The Moment Between

by Nicole Baart

  “You okay?” Paige asked when Eli dismissed his workers and they started to dismantle the thrown-together tables.

  Abigail smiled ruefully. She wanted to say, “I’m a partner in a well-known and widely respected accounting firm. Recommending a silly little bottle of wine should be a piece of cake.” But she didn’t say that. Instead she complained, “Can’t there just be two kinds? You’ve got your white—” she raised one hand, palm up—”and you’ve got your red.” Abigail held up her other hand. “Keep it simple.”

  Paige laughed. “Oh, you’ll fall in love before you know it. You’ll never be able to drink the cheap stuff again.”

  “Can’t I just label bottles or something?”

  “You will at some point or another. Eli keeps one or two people in the cellar with him. But believe me, you’d rather be in the tasting room for now.”

  Abigail wasn’t too sure about that. And though she couldn’t tell whether Eli was regretting his earlier degrading display or if he was simply making sure that she didn’t screw up too bad, she almost moaned in relief when he instructed Paige to take the “new girl” under her wing for the day. At least she wouldn’t make the horrifying mistake of recommending the cabernet as a complement to chocolate fondue. “The wine should always be sweeter than the dessert,” Paige had muttered desperately when Eli pinned Abigail with that exact question in front of everyone.

  Hours later, after the tasting room was ready for guests and the employees were looking uniform with starched white aprons over their fashionable outfits, Abigail approached Paige with a weary smile. “May I please use the bathroom, Miss Paige?”

  “We call it a washroom, Yankee,” Paige teased. She consulted her watch. “But yes, you may. Doors open in about five minutes, so make it snappy. Eli usually sulks around the kitchen for an hour when we first open. He’s been known to stomp out and yell at us in front of customers.”

  “Sounds frightening,” Abigail mused.

  “It is.”

  Abigail slipped into the cathedral-ceilinged entryway of the building, her high heels clicking loudly with each step on the tile floor. She remembered seeing a discreet sign for a public restroom near the entrance, and though Paige had told her that there were employee bathrooms just beyond the kitchen, she was looking forward to a brief respite before the chaos of the rest of her day.

  The washrooms were behind a curving wall of stacked stone slabs that were slick with trickles of water from a gurgling but understated cascade. Abigail paused to admire the engineering behind the basinless waterworks when she felt someone move in close behind her.

  “I needed a little peace and quiet,” she quickly explained, expecting Paige to inform her that the public restrooms were not for employee use. But then it hit her that she hadn’t heard Paige approach. She stiffened. Only a man’s shoes could be noiseless on the granite floor.

  “Tell me about it.”

  The voice was definitely not Paige’s, and Abigail turned slowly, fearing who she would find.

  Tyler was even closer than she had anticipated, close enough for Abigail to pick up his musky cologne. She breathed shallowly, sure for a moment that he knew who she was and had guessed why she was here. But that was impossible. Impossible. Abigail had to force her mouth not to form the word.

  “It’s Abigail, right?”

  She nodded once, stiffly.

  The corner of his mouth pulled up in a brazen smile. “I didn’t catch your last name.”

  “Bennett,” Abigail whispered, hoping her French intonation was believable. Since Hailey used her last name when it suited her and made up interesting alternatives when it didn’t, Abigail wasn’t sure if Tyler knew Hailey as a Bennett or not. But she hoped that softening the consonants and elongating the vowels would make it sound different enough that he wouldn’t notice. Tyler certainly wouldn’t see any similarities between Hailey and her older sister. Besides, Abigail could easily pass for French and Hailey was anything but. All the same, her heart paused as she waited for him to respond.

  Tyler didn’t flinch. “You look tired,” he observed, taking a small step back. “It gets better, I promise. Or maybe you get better. You get used to it.” The bravado of his roguish exterior shimmered, and Abigail thought she could detect a hint of self-consciousness, an almost-boyish diffidence that she was sure had been irresistible to her sister. But then just as quickly as it flashed to the surface, it was gone. Tyler tossed a lopsided smile at her and cocked his eyebrow in a carbon copy of the same look he had thrown the girl across the table. “At least you’ve already figured out never to use the employee bathrooms. Smart. I like that in a woman.”

