished!”
“No.”
Anne pouts, and Susan remembers once, in the beginning, how she saw Billy do that same exact expression when he wanted something. “Please? Pretty please?” Anne says, and steps closer. She’s lowered her arms, and Susan isn’t stepping back. There’s about a foot between them and when Anne suddenly pulls her hand back up, and Susan feels cold green paint hit her nose.
Her mouth falls open and she stares at Anne as she bites her lip to keep from laughing. Her paintbrush is still held up.
“You painted my nose!”
“Yeah,” Anne says, and a giggle slips out. “I did.”
Susan rushes forward with her own brush raised, as mighty a weapon as anything, and paints a green line down Anne’s cheek. Anne jumps back, and when Susan next comes for her, she parries it with her own brush, and grabs Susan’s brush as well. For a second, her hand tingles where Anne touched her. Anne puts both brushes away in the can of paint, and turns back to Susan, taking her hands in hers and starting to dance.
It’s silly, no real steps, but Susan can tell Anne knows how to dance. She twirls herself under Susan’s arm, and then twirls Susan, and Susan laughs with her. For a second, she wonders if Anne did this with Julie. If Susan would have done it with Vivi, if only she’d been braver.
She’s not certain where that thought came from. She is certain that she doesn’t want to examine it.
Because Susan smells like paint, and she’s acting like a little girl, but the windows open and she can feel the breeze in her hair and can hear the sound of birds, and the truth is that this is the happiest and most fun she’s had in a long while.
So she doesn’t care, and continues laughing.
—
Billy’s released two days later, and Susan doesn’t think she imagined the way his eyes seemed to tear up once they showed him his new room.
Steve comes over every day. Susan can see the way it bothers Anne, not Steve and Billy, but the fact that she never gets any alone time to talk to her son. But Susan also sees how she smiles when Steve makes Billy laugh, and how she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tell them that Steve can’t come over, something Susan isn’t certain she would be able to keep herself from doing had she been in Anne’s position.
She’s proud of her.
—
It’s become routine.
Steve comes over during the days, Susan comes home from work and finds Anne working in the garden, smiling more every day, Max has her friends over and some nights, all four of them, Susan, Anne, Billy, Max, get out the flour and the sugar and they bake and watch movies once their creations are hot out of the oven before Anne gets in her car and drives back to her motel.
Susan likes her life.
Of course, the ease that’s settled over them all disappears those days leading up to the date they will all have to see Neil again.
Billy asks her if Steve can stay the night the day before, after Anne has left, and looking at him Susan doesn’t have the heart to say no. She doesn’t hear any funny business from his room that night either, so she imagines it was the right decision. She’s happy he even asked her, instead of sneaking Steve in. But she imagines he must have known he’d need him to be able to sleep through the night.
It’s three in the morning, and Susan figures Billy had the right idea, because she can’t sleep. She thinks about Billy’s hands shaking, even when Steve held it, and is glad he has someone.
She hasn’t really thought it through. She just gets up, puts some clothes on, and writes a quick message that she’ll be back in the morning for the kids should they wake up, and then without really knowing how it happened she’s pulling up and parking at the car park outside Anne’s motel.
She’s about to go up to Anne’s door and knock, when she happens to glance out over the cars and sees Anne’s convertible, smoke curling from the partly lowered window of the driver’s seat.
Susan goes up to the car and slips into the passenger seat.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Anne asks. She’s quiet, the way people are when having conversations late at night. And she doesn’t seem surprised to see Susan there.
“No.”
Anne sighs, and gestures down at her pyjama clad body. “Neither could I.”
Susan follows her hand with her gaze and it moves in the air above her body. Her eyes catch on the piece of skin she can see where Anne’s shirt has ridden up, before drifting back up to her face, eyes lingering a little too long at the way the locket disappears beneath her neckline.
“We’re going to see Neil again.”
Anne lets out a soft chuckle. Her hair seems to shine in the light from the streetlamp. “I haven’t seen Neil Hargrove in a decade.”
“I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
“Hm. You’ve got lots to look forward to. It’s amazing, not having to see him.”
“Hopefully none of us will, after tomorrow. But I’m worried. I’m worried about Billy, and... God, you know what Neil is like. I’m afraid he’s going to smile that stupid smile of his, or that he’ll say something, and I’ll revert back to that... that awful, awful person he made act like. The woman who hid in her own head when things got bad.” She thinks about the clothing she’d washed for herself and Billy and Max. Clothing that’s professional, serious, but that still doesn’t hide the cast on Billy’s wrist or the bruises on his skin.
Anne looks at her and shakes her head. “You won’t. I won’t let you. We’re going to stand there, and we’re going to tell them every horrible thing he did, and we’re going to support our son. And Max, of course.”
Susan nods, bites her lip. “Okay.”
Anne smiles gently back at her. “Good. I’m just going to need you to promise me something.”
“Anything,” Susan says, and finds that she means it.
“You’ll stop me if I try to punch him. God knows I want to, but it wouldn’t help anything.”
Susan can’t help but laugh. “I don’t know. I might honestly join in. Or be busy trying to restrain Max so she doesn’t. She’ll be cheering you on, though.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t shock me in the least,” Anne says with a smile of her own. Then her expression changes, and Susan feels like she’s looking into her soul. “You’re stronger than you think you are, Susan.”
