The Moment Between

by Nicole Baart

  Melody had been a lively young thing in her day—vivacious almost—yet also sweet and dazzlingly pretty. But after giving birth to Hailey, all that had slowly started to change. When her placenta ruptured after the long and agonizing labor that brought Hailey into the world, Melody had bled so hard and fast that the doctors didn’t waste time doing a complete hysterectomy. The cause of the abruption was never really diagnosed (her high blood pressure even then?), but as soon as Melody had been given an extra unit of blood and was officially considered stable, it didn’t really matter. She had only ever wanted two children anyway, and her wish had been granted. Though part of Melody had hoped for a son for Lou, it didn’t take her long to realize that Hailey would do just fine.

  Her recovery took longer than she anticipated, and Melody suffered from a mild case of postpartum depression that she tried to mask by claiming exhaustion. It worked, and no one pressed her, but in the subsequent weeks and months she began the gloomy process of fading away. Melody’s skin and hair, her bright eyes and trim figure, even her lively personality, never quite recovered. By this time Lou had found a new love, his baby, and Melody’s gradual decline was chalked up to age. She was, after all, the mother of two young

  girls. Didn’t every woman undergo the transformation from vibrant young wife to rumpled, middle-aged mother?

  At any rate, the woman the Bennetts buried was not the same one Lou had married, and no one was the wiser but the ageless husband and lover who lived only in midnight dreams. Since Lou never remembered his dreams, he was left with nothing more than a haunting love for Melody that aged subtly with the years instead of losing intensity. He mourned her greatly.

  Everyone did.

  Abigail stayed home for five weeks, and during that time she asked herself every single day if she would be able to get back on a plane for Florida when the new semester began. Can I? Can’t I? Will I? Won’t I? She went back and forth endlessly, pulled in every direction the compass pointed because she felt obligated to her family but also loyal to herself, duty-bound to stay but desperate to leave. And she missed her mom. More than anything, she missed her mom.

  In the end, Abigail realized that she had made her decision the moment Hailey had announced on the phone, “Mom’s dead.” She was going back to Florida. What was there for her in Newcastle? A father who blamed her? A sister who drained her?

  “You can’t go,” Lou told her when she mentioned that school started in less than a week.

  “I have to. My professors gave me extensions for the fall semester and I’ve finished all my work. I’m not even behind.”

  “I don’t care if you’ve done the work. You can’t leave us like this.” Lou’s face was chiseled marble; he didn’t even take his eyes off the TV when he spoke to her.

  “I’ve already bought my ticket.”

  “With whose money?”

  “Mine,” Abigail said. “You know I got a huge out-of-state grant. You know I’ve been saving for college since I was thirteen.”

  Lou just grunted.

  “I leave on Friday. Classes start Monday.”

  “I’m not taking you.”

  “Mrs. Manning already said she would. She’s going to cook you supper once a week. She even told me she’d teach Hailey how. And I’ll be back for spring break. You’ll be fine.”

  “Your mother is dead,” Lou said cruelly, finally tearing his gaze from the flickering TV and glaring at Abigail. “How can you leave us?”

  “I’m not leaving you. Hailey will be sixteen in a few months—she’s practically a woman. You have each other. You’re going to be fine, and I’m going to get my degree.” Abigail almost said, “I’ll move back when I’m done,” but she couldn’t bring herself to lie so blatantly to his face.

  Lou’s lips contorted for a moment. Abigail thought he almost looked like he was going to cry, but then he managed, “Hailey’s sick, Abigail Rose. I can’t take care of her on my own.”

  “She’s not sick. Everything is under control. She’s been fine, hasn’t she?” All at once Abigail regretted her question. Living in Florida had kept her out of the loop where Hailey was concerned. Maybe she didn’t want to know anymore. Maybe she didn’t want to hear about the tantrums, the self-mutilation, the suicide attempts.

  But Lou didn’t go into specifics. “Something like this will send her over the edge,” he stated bleakly.

  “She’s still seeing Dr. Madsen. He’ll catch it if something is going to happen. He’ll change her meds, do more counseling . . .”

