The Moment Between

by Nicole Baart

  With a sigh, she dropped the towels on the short bench and crossed the room to grab the bucket of cleaners from beneath the filthy sink. But Abigail could instantly feel that the bucket was too light, and when she lifted out the industrial-size all-purpose spray, she realized the bottle was nearly empty. So was the toilet bowl cleaner and the glass spray. She couldn’t clean this sort of grime with plain old water.

  Abigail sighed and put her hands on her hips to survey the compact room. She knew there was a metal utility cabinet in the entryway between the bathroom and the rest of the shed, but the door was padlocked, just like the door that led to where the equipment and tools were kept.

  Normally, Abigail would be too decorous to do anything other than mention the shortage to Eli and then clean the bathroom at the next opportunity she got. But there was a certain ease in her growing familiarity with Eli, and Abigail was sure that she had learned some things about her employer. One such revelation was the knowledge that he didn’t keep his keys on a key chain—he hid them.

  Abigail went back to the sink and got down on her knees, feeling inside the gaping cupboard and around the edges. No key as far as she could tell. Next she stood on the bench and combed the dusty tops of the four side-by-side lockers. Nothing. Searching inside the lockers, behind the plastic-framed mirror, and along the top edge of the shower stall produced the same result.

  Exhausting the hiding places in the bathroom, Abigail left the dingy room and went to stand in the center of the square entryway. It was nothing more than a truncated hall, really, a ten-by-ten enclosure with doors on three sides and a utility cabinet on the fourth. One door led outside, one door led to the bathroom, and one door led to the equipment shed proper and was heavily padlocked. The only place left to look was on or around the utility cabinet itself.

  Abigail slid her hands all over the cabinet but found nothing. She was too short to see the top of the metal closet, but she was determined enough to find the key that she went back into the bathroom and dragged the little bench across the floor so she could stand on it. The bench helped, but Abigail still couldn’t see if there was anything on the top of the cabinet. She stood on her tiptoes and reached as far as she could, displacing an inch of dust in the process. Abigail erupted in a succession of sneezes and was about to give up when she inadvertently knocked something to the floor. The tinny clink of metal on concrete told her she had found what she was looking for.

  Thompson Hills was a ghost town on Sunday morning, and Abigail celebrated her find with an uncharacteristic whoop. She hopped to the ground and retrieved the key from underneath the bench. Dusting it off, Abigail tried it in the padlock and let out another triumphant cry when it clicked. She removed the rusted lock and hooked it on the belt loop of her jean shorts, then swung the double doors wide open.

  A glance at the interior of the cabinet showed Abigail that extra cleaning supplies were not stored inside. In fact, the cabinet was mostly empty, save two pairs of crusted over old work boots on the bottom shelf and a limp tool belt sagging on a ledge near the middle. Straining to see the top shelves, Abigail noted that there was a cardboard box near the top. It was just tall enough to contain a few stacked bottles of cleaning solution, and since she had gone through so much trouble to open the metal chest in the first place, she positioned the bench so she could reach the box and see for herself.

  Something inside the box thudded dully when she pulled it down. It didn’t slosh or feel heavy enough to contain bottles of cleaner, but Abigail peeled back the cardboard tabs anyway and peered inside. There were a handful of dirty rags that she pawed out of the way, then a stack of old newspapers and outdated National Geographic magazines that she ignored. Sticking her hand deep into the box, Abigail patted the dark recesses until her fingers struck something cold and hard. Confused by the smooth feel of icy metal, she gripped the object and lifted it to the light.

  The moment it was in her palm, Abigail knew what she was holding, but that didn’t stop her from letting a choked gasp escape her lips when the handle of a graphite-colored handgun appeared above the edge of the box. Shock sent a series of stinging tremors from her scalp to her fingertips, and she instinctively tightened her grip.

  Abigail was holding the barrel of the gun, a long, cool cylinder that was rounded on the bottom and squared on the top with a raised sight at the tip of each end. Biting her lip, she carefully aligned the weapon in her right hand, gripping the notched black handle so that the barrel lay flat in her left palm. She avoided the trigger so vigilantly, it might have been tipped with poison.