“I was a horrible mother to Billy.”
Anne nods. “We’ve already had this conversation. Remember what you told me? Neil messed us up, Susan. He’s a horrible father and husband. He’s manipulative, and charming, and that makes him dangerous, because he gets in your head and digs his claws in until you’re left with a festering, bleeding wound. He’s a horrible human being. And all we can do is apologise, and forgive each other, and forgive ourselves, and-“
“- be better.”
“Yeah. We were shitty mothers, but we realise it, and we’re trying. We’re doing better. And that has to count for something. At least, Billy seems to think so.”
“He does?” Susan asks, even though she knows Anne’s right. She’s seen the way Billy smiles, laughs more, the way he’s relaxed. His shoulders aren’t tense all the time anymore, he’s not walking through the house bracing for a hit. And he’d asked Susan if Steve could sleep over.
Anne grins, fishing her locket out from underneath her shirt and rubbing her thumb over it. “Yeah.” She nods, and smokes the last off her cigarette before putting it out on the ashtray she’s got in the space between their seats. Susan watches as she throws it out the window, and takes a deep breath.
There is something with the night, the smell of the very oxygen once dark has fallen. It makes a person brave.
“Anne?”
She turns away from the window to look at Susan, still that far away smile on her lips. “Yes?”
“Can I kiss you?”
Anne seems to come back to herself, and the smile turns from dreamy to something more... playful?
“‘May I’,” she says, and Susan is reminded she’s talking to a writer. “But yes. Yes, you may.”
They meet each other halfway, leaning over the gear level, and Susan thinks about kissing her standing up, about how she’d have to stand on her tip toes.
She can smell her, taste her. There’s the perfume that for Billy means home, but underneath there’s the smell of garden, of earth, and somehow, she smells like the way it feels to step into a library. She can taste coffee, and thinks about Anne ordering a coffee that late evening they first met, can vaguely taste her lipstick, and the smoke still clinging to her. Susan wonders what Anne can sense on her.
When they break apart, they’re breathing hard, but grinning.
“Do you want to stay? Spend the night with me? Just sleep. We have an important day tomorrow, and you should make sure you get at least some rest.”
Susan nods, and later accepts the hand helping her out the car and in the direction of Anne’s room.
—
They win. Neil goes to jail. Susan divorces him and gets full custody of both Max and the baby. And Susan feels like she can finally breathe. Joyce brings them all ice cream, when they get the news, and it feels a little weird, but it also feels absolutely right. She lets Steve stay the night, then, too.
And when she walks past his door on her way to her own bedroom, having said goodbye to Anne with a kiss at the door, she isn’t planning on listening in. Isn’t planning on eavesdropping. But she hears them say something, and she knows it’s about Anne. So she stops outside his door, and listens.
“I guess I just don’t understand.” That’s Billy’s voice. “I mean, it’s like she came back from nowhere, and, she loves me, I know she does, but like, I don’t... she calls me sunshine like she used to. And I love it, I really do, but I’m scared she...”
“Scared she what, love?”
“I’m scared she forgot about me after she left, and that on some level she only came back because the Chief called her, and she felt guilty and that she’s going to realise what a fucking mess I am and go back to her amazing life in New York without this asshole of a son she has. And I don’t think I could handle that. I don’t think I could handle her living me again.”
Susan catches her breath at hearing that, especially since she knows it isn’t true. But she can’t really fault Billy for worrying. And she imagines it won’t do much for Anne to try and reassure him. But Susan could.
She goes to bed that night with a heavy heart, but with a plan for how to ease the weight.
So when Steve leaves to go to work the next day, Susan asks Billy to come with her to Max’ room after breakfast. He looks a little confused, but he follows her, and he sits down on Max’ bed when Susan gestures for him to do so.
“I want to start by apologising. I’m old enough to know it’s wrong to listen in on private conversations,” Susan starts, standing in front of him, and Billy frowns at her, looking a little pale. Susan hurries to reassure him of which of his conversations she’s heard that she wasn’t meant to. “I heard you talking with Steve last night, when I was on my way to bed. About Anne. That you were afraid that she’d leave you again, or that she forgot about you. And I realised, that I can show you she won’t.”
Billy opened his mouth halfway through Susan’s explanation, but now he’s frowning again. He looks a little wary. “How?”
“With these,” Susan says and turns around to get the Willa Chastain novels out from Max’ bookcase. “She writes under a pen name. ‘Willa’ for ‘William’, I suppose. And ‘Chastain’ for...”
“Julie Chastain.”
“Yeah. Two people she loves. I bought some of her books for Max throughout the years, and well, I think you should read the Author’s Dedications.”
Susan hands them to him, in the order they were published, and she as she watches Billy reads, and pales, and slowly, one by one, a few tears escape his eyes. One hits the page.
Once he’s finished, he turns to look back up at Susan, and he looks heartbroken. But it’s not that painful, dark heartbreak, when you feel your heart shatter in your chest and it feels like it’s going to take it an eternity to piece it back together. It’s the kind of heartbreak that sometimes needs to happen for you to be able to heal. The one that’s relieving, that comes from doubts being scattered to the wind, and that doesn’t leave behind an empty hole where love once was. No, this is the type of heartbreak that leaves a hole where there was pain, a hole ready to be filled with love and light and warmth.
