by Nicole Baart
Every kilometer or so there would be a ranch or a fruit stand or a sign indicating that a vineyard existed beyond some gravel path curving into the mellow hills. But the only real witnesses to Abigail’s journey down the hot ribbon of pavement were dwarf trees and flourishing bushes arranged in rows like pleasant but unexpected sentinels.
Mack’s Sweets was actually a vegetable stand with a huge poster of an ice-cream cone on the side. As Abigail drew closer to the clapboard building, she realized that what she had assumed was a swirl of strawberry ice cream topping the waffle cone was actually a glossy red pepper. Have you had your sweets today? the poster questioned. The concept didn’t work for Abigail. Rather than whetting her
appetite for vegetables, the poster made her long for an ice-cream cone.
Just as Jane promised, immediately past Mack’s was a narrow road sporting an unobtrusive sign for Thompson Hills. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she probably would have sped right past. As it was, she still had to step on her brakes harder than usual and snap on her blinker at the last possible second. Then she was alone on the little road, curling into soft hills and past yet another orchard blossoming with newborn fruit.
By the time the tiled roofs of the winery buildings burst into view over the tops of the trees, Abigail had climbed substantially from the valley floor. To her right the hills cut away to form a high bluff, fortresslike and seemingly impenetrable—the perfect place for the cluster of handsome structures that were suddenly before her. To her left, the orchards gave way to the long rows of an old and well-established vineyard; the vines sliced picturesque paths across the sandy soil, curving off over the hills until they disappeared in the distance.
And directly in front of Abigail, behind a rather small parking lot, there was a long, chevron-shaped building with an enormous double door in the angle between the two oblique walls. The heavy, carved doors were propped open with two oak wine barrels that were topped by matching arrangements of fresh flowers in wide glass decanters.
It was like something out of a dream for Abigail. Thompson Hills reminded her of southern Italy. Or maybe France. It didn’t really matter which; she had never been to Europe. But the hidden buildings, the sprawling vineyards, and the casual splendor of it all was as intensely foreign as it was inviting. Everything had the effortless air of uncompromised, natural beauty.
Abigail couldn’t help but be intimidated. Here? She had to meet Tyler here? Nothing was familiar. Nothing felt solid. And beneath the breezy, romantic overtones of the place, Abigail felt naked, exposed. The feeling made a pit gape hollowly in her abdomen; no matter which way she twisted, she couldn’t cover the sudden bare and unprotected place.
By the time she found a parking space among the thirty or so cars that crammed the lot, Abigail’s damp hands were slipping on the steering wheel and her heart beat a wild, heavy rhythm in her chest. She lowered her window and then turned off the car, letting the fresh air roll over her in an effort to steady her uneven pulse. Even now, after all she had done to find him, after how far she had come, turning around and walking away felt like a very real possibility.
But no. To leave now would mean that this would never end. Ever.
Abigail couldn’t live with that.
†
Abigail was seated at a tiny table that straddled the wide doorframe separating the main tasting room from an enormous outdoor patio. The tasting room was airy and light with a vaulted ceiling and two matching bars on opposite walls that were lined with shapely bottles of wine. The patio was merely an extension of the indoor space. It was a half hexagon arching out over a sheer, twenty-foot drop that opened dramatically on the tidy vineyards below.
Everything had been designed with maximum sun exposure in mind. The midmorning rays poured over the entire patio and spilled into the lofty room, bathing Abigail’s table in light. She herself was shadowed, strategically positioned behind a supporting pillar so that she did not bake in the sun. But instead of feeling protected, Abigail felt shifty. Though she sat perfectly upright and perched on the end of her chair, she couldn’t shake the impression that she was crouching in the shadows.
Upon her waitress’s strong recommendation, Abigail ordered a mimosa and a platter of fresh fruit. The mimosa was sunrise colored and tart, served in a tall wineglass with a perfect sprig of mint. She gulped it down gratefully until a gentle warmth spread through her shoulders and she grasped that it was barely ten o’clock and she was drinking. The realization left her oddly uneasy, as if a few sips could alter everything, could render her incapable of doing what she had come to do, and she set the drink aside to finish her entire glass of ice water in one long drink.
When the fruit came, it was arranged on an attractive, deep plate overflowing with chilled berries. At the center there was half a grapefruit, disparately hot and bubbling with what looked like brown sugar so molten that it had nearly candied on top. Abigail couldn’t help but be pleased. There was something about the extravagance of elegant food that resonated with her. She thought of the cookbook on her counter at home, then imagined herself serving up such austere delicacies as what lay before her to someone who would appreciate them. But the daydream was over almost before it began, and as she lifted a fork to spear a raspberry, she found she had no appetite for it at all.
Instead of eating, Abigail furtively skimmed every single face in the room. There were two waiters, two waitresses, and one good-looking hostess, who had seated Abigail when she arrived. None of them looked familiar, and none of them were the man that she was looking for. If Tyler had a brother, sister, or cousin working with him at his uncle’s vineyard, Abigail doubted it was one of the people present and working today. Nor did she see anyone who could even pass for what she assumed was the middle-aged owner of Thompson Hills. All the employees were young and attractive. And the patrons were far too eclectic of a mix for Abigail to even consider. One thing she did know: Tyler was nowhere to be seen.
