by Nicole Baart
Tyler stopped. Abigail instinctively did the same, but the second she faced him, she wished she could run away like a child fleeing from a nightmare.
“Why do you hate me?” Tyler asked, piercing her with a look so bold she couldn’t hold his gaze.
“I don’t hate you,” she forced.
“Yeah, I think you might. But I can’t for the life of me figure out why.” Tyler started walking again, and Abigail found that she almost had to jog to keep up. “The rub is,” he went on, “I happen to like you.”
Abigail didn’t know what to say. “That’s nice,” she finally managed.
“That’s nice?” Tyler laughed. “You’re a strange one, Abigail.”
“Thanks.”
“Bad choice of words. You’re just . . . different.”
“That’s original,” Abigail snapped.
“Distinctive?”
Abigail moaned. “What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you trying to ask me out?” Abigail posed the question mechanically, without the slightest hint of true emotion.
“Oh, please. Is that what you think?”
“No.”
“Good, because I’ve sworn off women. My last girlfriend was a total psycho.”
Abigail felt herself get hot. She didn’t mean to grunt, but the impulsive noise made Tyler glare at her.
“Retract the claws, kitty. Don’t pretend like you know me.”
“I guess I know you don’t date psychos.” The word was hard to say, but it had the desired effect. Tyler instantly looked defensive.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “She was totally off and on, up and down . . .” He trailed off. “Why am I telling you this? I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
Allowing herself the luxury of burying her face in her hands, Abigail fought back a frustrated scream. She was annihilating any small connection she had built with Tyler. “Sorry,” she muttered from behind her hands. “I’m just . . . It’s been a long day. I’m not myself right now.”
Tyler slowed his step and studied Abigail openly. She couldn’t meet his eyes, but she felt the touch of his gaze on her cheek. Angling her chin away from him, she watched a line of soft, white clouds rise like foam at the edge of the horizon. Abigail breathed deep and then again. I can do this, she told herself.
After they had walked a few paces with nothing but the light breeze for company, Tyler broke the calm by saying, “You’re so . . . pensive.”
“What’s with you and all the adjectives?” Abigail joked weakly. “I’m surprised you even know what pensive means.” When Tyler didn’t respond immediately, she added, “It was a joke. I’m joking.”
“You’re not much of a comedienne.”
“Guilty,” Abigail admitted. The word stung somehow.
“You are one complicated girl.”
“Complicated?”
“Maybe complex is a better fit.”
Complex? He was trying to pick her up.
“When I look at you, I just know there’s a lot going on behind those brown eyes of yours,” he finished.
Tyler’s face was turned away from her, and Abigail allowed herself the luxury of rolling those brown eyes of which he spoke so fondly. She knew what was going to come next, and it made her want to ball her hands into fists and use them against him, to feel her knuckles break against the hard angle of his jaw. He was going to carry on about how beautiful her eyes were, how expressive and mysterious. Abigail could imagine him using the same lines on a much more vulnerable Hailey. It made her sick.
But Tyler didn’t say another word about Abigail’s eyes. Instead, he surprised her by spinning toward her and raising a finger almost in accusation. “You’re furious and you’re sad. And something about you makes me want to know why.”
It was Abigail’s turn to stop dead. Furious and sad? How could he see that in her? Abigail was livid, but she also had to struggle to choke down something that tasted a lot like fear. How could he know her? She wanted to rage at him and demand that he tell her how he knew. “Don’t pretend like you know me,” Tyler had said. She wanted to shout it back at him.
But Tyler didn’t give her the chance. He kept walking.
“Why?” she challenged, watching his back as he drew away from her. “Why do you care if I’m—” she flicked her hands feverishly in front of her—” furious and sad?”
Tyler was already several long strides away. For a second Abigail was convinced that he wasn’t going to respond and she almost took off after him. She wanted to spin him around, to make him answer her. It was true that she had struggled with her intentions concerning Tyler, but for one fierce moment Abigail felt a flash of anger toward him that was so fine-tuned everything came into sharp focus. All she could think was, You killed my sister, you sanctimonious jerk.
Maybe Tyler heard her sharp intake of breath. Maybe he felt like toying with her. Maybe he hoped to offer her a bit of understanding, a glimpse inside. Whatever the reason, right before Abigail opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of him, Tyler answered her. Without turning back, he called, “I don’t care. But I can relate.”
It wasn’t at all what Abigail expected to hear. She didn’t move. She just stared at the soft charcoal of Tyler’s stylishly wrinkled dress shirt until he disappeared at the spot where the row began to bend.
†
For the newly minted, twenty-year-old Abigail Bennett, moving to Florida had nothing to do with disappearing and everything to do with appearing. She felt like she had been waiting for fifteen years to emerge from behind the long shadow of Hailey. Fifteen years of delaying her own life, of abiding, of remaining, of staying exactly where she was and who she was because the slightest shift of self threatened to tip the careful balance. Abigail hardly knew the person she had become when no one else, including herself, was looking.