“She wrote those, not knowing if you’d ever read them, but hoping. That’s what she told me. And you know her locket? There’s a picture of you in it as a baby.”
Before her eyes, Billy seems to melt. Whatever tension was left in his shoulders disappears, and he starts sobbing, loud, loud like he’s never before been, and Susan sits down beside him on Max’ bed and opens her arms for him to fall into.
And if Max opens the door for Anne downstairs, and tells her where they are, and Anne steps in to find them surrounded by her novels, and comes to sit down on Billy’s other side, then that is just as well.
—
Billy’s acting strange. He’s been acting strange since he came back from Steve’s two nights ago, and Susan worries something happened between them but she doesn’t know how to ask. It’s a testament to how much their relationship has improved that she actually does believe he’d answer her, if only she knew what to say.
She asks Anne, who agrees with her, but she has never dealt with teenagers and love problems, not since she was a teenager herself, and since Billy’s cast came off and he started working at the pool again he’s not at home as much, so there’s not that many opportunities to talk to him.
And he keeps going for long drives, sometimes late at night, and Susan wants to tell him he’s not allowed to do that, but she’s still not so sure in their relationships that she dares say it won’t set Billy back. Even though he is a teenager, and really should have rules. They just shouldn’t be changed at random and punished by pain if broken.
At all come to a head when the phone rings that afternoon. Anne’s writing in her notebook at the kitchen table, and Susan was preparing lemonade for them, but she lets go off it to wipe her hands and answer the call.
She has never been as afraid as she is when she hears Max’ frantic, crying voice with Steve shouting in the background.
“Max? What’s wrong, sweetie? Max!”
Anne looks up at her panicked voice and meets Susan’s gaze. It grounds her.
“Mum, mum, you have to, you have to come to the pool, please, the pool, I’m so sorry, mum, please, Billy, he’s... he’s...” she breaks down sobbing, so Susan never finds out what Billy is, but God, she knows it’s not anything good.
“Okay, okay, sweetie, we’re coming.” Susan nods to Anne when she stands up with a questioning look, and Anne goes and grabs her car keys from the counter. “We’ll leave now, okay? Just hang tight.”
When they arrive at the pool, it’s to a flurry of movement from four panicking children, one sobbing Max on the floor by the wall where the phone hangs, and then there’s Steve, Steve on his knees outside the sauna with Billy in his arms and crying into his chest, the stench of vomit strong in the air and coming from the open door to the sauna.
Susan feels like her heart will stop, like she’s about to freeze where she stands, but Anne has the opposite reaction.
“ Billy! ” She screams her son’s name and runs up to them, falling down to the hard tiled floor. It makes Susan react, but instead of following after them she stops at Max’ side, because she trust that Anne and Steve can take care of Billy, and she needs to know what happened.
“Max? Max, sweetie?” Susan crouches down in front of her, and Max launches herself forward with such force she almost sets Susan toppling to the ground. But she keeps her balance, and hugs Max to her. “What happened? Is Billy...?”
“He’s not dead. He’s... he’s... I don’t know, mum, we had to, we had to, it hates heat so we had to warm him up so it’d leave, and it worked, but then Billy threw up and passed out and Steve can’t get him to wake up and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, but we had to, we really did, because it took him, mum, I’m so sorry...”
Susan realises she’s not going to get anything much more coherent out of Max at the same time that Anne’s cries register in her mind.
“ No, no, no... I can’t lose you! I just found you again.”
Susan turn around to look at them and sees Anne is the one holding Billy now.
“We need to cool him down,” Steve says. “But... but I think he needs a hospital.”
Anne nods, and lets go off Billy so Steve can take him back into his arms and pull them both up. She catches Susan’s eyes looking at her and glances between her and Max before motioning towards where they left the car with her head. She goes up and follows after Steve, and Susan looks over to the group of pre-teens staring at them. There’s one missing, she notes. Max has a curly haired male friend as well, not just a curly haired female one.
“Will you be okay?” she asks them. “Will you go home and take care och each other?”
She gets four nods in response, and decides to trust them, because Anne and Billy need her back at in the car yesterday . Susan stands up, and takes Max’ hand, who’s calmed down a little by now, and leads her out to the car park. She gets into the passenger seat, while Max climbs into the backseat with Billy and Steve. Steve’s sitting behind Anne, who’s driving, and he’s got Billy curled up in his lap. Throughout the drive, Susan watches Anne glance frantically at them through the rear view mirror and aches to hold her hand.
—
The doctor told them Billy might be pretty out of it, because he’s got a high fever that will most likely break that night, and the bad to put him on medication to stops his shivering so the ice packs the put along his body would actually end up cooling him down. He’s got Heat Exhaustion on the edge of becoming Heatstroke, and there’s a peculiar looking bite mark on his ankle that Susan can’t explain, but he’s going to be okay, will most likely be released the next day.
It’s a relief to hear, but Susan still feels something break in her when they’re let into his room and she sees Billy, once again, in a hospital bed.
He blinks blearily at them, and tries to focus on the doctor who steps in first and goes up closest to Billy. “Mum... I... Did you get... mum?”
“I asked for your mother, and both of these women stood up. They started talking something about biological mums, and a divorce and stepmums, but I didn’t know which one you meant so I got them both.” The Doctor sounds amused, and Susan thinks back to how he’d called out for ’Ms. Hargrove, here for Billy Hargrove’ , and both of them had stood up at the same time. They’d only been allowed to come in two at a time, but Steve had told them to go ahead, and that he’d stay with Max. They had their heads close together when Susan last saw them, whispering to each other.