  The way he said woman made Abigail distinctly aware of her femininity. She felt so bare, so on display and at the mercy of his appraising eyes that she didn’t say anything in reply. She couldn’t.

  But it didn’t matter; Tyler wasn’t trying to make conversation. He gave her one last calculated grin and then turned and strode across the entryway. “See ya around!”

  In the bathroom, Abigail realized that she was trembling. She turned on the cold water tap and thrust her wrists under the icy stream. There were dots of sweat prickling along the back of her neck, underneath her heavy hair. The heat was intense, uncomfortable. She felt she could have cried of it.

  Being here, being so close to Tyler, to the only other person that Hailey had fingered in what Abigail considered her accusation, was excruciating. Living with herself was hard enough. Living with Tyler was something she wasn’t sure she could do. Just the thought of it dislodged something in Abigail’s mind that made her heart pound painfully in her chest and her eyes spring to the mirror so they could seek out the woman who had birthed such nonsense in her subconscious. She stared at herself for a long time, begging the brown-eyed girl to say it wasn’t so, to rebuke the demons that suggested such things. But it was no use.

  What could cover the sin of Hailey’s spilled blood? What sort of penance could cancel the debt that her life demanded? And what really had Abigail hoped to accomplish in finding Tyler? Did she plan to secure his heartfelt apology? force him to pledge his undying devotion to a woman already dead? beg him to do the impossible and

  rewind the clock, change his mind about leaving so Hailey wouldn’t feel so abandoned? hopeless? alone?

  Abigail knew that her motives in coming to BC had much more to do with revenge than reconciliation. She knew the stories; she knew that even the Bible had demanded an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And she knew that the crime of murder carried with it a toll so heavy that the perpetrator’s life would never, ever be the same. Though Abigail couldn’t lock Tyler up for life, she could change his life.

  She could take his life.

  There. The girl in the mirror had admitted it.

  I could kill Tyler Kamp. Abigail mouthed the words, and as she did, she began to sob.

  †

  Hailey sobbed like the world would end when Abby announced that she was leaving for Florida. She sulked for days, and it seemed for those long hours as if the medication that had restored such harmony to the Bennett home was nothing more than a placebo. The desperate look that had haunted Melody’s eyes returned almost overnight. And Lou began to draw deeper into himself again, retreating from the family and spending his evenings on the couch with the remote in one hand and a Pabst Blue Ribbon in the other.

  Though she promised herself she would not feel guilty, Abby had to work hard to maintain her composure and not give in to the general consensus that life could not go on without her steadying presence. Too bad, she thought. I’m not Hailey’s mother. It’s not my job. And yet she also had a difficult time imagining how the household would continue to plod along without her. Melody was fragile, Lou distant, Hailey unpredictable. But Abby pushed those thoughts to the edges of her mind. She couldn’t remove them entirely, but she could suppress them.

  A few days after Abby’s announcement, Hailey tracked her sister down to her bedroom and stood in the doorframe as if
she would physically prevent her from leaving.

  “Why?” Hailey demanded, an edge of anger sharpening the challenge in her voice.

  Abby didn’t say anything. Pretending that Hailey wasn’t even there, she just went back to stacking and restacking the contents of her dresser drawer. She wasn’t leaving for months, but after her decision to attend South Seminole, she suddenly felt an urgent need to get her life in order. How does one pack up eighteen years of living and condense it into a few choice memories and a trunk full of necessities?

  “I asked you a question,” Hailey spat out, refusing to be ignored.

  “Because I’m eighteen,” Abby said calmly, quietly. She didn’t even turn around to regard her sister but focused on her drawer, removing a balled-up pair of socks with holes in the heels and tossing them in the garbage. “Because I need my own space. I need my own life.” She didn’t say “without you,” but Hailey caught the implication anyway.