The young woman who boarded a plane in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, brought with her nothing more than two huge suitcases stuffed to bursting and one carry-on that was filled with too much empty space. As Abigail marched to her gate, the messenger bag that she had slung over her shoulder thumped her hip with each step, the three essential items inside serving as sharp-edged reminders of all she left behind: there was a small, rectangular tin of gum, a hardcover copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, and a photo that Melody had taken at the Fourth of July picnic. Hailey had printed off two copies and purchased a pair of cheap silver frames for them. She kept one and thrust the other into her sister’s hands as she left.
Abigail was far from fond of the picture. She and Hailey were off-center, and though their youthful faces were arresting, something about the casual way Hailey’s arm was thrown over her shoulder irritated Abigail. But she stuffed it in her nearly empty bag anyway, discarding it alongside the book that had sat on her bedside stand since she fell in love with Gibran in her tenth-grade English class and the tin of cinnamon gum she had stolen. The ancient container rattled in the bottom of her bag and almost gave her away; Abigail was sure that Lou would hear the distinctive clink and know what she had done.
It wasn’t like she planned on taking Lou’s tin. It was hardly a premeditated act—it was more of an accident, really.
The whole family had decided to accompany Abigail to the airport, which was an hour’s drive from Newcastle. When her bags were in the trunk and everyone was in the car and ready to go, Abigail remembered that her Nike Windbreaker was still hanging on the hook in the mudroom. Lou was annoyed, but she raced back into the house anyway, leaving the car running in the driveway and her family waiting for her.
Abigail swept into the house, took one last, unexpectedly hungry look around, and then snagged her coat. The fabric caught on the old, crooked hook, and when Abigail gave it a hard tug, the coat beneath her Windbreaker fell, too. It was Lou’s lined canvas jacket, and his beloved little tin spun out of the pocket and banged the floor with a sharp clang. Abigail grabbed it and the coat, ready to st
uff everything back on the hook. But something about the cold feel of the metal in her hand stopped her. She couldn’t explain it, but holding the tin in her palm made her knees feel weak, as if she couldn’t walk out the door without trembling through every step.
The smudged Altoids tin hadn’t held peppermints in years—Lou preferred cinnamon gum and bought it by the ten-pack, unwrapping the bricklike pieces and stacking them with meticulous precision in the flat peppermint container. Abigail could vividly remember when his gum addiction started, when she began to associate her father with the scent of cinnamon gum. It was a week after Hailey was born. It was the week that heralded Lou’s decision to finally give up smoking once and for all.
Her father honked the horn in the driveway, and Abigail carefully hung his coat on the hook exactly where it had been. But she dropped the distinctive pack of gum in her bag and zipped the pocket closed.
Although she didn’t realize it until years later, Abigail had left Minnesota with a piece of almost everyone she loved: Hailey was in the photo, Lou was in the tin, and Abigail was sure that there were pieces of herself—her hidden self, the self she had always secretly been and would now be able to become—in that beautiful, mystifying book. The only person not represented in Abigail’s light but heavy-laden messenger bag was Melody.
Abigail regretted the oversight for the rest of her life.
†
Florida was everything Abigail had hoped for and more. It was lush and warm, exotic and foreign. The people were tan, and the grocery stores dedicated entire aisles to ethnic foods that Abigail had never heard of much less eaten. There was a pulse about the city of Rosa Beach, an undercurrent of life, of excitement. Though southern Florida didn’t match the short list of preconceptions that Abigail had amassed by watching the odd rerun of Miami Vice on cable with Lou, it did swing to the beat of a soundtrack that was wholly unfamiliar and undeniably electrifying. She loved it.
South Seminole also exceeded Abigail’s expectations. The small liberal arts college was sufficiently pretentious to assure that Abigail felt superior in her new career as full-time student. But South Seminole was insignificant enough to maintain an air of down-home ease, too. Abigail wanted for nothing in her college experience. It was a pleasant mix of culture and intellectual pursuit, casual parties and fast friendships. From nearly her very first day, Abigail sank into her new life with an air of complete surrender.
Melody had made Abigail promise that she would call home at least once a week. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it? After all, Melody’s firstborn daughter had spent twenty years of her life under the same roof as her parents. Their relationship implied a closeness that couldn’t be severed with a simple move across the country. Could it?
At first, Abigail was mildly homesick—though incapable of admitting it in light of finally getting what she had always wanted—and good at remembering the promise she had made to her mother. She dialed her parents’ number every Sunday afternoon and forced herself to make small talk for half an hour at least. While the details changed from week to week, each time the conversation felt the same to Abigail.
The phone always rang twice. Then: “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, Abby. It’s so nice to hear your voice.”
“Abigail, Mom. I go by Abigail now.”
“Sweetie, you’ll always be Abby to me.”
“I’m not—oh, forget it. How are you?”
“Good, we’re doing good. We’re all good. And you?”
“Good.”
“How’s school?”
“Good. How’s Hailey?”
“Good.”