  Lou went perfectly still. His eyes glazed over and slid away from her. “I’m alone,” he whispered.

  Abigail felt her heart sink past her stomach, past even her legs, her feet, until it poured out between the soft piles of brown shag carpet on the floor. “You’re not alone,” she whispered back. She hardly dared do it, but she moved to the edge of the couch. She sat down. “You have us.”

  Her father acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’m alone,” he murmured again.

  “No, Dad . . . ,” Abigail started, but she knew it was futile. He was mourning—they all were—and he had to deal with the loss of Melody in his own way. She patted his hand, and when he didn’t flinch, Abigail tentatively put her arms around his shoulders and squeezed. “Hailey’s here. And I’m a phone call away.”

  For her part, Hailey barely reacted to Abigail’s announcement. “I knew you’d go back,” she said, but there wasn’t an ounce of hostility in her voice. It was as if she were merely observing the weather. I knew it would rain today.

  “You’re going to be fine, right?” Abigail said more to herself than to Hailey.

  “This is what people do when someone dies,” Hailey confessed dully. “They go on. Persevere. Endure. I guess we’re going on.”

  “I guess we are.”

  “I’ll try my best.” Hailey reached behind the pillow she was wrapped around and handed Abigail a small bundle. “Here. Take these. I think Mom would have wanted you to have them.”

  Abigail didn’t know that she was reaching for her mother’s rosary and prayer book until they were folded between her hands. “No,” she said, trying to hand them back, “she would have wanted you to have them.”

  “I have my own.”

  “But you and Mom . . .” Abigail hesitated, working around a lump in her throat. How could she admit that this was something Hailey and Melody shared, something that she was not a part of? After Hailey’s confirmation, the lines of her mother’s spiritual devotion deepened, too. It was a place where they could meet each other, where they could find a square of common ground on which to stand. Abigail couldn’t meet them there. Maybe she didn’t want to.

  “Believe me, Abby,” Hailey said. “These are for you.”

  What could she do but run her fingers across the embossed cover and feel the weight of the beads in her palm? “Thank you,” Abigail whispered, knowing she held a small treasure. She leaned down and wrapped her sister in a hug. “I love you,” Abigail said

  because it was the only thing left to say. I love you and I can’t help fearing for you at least a little. But she couldn’t say the last part.

  “I love you, too.”

  †

  Lou and Hailey lasted six months in Newcastle without Melody. They waited until Hailey was done with school for the year; then they sold their citron home, liquidated Melody’s modest life insurance policy, and rented a small U-Haul with a car dolly to transport the few things they had decided to keep.

  By the middle of June, Lou and Hailey were the proud owners of a single-wide prefabricated home at the edge of Bayou Vista, an ancient but well-kept trailer park on the outskirts of Rosa Beach, Florida.

  When they showed up at the door of the on-campus apartment Abigail had rented for the summer, she didn’t know whether to laugh at the ridiculousness of it or cry, so she did both. She laughed for them. And when Lou and Hailey had left and she was alone—for the moment at least—Abigail cried for herself.

  It took me two
weeks to gather the courage to go back to Hailey’s apartment. Exactly fourteen days and two hours passed between the moment I first discovered her slumped inside the chipped porcelain bathtub until I could force myself to return and begin the process of erasing the signs of her existence.

  Though removing Hailey was the last thing I wanted, I couldn’t help but see it that way: like a purging almost, a deletion of Hailey Anne Bennett in every form but memory or photograph. No longer would there be a lease agreement in her name, pinning her to this time and place, assuring me that she was here and more or less safe with, at the very least, a roof over her head. No longer would there be a maxed-out credit card bearing her signature, a subscription to Vogue that she would thumb through over a cup of weak coffee, or a valid driver’s license with Hailey looking unduly charming instead of gray-skinned and horrible like everyone else’s frightening ID photos.

  And it was my job to expunge all these tokens, these little guarantees of life. I had to sort them and box them, sell them, give them away, or store them in some closet where they could sit in ambush, waiting to remind and devastate at just the wrong moment.