  “You saw . . . ,” Hailey began. Then she quickly changed her tactic, unwilling to admit to anything that she didn’t have to. “Why do you hate me?”

  Abby growled impatiently. “Don’t be so self-absorbed. What makes you think I’m leaving because of you?”

  “See?” Hailey’s tone rose in intensity. “You didn’t even deny it. You do hate me.”

  “I do not hate you.”

  “You’re only saying that because I made you.”

  “Hailey—”

  “You loathe me. You abhor me. You wish you could eradicate my very memory from your mind.”

  Abby unearthed another pair of worn socks and threw them straight at Hailey’s head. “Grow up.”

  “Would you like me better if I did?”

  Rolling her eyes, Abby left the drawer and went to grab her sister. Seizing her by the arms, she pulled Hailey over to the bed and pushed her down on it. She didn’t intend to be so forceful, but with Hailey looking up at her in a mockery of total innocence, she felt herself begin to seethe. Emotions that she thought she had buried were far closer to the surface than she had realized. Before Abby knew it, her finger was an inch from Hailey’s nose and she was muttering through clenched teeth, “You kissed my boyfriend.”

  Shock rippled across Hailey’s face, and she shook her head. “I did not. I would never do that. I—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Abby yelled. “You did, too! I saw you.” Taking a jagged breath, she straightened and put her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe you did that.” She spun away and added, almost as an afterthought, “But that’s not why I’m leaving.”

  “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I didn’t—”

  “Stop lying,” Abby whispered acidly.

  Hailey chewed her bottom lip in concentration, her eyes inviting Abby to defy her. It was a lose-lose situation, Abby knew. When Hailey dug herself into a lie, there was no convincing her that what she so firmly contended was anything less than the god-honest truth. Abby didn’t know if her sister was delusional at times, or if she was so pathological that she could convince herself of anything that suited her purposes. Either way, it was a battle that Abby couldn’t win, so she threw her hands up in defeat and turned back to the drawer.

  “You can’t go all the way to Florida because of something you think you saw,” Hailey reiterated.

  Abby sighed. “I told you, I’m not leaving because of . . . that.”

  The bedsprings creaked and Abby could tell that Hailey had lain back, propping herself against the sky blue pillows. “Then why?”

  How could Abby explain it? How could she tell Hailey that the pressure of being her sister—and her surrogate mother, her counselor, her punching bag, her scapegoat—was deflating her spirit? Abby felt like a mortal wound had been inflicted on her person the day Hailey was born. It was a small lesion, but Hailey pressed on it and it oozed a little every day. Abby lost herself little by little, bit by bit, until she was sure that there would be nothing left.

  But she didn’t try to explain that. She said, “I told you. I just need some space.”

  Hailey didn’t respond. In fact, it was so silent in her corner of the room that after a moment Abby turned to see if her sister had fallen asleep or maybe even left the room. She hadn’t. Hailey was sunken against the pillows, head tilted back and eyes fixed unwaveringly on Abby. Her lips pulled into a misleadingly gentle smile when Abby caught her gaze.

  “I won’t let you leave,” she said. Her words were so measured and calm that Abby had to stifle a shiver.

  “We’ll see about that,” Abby countered. Then she abandoned the drawer and left Hailey alone, lounging on the bed and watching her retreat with a knowing look.

  †

  Like Hailey’s first near-death experience, her second suicide attempt wasn’t really a suicide attempt at all. After leveling her threat at Abby, Hailey slipped into the bathroom and found herself a small bottle of ibuprofen. It was brand-new, and the neck was still encased in plastic. Hailey ripped through the perforated seal, plucked out the bit of cotton, and downed the entire bottle between sips of Diet Coke. The pills had a slippery, orange coating, and by the time she was done, her tongue was stained fluorescent orange.

  When the pills were gone, Hailey curled up on the floor of the bathroom with the door propped open and the bottle in her hand. She had a stomachache, and if she wasn’t imagining the side effects, she felt slightly dizzy and her vision seemed blurry.