Presently, Billy smiles sleepily up at them. “Both are good.”
“Should I contact the father as well, then?” the doctor asks. “Where is he?”
Anne chuckles, but there’s no humour to it. “I’m prison.”
“For child abuse,” Billy whispers from the bed.
Instinctively, Susan puts one hand on her growing belly, while the other one reaches for Anne. Her voice is steady, when she speaks. “And domestic violence.”
The doctor’s gaze flicks between the three of them. “I-I see.”
“I live with my mums now,” Billy says, in a tone like he’s trying to reassure the doctor. “They love each other. But they don’t think Max and I know. They think they’re being discreet,” he starts giggling at the end and Susan feels her cheeks heat up.
“Billy!” she and Anne say in unison. Susan casts a wary look at the doctor.
But he smiles, and holds up a hand. “It’s alright. I have twin. She’s... she’s like you. And I love her.”
—
Susan finally finds out what’s going on the next day, in the evening, when all of Max’s friends along with Nancy Wheeler and Joyce’s older son, Jonathan, pile into Billy’s hospital room with determined faces.
And what follows is one of the strangest tales Susan has ever heard. It’s like something straight out of a horror movie, or science fiction novel. She keeps a hand on her belly, the other one holding Anne’s hand, the whole way through. Anne’s sitting next to Billy’s bed, one had in Susan’s and the other on her son’s arm, and Susan longs for having Max closer to her as well, but her daughter stands determined next to Jane, or El, or... Eleven , as Susan learns she’s called, and tells her story.
She glances over at Billy at times, and he doesn’t seem too shocked to hear all this, but it’s clear that he wasn’t part of it. Susan learns why when the kids, because that’s really what they all are, get to what they were doing to Billy in the sauna yesterday.
She listens to Max tell them about how she noticed Billy acting strangely, how she went to the bathroom after him two nights ago and found a tub filled with ice cold water, and listens to her tell them they figured out a monster was possessing him. She hears Billy gasp at that, and looks over to see him trembling and squeezing Anne’s hand.
And then he tells them about how, four nights ago, he went driving to clear his head like Susan knows he sometimes does, and how something hit his car and dragged him inside an abandoned warehouse, and Susan thinks about the bite mark, about how... scattered, he’d been acting, as he tells them he spoke to something that looked like himself, with an army of shadow people behind it, and how it told him it wanted to build. “I released it wanted me to help it build an army, that the shadows were people it hadn’t yet taken, when it tried to make me take Heather.” He shakes his head. “But I refused.” He’d been speaking to his lap, staring down at the hand that kept clenching and unclenching the sheet, the whole time, but now he looks up, turns his gaze to the kids, and Susan sees he’s got tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispers and Susan has to agree with him. What they did landed him in the hospital, and Susan had been so worried, but it’s better then the alternative. He’s being released the next morning, after all.
“About that,” Nancy says, and Susan turns back around to look at them. Susan doesn’t think she’s ever said a word to Nancy before today, but she seems kind, and brave. A good young woman. Much better than her mother, in any case. “I visited Mrs. Driscoll yesterday, about the same time as you got the Mindflayer out of Billy. And she... she was reacting. I think it’s taken more people, even if Billy didn’t take them to it.”
“She should still be here, right?” Jonathan says, and Nancy nods. “We should go and see her. Now.”
The kids all stand up and start moving towards the door after the two teenagers. Susan manages to grab Max before she gets too far.
“Hey, wait. Where do you think you’re going? This is dangerous, I don’t want you in danger, Maxie. Can’t you get the Sheriff to deal with this?”
Max actually looks annoyed, pursing her lips and seeming seconds from rolling her eyes. “Mum, no offence, but I’ve already dealt with this shit once.”
And Susan realises, that somewhere along the line, between Neil abusing her stepbrother and her fighting actual monsters from another dimension, that Max, her little girl, grew up.
But Susan is still her mother, and it’s a mother’s job to protect her children, even if she’s been doing a rather bad job of it until recently.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Okay.” Susan has to be honest, she was expecting more of an argument.
And so Susan follows them, follows them out to the waiting room, which is around the time that they realise that five children, two teenagers, and one pregnant adult woman with zero connections to Mrs. Driscoll probably won’t have an easy time convincing the staff to let them all in. But Nancy’s already been in her room once, so it’s decided that she and Jonathan will go and then report back to the others. Susan’s left in the waiting room with the children, and mostly she feels out of place. These kids have experienced more than she can even fully comprehend, and Susan doesn’t know what to say.
Eventually, she figures they’ll be fine waiting there without her, so she wanders back to Billy’s room. And ends up listening in on another conversation. She can hear Anne and Billy speaking quietly from inside, the door slightly opened so their voices slip out into the corridor and reach Susan’s ears.
“Do you want to leave, after all of this is done? Come live with me in New York?”
“I don’t want you to leave me again.”
“I know”, she hears Anne say, in an almost whisper. “But what do you want to do? Do you want to go back to California?”
“Is that an option?”
“It could be.”
There’s a pause, and Susan holds her breath. “I don’t want to leave Steve. Or Max. Or Susan, even. I... I want to stay here, and I want you to stay here with me.”