  I put it off for two weeks, but I would have gladly postponed my return to Hailey’s apartment for two years.

  When I slid my key into her front door lock for one of the last times, I half expected the small rooms to have darkened, succumbed in some visible way to grief in Hailey’s absence. But the apartment was exactly as I had left it—minus, of course, the men in uniform. I closed the door behind me with a careful click, then stepped out of my shoes and crossed the floor barefoot and silent, waiflike and solemn as if I were treading on holy ground. As if her spirit hovered over me, watching. The undeniable truth was, she was everywhere I turned. And in between the places filled by her, there was something entirely unexpected: remnants of him. Of Tyler Kamp.

  Of course I knew the name. Though my contact with Hailey was sporadic at best, and I had never actually met the most recent love of her life, I knew who he was. I knew what he meant to my sister. Most significantly, I knew that Hailey had anticipated him to be the person who would finally come to her rescue.

  What I didn’t know was everything else about him. Where did he work? Where did he live? What was he like? What were his intentions with my sister? How could he be so in love with Hailey one minute and then gone the next?

  I had scanned the crowd at Hailey’s vigil and at her funeral, and as far as I could tell, Tyler hadn’t shown up. I felt like I would recognize him instantly—Hailey never dated anything less than perfection. Her boyfriends were all legendarily attractive, more often than not whispering to her in exotic accents and radiating an air of enticing mystery. One had been a model, one an aspiring actor. Once Hailey dated a man nearly twenty years her senior who owned a yacht and took her to the Miami Bay Regatta, where she christened his new boat with a bottle of two-hundred-dollar Veuve Clicquot.

  Tyler, the latest in a long line of remarkable men, would have to be equally impressive.

  But no such Apollo showed up to say his final good-byes to Hailey. In fact, none of them had come at all. Her funeral mass was much like my mother’s: intimate, small, almost lonely.

  As I sorted through Hailey’s dresser drawers, extracting the leftovers that Tyler had forgotten when he cleaned out his things and left my sister, I raged at him in my mind. Had he lived with her? or only spent the occasional night? Had he made promises that broke her heart? Or did she misinterpret his intentions? The only crime I could convict him of with any certainty was abandonment, but that didn’t stop me from vilifying him for a hundred different sins that I was sure he had committed.

  Hating him was cathartic, but my fury reached a new level when I slid the nightstand drawer open and found Hailey’s dreams nestled inside. A glossy print magazine stared up at me, replete with the photo of a stunning bride swathed in white. Though the magazine was new, it had obviously been thumbed through dozens of times, and there were dog-eared corners throughout. With my heart in my throat, I sank to the bed and turned to the pages she had marked.

  For the rest of the afternoon, I lived the wedding that I was sure my sister had imagined. Her dress was strapless but simple, elegant in the lay of the exquisite fabric instead of the flashy sparkle of faux gems and sequins. Her ring was a platinum band encircling a square-cut diamond. Her flowers were pink roses. And I would have stood beside her in a knee-length, chocolate-colored dress.

  Near the back of the magazine I found a page bookmarked with a square of creamy linen cardstock, the logo of a local greenhouse embossed in the corner. The note was short and I read it in a glance, but I held it for many long minutes studying each word as if I could uncover a secret code in his profession. There was no cloak-and-dagger mystery, but his lie had proven deadly.

  I ripped the card down the middle, splitting I love you and forever, and rending Tyler’s name in two.

  XIII

  After spending Canada Day with Eli and Tyler, Abigail found herself to be the honorary member of some slapdash sort of makeshift family. The two men were already family, but Eli intentionally pulled back to make room for her in a way that was both heartwarming and disconcerting. Tyler watched from the sidelines, apparently wary of the mixed messages Abigail continued to send him, but he didn’t seem opposed to seeing more of her and watching where this all would go.