And on and on until Melody inevitably passed the phone to Hailey for more chitchat that skimmed the surface but never went deeper than a short list of what’s new and who’s who. Once or twice Lou was handed the phone, and Abigail asked her father a series of questions that he answered with vague grunts. Abigail could hear the television on in the background.
On a particularly warm Sunday in early October, Abigail went to the beach with her friends and forgot to call home. When she got back to her dorm room later that evening, there was a message from Melody on her answering service.
“This is a message for Abby,” Melody said uncertainly, her concern traveling almost tangibly over the thousands of miles between them. Her voice sounded very far away and tremulous. “Hi, honey. It’s Mom. Just wondering if you’re okay. We didn’t hear from you this afternoon, and we wanted to make sure you were all right. Well, okay. I’ll talk to you later, okay? I’ll try again. Or you can call us. Bye. Love you. Bye.”
“It’s after ten,” Abigail explained to her roommate as she erased the message. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you from Minnesota? It’s an hour earlier there.”
Abigail shrugged off the reminder and promised herself she’d call the next day.
But the next day faded into the next and then the next until the phone in Abigail’s dorm room rang one afternoon nearly a week later.
“Yep?” Abigail quipped when she had clicked on the cordless telephone.
“Abby?”
“Hailey?”
“Well, at least I know you’re alive. Thanks for calling, Sis.”
“Hey, I’m sorry, okay? It’s only been a few days.”
“Whatever. Mom’s been having a conniption.”
“It’s only been a few days,” Abigail repeated.
“Feels like more than that to us,” Hailey complained. “The house feels vacant without you, cavernous. We live for those brief moments of contact when you deign to set aside your incalculably satisfying new life to call us one measly time a week.”
“Be serious.”
“I am.”
For a few seconds nothing filled the line but the sound of Abigail and Hailey breathing in perfect cadence.
“I—”
“You—”
“What?” Abigail persisted. “You go first.”
“Nothing, really. I don’t remember what I was going to say.”
“How’re Mom and Dad?”
“Fine.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
This is why I didn’t bother calling, Abigail thought.
After that, the habit that Abigail had cultivated of regular Sunday afternoon phone calls fell to pieces. Sometimes Abigail called; sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes Melody called. And every once in a while Hailey picked up the phone and took a few minutes to reprimand her sister for not continuing to pull tight the knot of family ties.
Christmas quickly became a hot topic, and Abigail dreaded the conversations that always started with, “It will be so nice when you’re home for a month over Christmas break!”
“It’s not a month,” Abigail reiterated with increasing irritation. “It’s three weeks, and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to be home that whole time.” In truth, Abigail couldn’t quite deal with the thought of spending any substantial amount of time back in the little second-story bedroom she had occupied for most of her life. It had taken years, but she had finally moved on. She loved her family, but she was happy for now to let that complicated love simmer from a distance.
Of course, Melody and Hailey weren’t deterred. They acted like a month with Abigail home was the highlight of their year. And as if they could will her trip into being through earnest prayers and petition, they applied themselves with downright fervor. In the end, Abigail bought a ticket for just over two weeks, intending to fly standby on an earlier flight if she found that life in the Bennett house was something she had utterly outgrown.
Two weeks, Abigail told herself. I can survive for two weeks.
Then, less than a month before Abigail was scheduled to return home, the phone rang at five o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Abigail shot awake, glanced at the clock, and grumbled that whoever dared to bother her at such an ungodly hour deserved to be shot. “They can leave a message,” she mumbled to her roommate.
<
br /> The phone stopped ringing.
It started again a second later. Abigail put her pillow over her head and tried to ignore the insistent sound. But after the answering service picked up the second call, whoever was trying to get ahold of room 224 dialed their number yet again.
“Make it stop!” Abigail groaned. But she rolled out of bed anyway and grabbed the phone groggily. “What?”
There was a strange sighing on the other end of the line, a soft, low moan that sounded like static or maybe a bad international connection that hummed vaguely over continents and oceans too far away to be clearly connected. It was obviously some drunk, some psycho. But just before Abigail was about to hang up, she became aware of a rhythm in the sound, a two-syllable whimper that finally became recognizable. Somebody was calling her name.
“Hailey?” Abigail asked, immediately wide-awake now. She dropped to the edge of her bed as if she had been shoved down. “Hailey, is that you? What’s wrong?”
“Abby, Abby, Abby . . .”
“Hailey Bennett, you tell me what’s going on.” Abigail clutched the phone in two hands. She pressed it forcefully to her ear, trapped it there, because what she really wanted to do was throw it across the room.
“Abby . . .” The word had become an incantation, a prayer almost.
“Hailey, tell me!” Abigail was terrified, but she was ready. Hailey had been suicidal before; her meds had failed her before. Even as she waited for Hailey to pull herself together enough to respond, Abigail was thinking of what she should do. If she called 911 in Rosa Beach, could they patch her through to the crisis line in Newcastle, Minnesota? If she could remember the neighbors’ phone number, would they be able to run over? Could she avert this disaster from two thousand miles away?