  As it was nearly suppertime, Melody found her within ten minutes. She screamed, her voice echoing through the tiny house: “Help! Someone call 911!”

  Lou bounded up the stairs two at a time. He assessed the situation in a fraction of a second and scooped up Hailey in arms that were no less strong than they had been twenty years before.

  The ride to the hospital was tense, though Abby tried to convince her parents that an ibuprofen overdose was only rarely fatal when caught early. Damaging if left untreated, yes. But not necessarily fatal. Lou and Melody didn’t seem to be much comforted.

  At the hospital, the ER doctor induced vomiting and then treated Hailey with activated charcoal. He also ran a few basic labs: arterial blood gases, electrolyte levels, and liver function. When everything came back okay, Abby thought Hailey would be released and they would all be able to go home and begin again the process of forgetting.

  But as the doctor studied Hailey’s chart, his brows crept closer and closer together. “I want to keep her for observation,” he said.

  Abby knew what that meant: Dr. Madsen would be getting a call.

  †

  Though it broke her heart to do so, Abby threw her South Seminole enrollment package in the garbage. She registered at the local tech school, signing up for entry-level classes that would easily, hopefully, transfer to a larger college in a year or two. When Hailey stabilized a bit.

  If Hailey ever stabilized a bit.

  My head was pounding so furiously that I drove straight to Starbucks and ordered a grande hazelnut latte with an extra shot of espresso. “Skinny, no foam, and a sprinkle of cinnamon, please.” The words came automatically. I didn’t even have to think about what I was saying, what I was doing. But when I pulled up to the drive-through window and fumbled in my purse for money, it hit me that I was ordering a specialty drink while my sister was being taken to the morgue.

  I nearly vomited. Bile rose up in my throat so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that I actually slapped a hand to my mouth.

  “Four sixty-seven,” the barista called cheerfully through the open window.

  The sound surprised me and I spun toward him.

  The standard-issue smile that he had pasted to his face disappeared in an instant. “You okay?” he asked, the hesitancy in his voice matched by the intentional step he took away from the window.

  I closed my eyes and nodded, slowly lowering my hand from my mouth. Parting my lips the tiniest bit, I realized that it was safe. “I’m fine,” I managed. Then I grabbed a bill from my wallet and thrust it at him.

  He took the
money and passed me my coffee, his fingers around the very tip of the cup as if he didn’t dare touch me. As if my sorrow were contagious and he could become infected through casual contact.

  The coffee cup was hot in my palm—he had forgotten to put a sleeve around it. But instead of complaining, I drove away. I heard him yell something about change, but I didn’t care whether I had given him a five or a fifty. It was ridiculous, but I didn’t want my change or my receipt. I didn’t even want my coffee; I wanted to pour it out the window, remove any evidence of it so I wouldn’t have to admit that I had indulged in an act of normalcy when the world was so obviously anything but.

  Though I didn’t dare to even glance at it, Hailey’s letter was open on the seat beside me, faceup, accusing me of things that I could never seek forgiveness for. A part of me regretted ever opening it. As always, she had changed everything. I didn’t see how life could ever be commonplace again. How could I drink lattes, go to work, meet my friends for a Saturday jog on the beach?

  Suddenly furious, I slammed the steering wheel with my fists. I did it again and again until my hands tingled with the ferocity of my misery. The car swerved a little, and the driver of the SUV in the lane beside me tapped his horn and made an obscene gesture. I glared at him and accelerated, too angry to care that I was being uncharacteristically reckless and too blinded by my emotions to even realize where I was going.

  I drove instinctively for fifteen minutes before pulling into the parking lot of the Four Seasons Manor Home. The long shadows of the palm tree–lined driveway striped across the road and made me feel like I was the villain in an old black-and-white movie, blurred in the fuzzy frames and trembling on a rickety reel.

  “Help,” I breathed, not knowing exactly who I hoped would come to my aid. “I can’t do this.”

  But I had to do it. Lou had no one else.