“Okay.”
Susan hopes she isn’t imagining the smile she thinks she can hear in Anne’s voice.
She waits, almost a full minute, but when they don’t say anything else Susan decides it’s safe for her to enter.
They both look up at her when she comes in, two twin heads of curly blonde hair, and Anne smiles at her while Billy raises an eyebrow.
“Mrs. Driscoll okay? Where’s Max?”
“We realised we couldn’t all go to her room, so Nancy and Jonathan went, and the kids didn’t seem to need me, so I left them in the waiting room.”
“Figured we needed you more?” Anne says.
Susan strokes her belly for a second. “Well, maybe. Figured you were as new to this as I am. More or less.” She frowns, and steps closer to Billy’s bed. “How are you doing, Billy? How much do you remember of... that thing...?”
He shakes his head. “It’s blurry. It’s like, I’m missing time. I have gaps in my memory, and I don’t know what I was doing then. But I don’t think it made me take anyone else, so at least - Ow , shit , shit!” He bends over and clutches his head. Anne stands up from her chair and both she and Susan reach out towards him.
“Billy? Sunshine? What’s happening? Does your head hurt?”
His eyes are clenched shut and he breathes heavily for a second, before it seems like all tension leaves him in the next breathe. Something over Susan’s shoulder catches his attention, because his eyes widen.
“What the fuck was that?!”
Susan turns to look behind her, and feels Anne do the same. But there’s nothing there, just a painting of a ship at see and the dark night outside the window.
“Something fell. Something big,” Billy says. “Outside.”
So Susan goes over to look out, and there, on the street outside the hospital entrance, is... something. Years ago, when Susan was a teenager, she went to the movies at Halloween when they were showing old movies, and she saw one called ‘The Blob’, and that is really all she can think of when she watches the thing, the messy puddle, move , in the harsh blinking light of the hospital. And then Max and her friends burst out from the hospital doors, and Susan watches Jane put her arms the the side to stop the others from getting closer, and part of her wants to move and go and check up on her daughter, but the other, stronger part, stands transfixed at the window, watching the thing as it seems to melt and disappear down the sewers.
—
Anne goes to pick Billy up from the hospital the next morning. Meanwhile, Susan gets to prepare targets for shooting, and barely manages to keep herself from taking a second to reflect over what the fuck her life has come to, because she knows if she starts it’s going to take her much longer than a second to finish. There’s a fair in town, with amusement rides, celebrating some part of Hawkins history Susan didn’t bother to learn, but she was planning on going to it with Anne, and Max and Billy. And yet this is how her day has turned out.
Jonathan comes over with Will and El and Lucas, and then Nancy gets to the Cottage with Mike, after a stop at the Chief’s cabin to pick up firearms.
They made a plan yesterday, after the kids stumbled back to Billy’s hospital room and told them what happened, that they’d all meet up at the Cottage and try to prepare for when the monster comes back. Because it will come back, and they need to be ready when it does.
Susan has never held, let alone shot, a gun before.
Nancy, it turns out, has. And she’s pretty damn good at it.
So when Anne comes back with Billy, she starts handing them out, and well, when Anne grabs a shotgun with a smile and goes over to Susan to teach her how to shoot with the gun she’s been given, well, Susan learns that Anne apparently also knows her way around firearms.
It goes well right up until it doesn’t.
Susan knows that Billy’s never held a gun either, knows Neil wouldn’t have taught Billy how to wield a weapon no matter how manly he might have thought it, because he wouldn’t ever willingly given Billy a way to defend himself.
Which means that Nancy has to teach him, because Anne is busy teaching Susan. And one second Susan is being taught how to properly aim, and the next she’s turning around because she heard something clatter to the ground behind her.
Billy’s gun is lying in the ground, between him and Nancy, who Jonathan has got an arm around now. They’re both looking at Billy, concerned frowns marring their faces.
Billy’s stepped back, has his eyes squeezed shut and hands clenched into fists at his side. He’s trembling all over, and his chest is heaving with the harsh breaths he’s taking in.
“Billy?” Nancy asks.
“I’m okay,” he says, but his eyes are still closed and he’s still trembling all over. Susan thinks that’s it, that he won’t say anything else, but he surprises her. “It’s just... your perfume. It’s... too sweet. Flowery, and strong, and... too sweet.”
Nancy frowns. “I’m all out of my own, and I didn’t have time to buy a new one. So I burrowed some. It’s my mum’s.”
Billy lets out a chocked sob at that, and Nancy looks even more concerned. But Susan understands. She feels the rage from earlier this summer simmer under her skin when Billy nods, and laughs brokenly. “I know.”
Susan reaches him just in time for him to start wavering and tilt over, almost falling into her outstretched arms. He sinks down so his face is buried between her neck and shoulder, and she gets a face full of blonde curls.
He’s not crying, he’s just breathing. Just trying to collect himself. Susan holds him, strokes his hair, and waits for him to calm down.
“Do you want me to tell them?” she eventually whispers.
It takes a second, but then she can feel Billy nod against her.
So Susan doesn’t let go, but she turns so she can look at the other three. Anne’s stepped closer, as well, but she doesn’t try to go up to Susan and Billy. Susan’s glad she trusts her enough to take care of her son. After all, this part is one that’s been his and Susan’s secret.