It would come down to asking. Abigail would have to flag someone down—maybe her bright-eyed waitress—and make the object of her obsession public knowledge. She could almost imagine the kitchen chatter that would inevitably surround her request: “She’s looking for Tyler! Can you imagine? . . . No, not her. The one at the corner table in the shadows. The one . . .” But what would they say about her? Though she tried, Abigail could scarcely imagine how she appeared to other people.
The whole process of being self-aware, or at least trying to be, often proved to be a downright daunting task for Abigail. She had always considered herself the definition of a wallflower: plain, unobtrusive, forgettable. But then sometimes people chipped away at that insular perception and treated her as more. It always left Abigail feeling mildly baffled, as if she needed to peek over her shoulder to discover who exactly was the object of this unfamiliar attention, this occasionally thinly veiled admiration. Colton made her feel this way, and Abigail wondered sometimes if her subconscious had derailed that potential relationship long before a wayward Tic Tac did.
But that was then and this was now. This was Abigail’s present reality. It didn’t matter what anyone thought of her; she had to ask—it was what she had come to do. Abigail decided that when the waitress came back with her bill she would casually mention Tyler. Until then, it was enough to simply watch the breeze play with the profusion of perfectly formed grape leaves and sip on her mimosa.
“Can I get you anything else?” The friendly voice that tore Abigail from her nervous reverie was not the voice she had expected to hear. It was not female.
As Abigail turned to face this newcomer, this glitch in her monumental morning, she knew that this was no casual coincidence. Jane had called her lucky twice, but Abigail knew that the world functioned along the rule of three. Everything had a beginning, a middle, an end. There was up, down, and that nebulous place in between. Life consisted of before and after, but who could ignore the interim? the time that joined the irrevocable commencement and cessation with a thin thread
of existence, forever shaped and affected by the events that bookended it? And though she wasn’t superstitious, Abigail had to admit that even religion followed this threefold pattern. She had grown up knowing the solemnity of the supreme trio: the Trinity. And creation, fall, redemption. Heaven and hell, with earth balanced forever between, tilting first one way, then the next. Ultimately, there was the triangle of eternity that Abigail could never quite take in: life, death, resurrection.
Now Abigail’s third was complete. She had been lucky twice, but as she turned to face him, Abigail knew that this made three times. She was looking at Tyler.
“Sorry,” he said, the corner of his mouth curled into an apologetic but amused smile. There was a dimple nestled beside the curve of his lip. “Natalie has been here since five without a break. I’m taking her tables.” He paused, then startled Abigail with a brilliant grin. “Don’t worry. I won’t skim her tips.”
Abigail shook her head almost imperceptibly. Blinked. Tried to absorb the sweep of sandy brown hair that he pushed nonchalantly from his forehead, the sparkle of his blue green eyes that seemed to tease her.
“Hey.” Tyler’s eyebrows narrowed. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
I’m the girl in the photo, Abigail longed to say. The one on the nightstand where you fell asleep beside her. The words bubbled in her throat, choked her. What she wanted to say was imprisoned behind the cruel shock of his proximity. What she wanted to say was an ugly, living thing that threatened to eat her up inside. She wasn’t ready for this, not ready at all.
Tyler stared at her, confused, wondering, and Abigail couldn’t say a thing. But she thought it over and over and over: You killed my sister.
†
When Hailey was nine years old, she almost killed herself.
If Abby had known at the time that this was the first in a long line of other close calls, she probably would have paid more attention to the before and after. Maybe if she could have begun to pinpoint the “why?” and the “what next?” she would have been able to start anticipating the frantic downslide and the ensuing colossal fallout. But instead of recognizing the initial incident for what it was—the first in an emerging destructive pattern that highlighted Hailey’s eccentric life—Abby merely reacted like anyone else would. She recoiled in concern and fear over what might have been, then pushed the occurrence out of her mind as if forgetting it entirely could undo it. It never happened, Abby told herself, and eventually she began to believe it. It never crossed her mind that it could happen again.
The trouble began because Hailey was too old for her age. She was too pretty, too wise. Too capable of manipulating any situation to her advantage, too triumphant when she won, and too moody when she didn’t. Actually Hailey was too much of nearly everything. It seemed as though her spirit was simply too much for her little body to contain. She should have been twins, Abby once thought. Abby was in biology and could imagine the cellular split that was supposed to happen when Hailey was smaller than a pinprick but didn’t—Hailey was left with soul enough for two. In some ways, Abby wished that the clock could be rewound and the problem fixed. But then there would be two of them, and she couldn’t even deal with the implications of that.
It’s not that Abby didn’t love her sister intensely—she did—but when Abby started high school, Hailey became too much to handle. Abby was ready for freedom and friends, maybe even a boyfriend or two to collect and admire along the way. Hailey thought she could tag along for the ride.
After a tumultuous freshman year, a distraught Abby convinced her mother to draw a line in the sand between the sisters. Melody made it clear that Abby was the young woman; Hailey was still a child. The little girl was banned from her sister’s room without explicit invitation, forbidden to touch the subdued collection of new pastel makeup, and warned about interfering when Abby had friends over, was on the telephone, or was involved in anything even remotely adult or personal.