  Etched into the side of the gun was the word Glock, and then, after a short space, 22. The G of Glock was elongated and misshapen; it encompassed the entire word, wrapping around it so the only truly legible letters were lock. Something about the brand, the distinctive logo, stirred a forgotten corner of Abigail’s memory. She was an avid news buff and read every issue of Newsweek cover to cover. Surely there had been an article about Glock handguns. Were they used by law enforcement professionals?

  Confused and slightly afraid, Abigail turned the weapon over and over. It was very cold and much, much heavier than she had imagined a gun would be. She had never held a gun before, and it filled her with a sort of hostile dread—she hated the way it felt in her hands, the way it pressed her arms down and forced her to hold it up almost against her will. Guns don’t kill people, she thought. People kill people. With the ominous weight of cold metal in her palms, Abigail had to agree. Lifting this weapon, peering down the line of sight, and pulling the trigger would have to be an act of intention.

  With a very deliberate motion and a disproportionately unsteady hand, Abigail raised the gun and pointed it at the round, silver lock of the bathroom door. There was an obvious scored grip at the end of the barrel, and she grasped it in between her thumb and the knuckle of her forefinger and pulled. It stuck.

  Abigail wasn’t strong enough to chamber a round with the gun raised, so she lowered it and pushed down on the handle while she tried again. It took her three tries, but eventually there was the smooth clack-clack-clack of metal on metal, and Abigail saw the brassy flash of a bullet before the chamber snapped closed so hard she jumped. Then, filling her lungs with as much air as they would hold, she held the gun in her right hand and supported the bottom with her left. Abigail found the door lock, closed one eye, and aligned the sights.

  When the barrel was perfectly in line with her target, Abigail put her finger on the trigger. “Bang,” she whispered.

  That one little word sent shock waves down her taut spine. It startled Abigail so much, it sounded so definitive, so harsh, that she dropped the gun.

  The clatter of the Glock hitting the floor made her scream. Abigail sprang away from the discarded weapon as if it were a cobra, coiled and ready to strike, instead of a neglected piece of man-made hardware. Her heart was thudding so hard it ached in her chest, and she pressed the heel of her hand to her breastbone in the hope of easing the pain.

  With her hand in place over her heart, Abigail impulsively crossed herself. It was something she rarely did, something that signified a childhood that had been less than idyllic, that she tried to forget. But with the strange black gun at her feet, somehow it felt appropriate. Forehead, chest, shoulder, shoulder. Each touch deliberate, almost calculated.

  “Elijah Dixon,” Abigail said, “what in the world are you doing with a gun in your cabinet?”

  Abigail had a vague awareness of the fact that guns were far more strictly regulated in Canada than they were in the U.S., and she was sure that Eli would be in serious trouble if anyone knew there was a Glock hidden in his equipment shed. Had he crossed the border with it? Why was it so recklessly abandoned in the bottom of a nondescript cardboard box? Why was it loaded? Abigail knotted her fingers in her hair and held her head. Was it loaded? Had she seen a bullet? Or were her eyes playing tricks on her?

  Regret expanded against Abigail’s rib cage until she was sure that she could hear the crack of se
parating bones. She wished with all her being that she had never gone snooping for more cleaning supplies. She wished she could forget what she had uncovered.

  She had to make it go away.

  Abigail grabbed the gun with two fingers and thrust it back into the box. She arranged the magazines and newspapers over the top of it, then scattered the rags so they covered everything. As she wove the four cardboard tabs together, Abigail stifled a sickened shiver. She was putting a loaded gun in a flimsy box meant for nothing more threatening than a few bottles of cleaner. Thankfully, it looked like no one had touched it for years, and she wondered if there was a way she could return the thick layer of dust to the box. But no, that was impossible. She’d have to just put it back where she found it, lock the cabinet, and pray that no one noticed that the accumulation of dusty soot had been displaced.