  As for Abigail, for the first time in years, maybe decades, she felt like there was a space carved out just for her. There was an emptiness here that she alone could fill; she didn’t have to move over to make room for Hailey, another coworker, or anyone else for that matter. Deep down, Abigail feared it was useless to form any sort of attachments, and she tried to distance herself from the indefinable role that Eli seemed ready for her to satisfy. But as much as she rebelled against the possibility of letting things get muddled, she found that her defenses were steadily weakening.

  Revenge, she told herself, lying in the darkness of the trailer when the stars were burning holes in the midnight sky and she couldn’t sleep. Remember why I’m here: revenge.

  But that wasn’t entirely true. Abigail had premeditated nothing when she stepped on a plane bound for the West Coast. True, she had imagined a handful of different scenarios, of confrontations and shouting matches, of accusations that would defer some of the guilt she felt to the shoulders of the man who should rightfully bear it. She wanted to make Tyler pay. But mostly she had gone because her life was in shambles, her mind was besieged, and she felt she couldn’t go on without looking into the eyes of the man who gave Hailey enough of a reason to finally kill herself. Who was he? Was he the monster she expected? Meeting

  Tyler and then facing the violence that lay dormant in her own broken heart was more than Abigail had bargained for. Was she really capable of killing this man? of paying the blood sacrifice that Hailey’s life, Hailey’s unforgivable sin, demanded? Now that she knew Tyler was everything she had steeled herself against yet nothing she had anticipated, was she capable of going through with the penance that she believed Hailey’s death required?

  The way Abigail saw it, Hailey’s suicide note and her two terse sentences were indicative of the tragically codependent nature of her sister’s entire life. Abigail could finish Hailey’s sentences for her. I don’t blame you for twenty-six years of failing me. I don’t blame Tyler for failing me the rest of my life. And yet somebody had to pay for their failure. Somebody had to pay for what happened, didn’t they?

  Because living in the tension between what she wanted to do and couldn’t, and what she shouldn’t do but wanted to, was so difficult, Abigail gave in for a while. She suspended the materialization of her hazy intentions and let life sweep her along as if none of what brought her to British Columbia in the first place mattered. It went so against her organized, sensible nature that Abigail felt like an off-balance centrifuge—tipping, spinning, falling. It was a jarring but not altogether disagreeable feeling. She went with it.

  A few weeks after a bri
dge had been crossed the night they talked over salmon and wine, Eli opened up his home to Abigail and offered her the use of his downstairs bathroom. It was across the house from the little mudroom commode that she had been utilizing at night, and it featured a roomy shower with fantastic water pressure and, somewhat surprisingly, a lovely marble-topped cabinet, where she could finally store her toiletries for good.

  At first, Abigail felt a little strange sliding Eli’s house key out from underneath the geranium pot where he placed it just for her use. It was even harder to make herself tiptoe down the narrow hallway past the black-and-white portraits of Eli’s ancestors in discolored gilt-edged frames. Once in a while, Abigail would hear footsteps above her and she’d freeze, terrified of getting caught, terrified that Tyler would descend the steps and find her there, crouching in the darkness like some criminal. But then, Eli had invited her in.

  Abigail had used the extra bathroom in Eli’s house for a while when it struck her that the service shed locker room had gone untended since the last time she set foot in it days before. Dismayed that she had overlooked one of her responsibilities when Eli was being so nice to her, Abigail snuck to the service shed one Sunday to scour the bathroom she had neglected.

  Eli usually frowned at doing work of any kind at the winery on Sundays, but she reasoned that the situation warranted it. When Eli left for church early in the morning, Abigail stole through the vineyards dressed in the stained, grubby clothes she used for cleaning out barrels. She was equipped with armfuls of towels and rags from her own stash and ready to plunge headfirst into what she knew would be a disaster zone.

  The bathroom turned out to be even worse than she had expected. The floor was blotted with dirty footprints, and the mirrors were splattered with gray water. Even the lockers bore marks from muddied hands. It was so filthy, Abigail kicked one of the open metal doors with an aggravated grunt. It made such a glorious slamming sound that she opened the door and did it again. Slam! Take that, she thought. Slam! And that. But the object of her frustrations was unclear even to Abigail.