“I’m sure by now you know what Billy’s dad was like?” When she gets hesitant, wary nods back, she continues. “Well, after he hurt him, an evening a few weeks back, your mum, Nancy, she found Billy at the pool. She and her friends had been flirting with him, before, but this time, she took him with her home. They didn’t... they didn’t sleep with each other, but I think they did a of other things. Billy...” Susan sighs. “Billy didn’t realise he could say no. And Karen didn’t make sure to ask. And she didn’t seem to realise what she did was wrong when I confronted her, but at least they all stopped what they were doing.”
Nancy’s got a hand over her mouth when Susan’s finished, and tears at the corners of her eyes. Jonathan’s looking a little green.
And Anne looks like she’d like to take the shotgun she’s still holding and march up to the Wheelers’ house and shoot Karen Wheeler.
Billy sighs and steps out of Susan’s embrace, and Nancy meets his gaze with pain in her eyes. And understanding, the type that only comes from having a shared experience of some kind. Nancy’s pretty, and Susan doesn’t doubt for a second that she has heard inappropriate comments from men who have no business even thinking about her like that, but Susan at least hopes they didn’t take it as far as her mum took it with Billy.
“Fuck,” Nancy breathes. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Billy’s voice sounds like gravel.
Nancy smiles, a little. A gentle thing. “I know. But still. I’m sorry.”
Billy swallows. “Thank you.”
Nancy nods, and turns to Susan. “Do you have any perfume I can borrow? We still need to continue practicing, but I... I don’t want to smell like her.”
Susan smiles at her. “Of course.”
Nancy follows her back into the house, up the stairs and into Susan’s bedroom. She doesn’t say anything about the clothes on the bed that are, quite obviously, not Susan’s style at all.
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to look mum in the eye again,” she says, when Susan hands her one of the perfume bottles she doesn’t often use. “She should know better. She... She’s a woman, for fuck’s sake. And she’s my mum.”
“I know,” Susan says quietly. She really feels for her. She can’t imagine it’s easy, finding out the type of people your parents are when they’re not being your parents.
Nancy looks at her, and there’s steel in her gaze. Susan is again reaffirmed in her belief that this is a strong, kind, brave young woman. “Thank you for telling me. I’m glad I know what she’s like, now.”
Susan nods, and they go back out to the others.
They keep practicing for much of that afternoon, only pausing for a late lunch. And it’s after that one, that it all goes to shit again. Worse, this time, though.
Because suddenly, both Billy and Will gasp and reach up to clutch at their heads and when they let go, a few seconds later, Susan sees as their gazes seek each other out. They both turn to stare at Jane, then.
“It wants you,” Will says, and Susan sees on Billy’s expression he agrees. None of them have to ask who ‘It’ is.
Jane goes up to her backpack and comes back with a long piece of black fabric, which she ties around her head so if covers her eyes after sitting down on the floor by the couch. The kids tell them all to be quiet, and they sit in silence while Jane goes into The Void, as Susan learned they called it yesterday.
It takes a minute or two, and then Jane gasps and rips the fabric off. “It’s coming. Now.”
“It’s coming here?” Nancy asks.
Jane nods. She looks scared. They’re all too young to be dealing with things like this. “And it’s big.”
“How does it know where you are?”
Lucas, Max’ boyfriend, looks from Billy, to Will, to El. “Remember last year?” he says. “How it used Will to spy on us? What if... what if it’s doing that’s again?”
“But we got it out of them!” Max protests, and turns to look at Billy, but he shakes his head at her.
“I think he’s right.”
“Yeah. It’s stronger now,” Will says. “You’ll have to blindfold us.”
Jane nods, going back to her backpack and grabbing more of her black pieces of fabric.
“If it knows where we are now, then we have to leave,” Jonathan says, while Jane hands Billy and Will each a piece of cloth to tie around their heads.
Lucas nods, and opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but with another glance at Will and Billy stops himself. Nancy nods, and takes hold of both boys’ arms. She leads them out through the front door, and Susan sees them stop by the cars through the window in the living room. Once they’re out of earshot, Lucas starts speaking. “Bradley’s Big Buy. They have earmuffs. In case it can track us by hearing, I mean.”
“Sounds good.” Jonathan nods. “Let’s go.”
They have four cars, and they’re ten people. So they end up wasting some time going back and forward on who will go in which car, an argument that mostly occurs because Anne starts talking about how Susan probably shouldn’t go with them if a monster’s after them, and Susan’s almost ashamed to say she’d forgotten she’s pregnant. This leads to Nancy and Jonathan trying to figure out the safest plays to drop her off, before Max starts shouting at all four of them.
“Nowhere is safe! Everywhere is fucking dangerous, because we don’t know where it will go!”
And so they just pile into two of the cars, and drive. Susan’s in the passenger seat of her own car, because it’s got more space than Anne’s, who’s driving. Jonathan’s driving the other one, and Susan saw Nancy, weapon raised, in the passenger seat. In her own car, Susan has Max squeezed between Billy and Jane, holding both their hands in each one of hers.
“You alone in your head, Billy?” she hears Max ask.
Susan can see Billy grinning through the rear view mirror. “I think so. But don’t tell me where we’re going.”