  Abigail arranged everything just the way it had been, including the padlock key at the far right corner of the cabinet top, and cautiously backed out of the equipment shed casting guilty glances over her shoulder. No one was around. No one had seen her. And yet she couldn’t shake a feeling of culpability, as if she were the one who had put the gun there instead of merely being the person who found it.

  But as she sprinted from the service shed, Abigail knew that her conscience was troubled for good reason. For even as she hated the feel of that gun, even as she lamented the fact that she had found it in the first place, some small part of her soul rang with the knowledge that if she hoped to make Tyler pay for what he had done, she now had a way to do it.

  †

  If there was a way to thrive with Lou and Hailey transplanted in Florida, Abigail never discovered it. When her father and sister made the transition to Rosa Beach, Abigail wanted nothing more than to ignore their presence. How could they do this to her? How could they invade her new life, wreck her chance at a fresh start?

  But as much as she resented the intrusion, Abigail also understood that Lou’s intention was never to ruin her life. He merely wanted to preserve his own.

  Abigail had been in Florida for less than a year, and in the months of her absence Hailey had undergone yet another personality evolution. At sixteen years old, she was a force to be reckoned with for more reasons than simply her disarming good looks.

  There had always been a bit of an edge to Hailey Bennett, but the almost-woman she had become in her adolescence had such a wild fierceness to her it was downright alarming. She seemed taut, ready to burst at any moment, to dissolve into tears or fly into a rage at the smallest hint of provocation. Abigail quickly realized that Hailey’s growing instability was a secret that first Melody and then Lou had carefully guarded from her.

  But no one could hide it anymore. Whether she liked it or not, Abigail was once again thrust into the multifaceted role of mother, caretaker, and disciplinarian, never mind sister and friend.

  Although it wasn’t like Hailey wanted her sister to step into that role. Hailey was reveling in the anonymity of being the new girl in a new town. Nobody knew her or her past. No one had heard alarming stories about that “pretty Bennett girl” or told their kids to stay away from that “strange child.”

  School wasn’t in session, but that didn’t mean that Hailey wasn’t instantly popular—she trawled the mall and made friends by merit of her striking blue eyes and flippant ways. She was perfectly imperfect with her eccentric ideas and lightning flash of changing moods. Hailey was the definition of cool because she was the most beautifully astonishing person anyone could ever hope to meet.

  Beautiful, astonishing, eccentric, striking . . . Hailey was many things. But just below the surface she was also unstable, and within the first month that Lou and Hailey lived in Florida, she proved the extent of her unpredictability.

  Abigail had a work-study job in the library of South Seminole, and she was busy fixing the bindings on aging books one day when the phone at the front desk rang.

  “Phone for you, Abigail,” the head librarian called over the return counter. Her voice was soft and melodious, but there was a peculiar look on her face that said, “You shouldn’t be receiving calls on the job.”

  “Thank you,” Abigail said, ducking her head. She put down the book that she had been working on and tried to hurry over to the phone without disrupting the hushed air of the nearly empty library.

  Taking the phone and turning her back on her boss with an apologetic smile, Abigail muttered into the mouthpiece, “Yes?”

  “Abby, you gotta come and pick me up.”

  “Hailey?”

  “Who’d you think it was? Seriously, Sis, sometimes you are so opaque.”

  “Dense, Hailey. Be normal—say dense.”

  “Impenetrable.”

  “Whatever. Where are you?”

  “In the security office at the Sawgrass Sands Mall.”

  “What?”

  “I got in a fight.”

  “What?” Abigail’s voice hurdled over the acceptable threshold of noise.

  “Shhh!”

  Abigail swiveled to face her employer, her cheeks ashen. “Sorry,” she mouthed. Then she turned away again and whispered into the phone, “Hailey Bennett, you did not get into a fight.”

  “Oh, but I did.” Her voice dropped. “And I won. You should see the other girl.”

  “You got into a catfight?”

  “That’s not what we call it. We call it a—”

  “Hailey.”