Hailey was furious and made her feelings known by taking sharp fabric scissors from her mother’s sewing kit and hiding herself in Abby’s closet. Hailey pulled down one shirt at a time, making the fabric slide heavily from the hangers and sending the thin metal hooks flying off the closet rack. It was the sound of the hangers hitting the closed closet door that alerted Abby to the fact that something was going on. Thump. Then nothing. And again, a few minutes later: thump.
Abby found Hailey buried in a chaotic pile of shredded clothes. She had obliterated a dozen shirts, and the tangled pile of colorful strips spread across her lap like the beginning of a memory quilt. Abby wanted to strangle her and probably would have if Melody had not heard her daughter’s low, anguished cry and come running.
Melody pulled them apart, panting, gasping, weeping, although it was impossible to know who was doing what as they grappled, all twisted limbs and tousled hair. “How could you?” Melody cried. And while the plea was directed at Hailey, Abby felt blame radiate—surely she had done something to cause this, surely she had had some hand in it, too.
After that, Melody brought up the topic of counseling for the first time. She had carefully approached the issue before, sidling up to the outskirts of suggestion but backing away immediately when Lou bristled. This time, she finally plunged in and said it. “Therapy,” she muttered, barely above a whisper, as if it were a matter of massaging sore muscles back to health.
Lou glowered. “Who? Hailey?”
Melody nodded, a calculated little flick of her head that could have been interpreted as dissent if Lou completely flew off the handle. “She has some . . . behaviors that we should probably examine.”
“She’s a kid, Mel. A tailender who might as well be an only child. Abby doesn’t give her the time of day except to provoke her. You can’t blame Hailey for being jealous.”
“Abby doesn’t provoke her,” Melody defended weakly. “And I don’t think Hailey is simply jealous.”
Lou only grunted.
“Abby’s way older than Hailey. She—”
“Exactly my point,” Lou interrupted. “Abby’s older and Hailey’s just acting her age.”
Conversation over.
But Abby had heard it and so had Hailey as they perched together on the landing above the living room. They were cloaked in darkness, but when the grown-ups were quiet, the sisters peered at each other across the narrow hallway. There was nothing to say that could bridge the gap between them, and they crept back to their separate rooms wordlessly.
Things started to change then. Hailey plummeted over some invisible precipice and continued to freefall for weeks. The child that had been almost fanatical in her desire to be a part of it all withdrew. Where she had been loud and vibrant and electric she became subdued. Her colors flickered and dimmed. Her too much became too little. Way too little.
The cataclysmic switch upended the very structure of the Bennett home.
Abby vacillated between anxiety and anger, because although Hailey had always been a roller coaster of emotions, she had never dipped so low nor stayed there for so long. Abby worried about her and then despised her for throwing everything out of whack. Where was the inevitable upswing? Where was the eventual turnaround that would restore everything—their family, their relationships, their understanding of themselves and each other—to its natural state?
Lou and Melody were also far from blind to Hailey’s sudden and absolute reversal. Melody teared up often and chewed her fingernails down to the quick. Nail biting was a habit that Lou detested, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care when Melody picked up the addiction that she had kicked years ago. Besides fretting, Melody poured all of her nervous energy into cooking, cleaning, and creating things for Hailey. She seemed to think that peanut butter cookies or a new, fluffy purple scarf could coax Hailey out from under her dark cloud. With each offering, Melody tried to force cheer into the house. She laughed thinly to cover up the deep lines of concern that creased her face and carried on a limping form of life as normal.
W
hile Melody fought the unhappy fog, Lou almost seemed to embrace it. He followed Hailey down her sad path and joined her in whatever strange and solitary place she had decided to hide. They curled on the couch together, father and daughter, arms entwined but eyes faraway and blank. Abby couldn’t help wondering if each was aware of the other’s presence. Sometimes she doubted it.
It was in this dismal and echoless facade of a home that Abby decided life could not possibly go on like this—Melody pretending, Lou singing funeral dirges with his sighs, and Hailey becoming a phantom of the girl she used to be. It was horrible. And somehow the responsibility to fix it seemed to rest on fourteen-year-old Abby’s shoulders. Lou ignored, Melody tried to fix the wrong problems, and only Abby could stand outside and see the brokenness for what it was, even if she didn’t understand what caused it or why. And she certainly didn’t know how to begin to make things right.
So instead of trying, Abby started to drift away. She began the slow and difficult process of disentangling herself.
†
Disentanglement proved more difficult than Abby had imagined it would be. True, Lou and Hailey were impervious to her subtle change of attitude, but Abby could tell that her mother was present enough to realize that her eldest daughter’s place in their family was slowly eroding. Abby prickled with a sort of mild shame around Melody, but what was she to do? She had been a virtual outsider in her own family since the day of her birth, the day her father grudgingly learned that love was designed to be shared. Of course, she could not put any of this into words, but she was definitely perceptive enough to be fully aware of the dynamics in her family and her father’s simmer of something that smacked of resentment toward her.