They don’t. They just follow after Jonathan, and while they occupants of the other car rush out to the store, the five of them stay in the car park. They come back in just a few minutes, with Nancy handing Susan a pair of earmuffs she gives to Max to put on Billy. Over Nancy’s shoulder, Susan thinks she sees the boys
carrying something that looks like fireworks.
“We got a distress signal from Dustin,” Nancy tells them, after she’s seen Max put the earmuffs on Billy so they cover his ears completely. Dustin, Susan remembers, is the curly haired boy who’s been missing. And suddenly she realises that she hasn’t seen Steve since he went to work yesterday morning. “They’re at the mall, and they need help. So that’s where we’re going.”
—
There are Russians, underneath the mall, working on opening another portala into that hellish dimension, Susan learns when the others come back after leaving her with a gun and telling her to wait with Billy and Will while the others rush forward to check out what’s going on once they get to the mall. Jane threw a car at the people chasing Dustin, and Lucas’ little sister , and Steve and Robin, his coworker, who somehow also got pulled into this. Steve’s face is a mess, and both he and Robin were apparently drugged by the Russians when they interrogated them, which based on Steve’s face Susan translates into ‘lightly tortured’. Joyce shows up with the Chief, as well. She seems a little shocked to see Susan and Anne there, but she laughs the way a person who’s had to deal with too much crazy shit with too little time to process it might, and then she hugs Susan like the real friend Susan’s starting to find in her.
Joyce and Hopper know how to close the Gate, as it turns out, so it’s decided that Erica and Dustin will guide them to it. And while they do that, the rest of them will have to distract the monster, the Mindflayer, so it doesn’t kill anyone else.
So Max pulls of Billy’s earmuffs, and tells him to take off his blindfold, while Dustin does the same for Will, and Anne casts a worried look in her direction so Susan figures she should probably try to put her mind at ease and trust her to protect their children. So Susan goes to the second floor, and hides in the back of a clothing shop.
It doesn’t take long before the glass ceiling brakes above them, and legs, followed by a body, made out of bloody melted pieces of bodies, climbs into the mall. She can hear the others shouting, can hear guns going off, and while she wants to run out and looks over the railing, wants to help, Susan knows she’d just distract them from protecting themselves if they had to worry even more than they already do about her. So instead, she curls up, holding her belly and clutching her gun, and she watches the monster moving, sees fireworks go off, and she prays and prays and prays like she’s never done before that they will come out of this unscathed.
And maybe a god exists, because they do. Susan watches the monster waver, and fall, hears the sound it makes when it crashes to the floor, and then Anne comes running into the store and helps her to her feet. Anne pulls her close and kisses her, and laughs, only a little hysterically, and Susan reaches up and catches the first of the tears that fall from her eyes.
“It’s dead. It’s dead, Susan.”
“And everyone else?”
“They’re okay.”
When Susan gets back down, she’s just in time for Joyce and Hopper to come in. Susan freezes when she sees the monster, stays rooted to her spot staring at it, only reacting when she suddenly feels three pairs of arms curl around her and obscuring her sight of it. Max is hugging her around her belly, Billy hugging both her and Max, and Anne’s got her arms around all three of them.
A man comes in a while later, with people that seem to be military, and he talks to Hopper in hushed voices, before coming over to them. He introduces himself as Doctor Owens, looks searchingly at Billy and tells them he helped Will last year, before ending with saying he’ll be in touch. They have papers to sign, after all.
—
“Anne, Anne, wait,” Susan says, a night some three weeks later. They’d gone to the movies, because Max wanted to go to a sleepover at Will’s, and they thought Billy might appreciate a night alone with Steve at his place.
And then Susan has put her hand on Anne’s thigh before she could get up and leave the car, and Anne has turned around and somehow they managed to climb into the backseat.
And now Anne’s got a hand halfway up Susan’s dress, fingers caressing her skin and making her shiver, but Susan needs her to wait.
It’s like it hasn’t hit her before. Not until she found herself making out in the dark in the backseat of a car as though she’s sixteen again.
“What is it, Susan?” Anne whispers in that soft voice she only uses with Susan in times like these.
“I’m behaving like a teenager,” Susan says with a laugh. Even to her own ears, it sounds nervous. “Anne, we’re not teenagers anymore . We’re adults. We’re mothers . We have responsibilities. And I... I need to know where you stand in this whole thing. I can’t go on like this.” It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy it, she’s just scared it’s going to end. She thinks she’s starting to understand what Billy felt like when Anne first showed up more and more with each day that passes.
“I asked my realtor if he thinks I’ll be able to sell the apartment soon,” Anne says, and Susan doesn’t understand, not at first. “And I told my agent I might be moving. I didn’t want to do anything yet, but I wanted to know I could. Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” she breathes.
Anne looks up and meets her eyes. “Just in case you asked me to stay.”
Susan leans forward and kisses her. “I want you to stay forever.”
Anne presses their foreheads together. “Does that mean I can stop paying for my room at the motel?” she asks, and Susan can just barely make out her teasing smile. “And maybe we can move this to your bedroom?”
“ Our bedroom,” Susan says, and that’s really all there is to it.
—
There are hard parts, of course. Because they’re mothers, and they have responsibilities.
It’s like now that Susan knows, Max doesn’t feel the need to hide her feelings. Which means that some night, Max ends up in the bed between her and Anne, crying from nightmares, other nights they wake up to Billy screaming, and some mornings they have woken up to find Max and Billy asleep together on the couch, mugs with traces of hot chocolate on the coffee table and the tv on.