  “Whatever. Just come pick me up. They won’t let me go until a parent or guardian comes to collect me.”

  Abigail wanted to say, “I’m neither of those things,” but she strangled the phone instead. She was going to tell Hailey that she’d be there after work; cooling her heels in the mall security office for a couple of hours would do her sister a little good. But before Abigail could say another word, Hailey hung up on her.

  Abigail stopped just short of slamming the receiver down and had a full-blown argument with herself over what to do. Should she call Lou? go down there herself? She didn’t get off work for another two and a half hours. Could she let Hailey wither beneath the cold stares of angry security guards for that long? Then again, Hailey hardly sounded like she was in wallflower mode. More likely than not she’d hold up just fine on her own.

  But whether or not Hailey would be permanently damaged by a short stay in the custody of beefy mall guards, Abigail couldn’t bring herself to abandon her sister. Melody hadn’t even been gone a year—who knew what sort of emotional turmoil the already-scarred Hailey was enduring?

  Though the head librarian was less than impressed that an employee was going to skip out of work early, Abigail didn’t give her a choice. “Family crisis,” she explained, not waiting for permission to leave.

  The security office of Sawgrass Sands wasn’t hard to find. Abigail parked near a Guess? outlet at the posh, pedestrian mall and followed the wrought-iron road signs to a narrow hallway between the Gap and Banana Republic. At the end of the brick walkway was a well-lit and modern-looking office. And there, behind the glass door marked Security, Abigail could just make out the kitten heel of one of Hailey’s new black sandals. It was bobbing, bobbing, bobbing.

  Taking a steadying breath, Abigail pushed open the door and intentionally turned away from her sister. On the opposite side of the room was a burly man in a white collared shirt behind a high counter.

  “Hi,” she said evenly, extending her hand. “I’m Abigail Bennett. I’m here to pick up Hailey.”

  The guard gave her a bored look, completely ignored her outstretched hand, and turned back to the papers in front of him. “I need to speak with her parent or guardian.”

  “I’m her sister.”

  “Good for you.”

  Abigail sighed. “Our mother died last year and our father is . . . He’s not equipped to deal with this sort of thing. I’m the closest thing Hailey’s got to a functioning parent.”

  The guard squinted at Abigail for a moment, apparently trying to decide if her story was a far
ce intended to pull his heartstrings or something close to the truth.

  “I’m a junior at South Seminole majoring in accounting,” Abigail offered as if the reference to her education would impress him. “I’ll take responsibility for whatever my sister has done.”

  “You don’t look like your sister,” the guard assessed coolly.

  Abigail shot Hailey a glance, taking in her miniskirt and layered, skin-hugging tank tops. “Tell me about it,” she muttered.

  “You don’t look old enough to be in college.”

  “Would you like to see my ID?” Abigail retorted.

  The guard paused, deliberating, and then pushed himself off the stool he was sitting on and moved in front of the counter. “Fine. You can have her. You’re lucky—the other girl’s family doesn’t want to press charges since you’d probably just sue back. But this young woman is effectively banned from Sawgrass Sands. I don’t want to see her here again.” He crossed his arms and glared at Hailey. “Got that, missy?”

  “Missy?” Hailey questioned, her eyebrows arching dramatically.

  Abigail all but jumped across the small room and grabbed her sister’s arm. “Come on.”

  Hailey was standing now, towering over Abigail in her little heels. Abigail could feel the electricity in her sister’s body, the way

  she leaned slightly toward the security guard as if she wanted to go after him, too. Why had he called her missy?

  “Let’s go.” Abigail pushed Hailey in front of her and turned to the security guard to distract him from the antagonism in the younger girl’s eyes. “I’m so sorry about what happened,” Abigail said, even though what happened had absolutely nothing to do with her. “It won’t happen again. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Then they were out the door and Hailey’s heels were a staccato of angry sound on the patterned red bricks. “Can you believe that?” she fumed.

  “Now is not the time for you to get all indignant.”