Chapter Text
The hotel room was nice, but not comparable to the Harrington mansion. Then again, Mary Harrington was glad she’d managed to persuade her husband to get them a hotel room in Hawkins, just in case something happened. Something even worse.
Mary was still shaking after three whiskeys. She didn’t want to drink them, but Richard had insisted. And for once, she didn’t even feel like arguing. What she saw in their house was…
Her poor son. Steven. She hated herself for not doing more, for not taking him with them, but he seemed so calm. So resigned to his fate. As she was leaving, he whispered: “It’s going to be fine, mom. Just give me some time.”
She wanted to believe it. She had to. Where would she even go? To pastor Brenner? Would he even know how to perform an exorcism on a living corpse? Would he even believe her?
The thought of pastor Brenner spurred her into action. She excused herself - not that Richard was paying attention, he had been scrubbing the hand the corpse had touched for half an hour or so - and made her way to the lobby, to the phone.
“Karen?” she whispered into the phone. “I’m so sorry to bother you at this hour, but…”
She took a deep breath. Steve was safe, or so he’d said. But only if she played along.
“I just wanted to let you know our heating stopped working out of nowhere. Silly, I know. But if you need to reach us, we had to temporarily move to the hotel on the main street. You know the one. Please call us here if you need anything.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Thank you. I…I don’t suppose you have found Steve yet?”
Even in her terrified state, Mary could sense there was something wrong with Karen Wheeler. “No, I’m so sorry…I think he will be back soon, but…it is possible we will have to postpone the wedding for some time. Maybe a few weeks.”
There was no acknowledgement, no suggestion of a new date. Just more silence and then: “I…I’m afraid the wedding is off, Mary. I’m so sorry, but…Ted insists.”
Mary grasped the receiver so tightly her nails scraped on the old plastic. “How come? I thought everything was agreed!”
“Mary…”
Karen wasn’t the type to cry. But her voice sounded completely broken, even with the bad connection.
“Did you know our children had an arrangement? That they…that they weren’t fully honest about their intentions?”
Before Mary could answer that no, she had no idea, and what on earth was she talking about, Karen continued in fast whispers.
“Because Ted found out. And he’s furious that his daughter is…is not who he thought she was. I tried to talk him out of it, to give her more time, but he refused. Said that our children need good influence, he won’t have them around anyone who might corrupt them. He sees only one remedy for the current…situation. An immediate wedding to someone who won’t allow Nancy to do what she has been doing.”
Closing her eyes, Mary drew a shaky breath as she realized what Karen was hinting at. The Buckley girl. Steven probably knew. But she couldn’t acknowledge that, not out loud, not in Hawkins. Instead, she willed her voice to stop trembling. “How…how can you manage to find someone so fast? Wedding planning takes time.”
“Everything is still ready. Ted said…he said we just need a groom. A respectable one. With proper values and right opinions.” Karen sighed into the receiver, deep and defeated. “Someone who also needs to move on, according to Ted.”
Mary knew the name of the new groom even before Karen said it.
“It’s Jason Carver. And his parents have already accepted.”