And Susan’s pregnant.
She’s been lucky these past few months, with barely any symptoms, but it seems like the feisty little thing, as Billy called it, has decided she’s had it easy enough, because now she wakes up almost every morning nauseous and vomiting.
But Anne wakes with her, and holds her hair away from the bowl when she throws up, and Susan feels safe and happy despite it all.
One thing she learned, after Anne officially moved in, sold her place in New York and stopped paying for her room at the motel, is that Anne is a morning person.
And with the baby waking her up, Susan kind of has to become one as well. But it means that she gets to see Anne in the early mornings, when she looks so indescribably soft and human. Not like that beauty, sea goddess, that she usually looks like, but human. Curls on ends, shirt hanging off one shoulder, hands around a cup, and like this, just like this, she stands right in that spot where the sun’s first rays shine through the kitchen window so the dust particles hover in the air like snowflakes, and make Anne’s eyes turn this glowing blue colour. It’s the most beautiful sight Susan’s ever seen. Neil never looked human like that. He was always this imposing presence that almost felt too big for whichever room he entered. Like he’d either explode in shouted words and raised fists, or lower his voice and ask her to go to bed with him.
Anne doesn’t lower her voice like that. Anne laughs, and it sounds like music, and she teases her, and holds her close, and when she wonders if Susan would like to do more than just sleep with her that night, she asks it in whispered words against Susan’s neck that make her heart flutter. And Susan is never afraid to tell her she’s too tired, or just not in the mood.
Although Susan rarely isn’t in the mood for feeling Anne’s naked body against her own.
—
Anne works from home, because she’s an author, so she will sit at various places around the cottage, or in the garden, or sometimes somewhere in Hawkins, and write in her notebook, and one such day when Susan comes home from work in early September, before Billy and Max have gotten back from school, and finds Anne curled up on the couch, she turns her gaze to the window, and sees seashells on the windowsill.
That, more than anything, lets Susan know this is permanent. That Anne sees this as much as her home as Susan does.
—
“I... I know it’s early, but the baby’s coming soon, and we’ve been through so much together I feel like I’ve known you a lifetime, and you did ask me to move in with you. So this doesn’t really feel fast to me, it doesn’t feel early. It feels like the next natural step. But maybe that’s just the romantic in me. It’s just... I love you, Susan, and I want to spend my life with you, so if you want me to stay, but you don’t want this, not yet, at least, then I’ll understand. I’ll stay and we can do it later. I love you.” She pauses, sighs and shakes her head, curls flying in all directions. “Will you marry me?”
—
They have a wedding ceremony in their backyard in October, when the leaves are turning red and orange and yellow, and Anne makes their bouquets with autumn flowers while Susan sews simple yet beautiful white dresses. She can’t exactly go find a wedding dress in a small town like Hawkins where everyone knows who she is, or hope to find a white maternity dress beautiful enough for the occasion.
Joyce bakes them a cake, and Chief Hopper acts as their officiant, which includes a bit of swearing at the law that won’t let him ‘ do this for real, legally’ , but Susan’s comforted with the knowledge that for everyone there, this is real , in their hearts it’s as real as any paper could make it.
They invite the whole party. All of Max’s friends, and Billy and Steve, and Robin, and Nancy and Jonathan, of course. Joyce and Hopper, and Murray and Alexei, two men who seem to love each other as much as she and Anne do, and who Susan first met a week after that night at Starcourt Mall, when everyone involved met to talk and drink and laugh and cry together.
Jonathan acts as their wedding photographer, and Nancy decorated the garden with the kids’ and Steve’s help, and Dustin made them a cake topper of two women in white dresses, holding each other, that he somehow managed to make move like a music box’ ballerina, so it looks like they’re dancing at the top of the cake. Robin comes up to them, afterwards, and tells them how what she saw that afternoon gave her hope for her own future, and Susan feels warmth fill her whole body and the pride in this teenager’s eyes when she comes out to them.
And that afternoon, surrounded by people who all love and understand each other, Susan feels like she might just have married the love of her life.
If there’s anything she can at least feel partially, possibly, a little grateful for to Neil Hargrove, it’s that he married both of them first, and so even though they’re not legally married, they do have the same last name.
And Susan doubts there is much she could do that would irk him as much as looking at Anne Hargrove, and calling her ‘ Mrs. Hargrove ’, and being called Mrs. Hargrove back, as they get up to the bedroom they share, and gently, eagerly, pull each other’s white dresses off to commence the best love making Susan’s ever experienced in her life .
—
Of course, it is the 80’s, so there sometimes ends up a person, usually drunk, at their property that comes to laugh at the lesbians in the forest, but Hopper showed them how to set up tripwires that let them know if someone’s there, because everyone who could possibly have any positive business there at two in the morning knows where not to step. So Susan grabs the phone and calls Hopper, and Anne steps out of the cottage with the shotgun Hopper let her keep raised and loaded.
They always turn tail, at that.
And when Anne comes back in, Susan kisses her wife and takes her back to their bed.
—
Susan gives birth to a little baby girl on the 15th of December, 1985.
They name her Vivianne Julie Hargrove.
And Anne adds two more pictures to her locket. One, of Max. And the other, of Susan and their daughter. So she always has her family close to her heart.