by Nicole Baart
“It’s gonna get noisy,” Abigail observed.
“Well,” Jane said, getting to her feet and gathering the pitcher and glasses, “I’m glad you stopped by. It was so nice to see you.”
“It was nice to see you, too.”
“Will you come back again?”
“Yeah,” Abigail said, wishing in spite of herself that this was a relationship she could continue to form.
“Lucky for you, if you ever want to see me again, you know exactly where I’ll be.” Jane grinned and started to walk away.
With a cheeky lilt in her voice, Abigail called after her, “Too bad I don’t believe in luck.”
Jane stopped. Turned around. “Neither do I.” Her eyes glinted at Abigail, mirroring the clouds in the water, the sky. “Some people would just rather hear ‘you’re lucky’ than ‘you’re blessed.’” She winked and gave Abigail a jaunty little bow. “But since you don’t believe in luck either, I suppose I can call you what you are: blessed.”
The word snagged on an exposed corner of Abigail’s carefully veiled heart and floated there, a balloon anchored by the sharp edge of her skepticism. Blessed? Jane had no idea what she was talking about. How in the world could anyone consider Abigail Bennett’s life blessed? Would Jane call her blessed if she knew that Abigail had held that gun and pointed it, practicing? wondering if she could pull the trigger when the barrel was aimed at something other than the lock on a bathroom door? And yet Abigail couldn’t help wanting to cling to
that small word, that token of something more. Against all odds, hope unfurled a tentative wing, stroked the sky.
As Abigail watched Jane walk away, she found it hard not to hope that her friend was right. Maybe the end of her story hadn’t been written yet.
It was time to find out.
†
The rest of the day melted away, the minutes and hours of freedom rendered languorous and dreamlike by the draining sun. Abigail went back to the winery around midafternoon, when she knew it was busy and when she suspected that Eli had slipped into his dark, cool office for a short catnap with his head on the desk. She parked Paige’s car close to the building, cracked the windows an inch for ventilation, and hid the keys under the mat. Paige would find them, and Abigail wasn’t at all worried about theft in this harmless little town.
Back at the trailer with no one around, Abigail unearthed her neglected phone and plugged it into one of the outlets in Eli’s downstairs bathroom. She let it charge for an hour or so while she cleaned up. Then she turned her cell phone on, ready to pay the exorbitant roaming fees.
Once every ten days or so, Abigail touched base with her other life. She phoned the Four Seasons Manor Home and made contact with Johnson, McNally & Bennett. Even though Abigail didn’t believe them, the ladies at the Four Seasons told her, Your father needs you. And if she was talking to Marguerite, she always heard, Your clients need you. We need you. Both calls always ended the same: When are you coming home?
As far as she was concerned, they could not have possibly posed a more difficult question. There were so many variables, so many uncertainties. I don’t know, she answered, her response as predictable as their query. But today, with Jane’s unwitting encouragement, she felt ready to be more definitive. She felt capable of saying, Soon.
Finding the handgun in Eli’s locked cabinet, then spending time in the soothing, normalizing presence of someone as down-to-earth as Jane had been a sort of wake-up call for Abigail. Her time at Thompson Hills and her distance from Hailey’s suicide were granting her a perspective that she hadn’t bargained for.
It was with a sense of urgency that Abigail waited for the evening to fade. She avoided Eli’s house and made sure that she was out of sight when Eli and Tyler came home around dinnertime. But when the sun tucked itself below the edge of the horizon and a cooling, purple veil unfolded across the sky, Abigail took a few shuddering breaths, whispered something that may have been classified as a desperate prayer, and crossed the driveway to Eli’s side door.
Something inside her recoiled at the thought of seeing Eli right now—she couldn’t stand the idea of looking into his face, of disregarding his kindness toward her, his subtle influence, and boldly asking to see his nephew. She knocked twice and muttered almost inaudibly, “Let it be Tyler.”
It was. Tyler opened the door with his lips forming a question, but instead of asking it, he swallowed and said, “I’ll get Eli.”
“No.” Abigail stopped him. “Actually I was looking for you.”
Tyler shrugged. “You found me.”
“Yeah. Um . . .” Abigail berated herself for not planning this out better. What was she supposed to say? “I was just . . . I was wondering if you knew what tonight was.”
The quizzical look Tyler shot her was far from encouraging.
“I mean, tonight isn’t necessarily a special night, but it is a moonless night.” Stupid, she thought. I sound so stupid. But she fumbled on. “It’s the once-a-year, most perfect night for seeing the Perseids.”
“You lost me at tonight.”
Abigail could hardly blame Tyler for being difficult, but it took all her patience to forge ahead. “The Perseids are a meteor shower. They stretch along the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle, and they’re very, uh, easy to see with the naked eye.”
“Meteors?”
“I like that stuff.” Abigail bobbed her head almost shyly and caught a ragged breath. She looked at Tyler through downturned lashes. “You know, meteors, stars, comets . . .”
“Star Trek?”
“No, not Star Trek.”
“Star Wars?”
“Is this a test?”
“Nah, I’m just giving you a hard time.” Tyler put his hand on the doorframe and let a thin smile crack his chiseled face. “So the Perseids are happening tonight?”
“Yes.”
“And . . . ?”
“I was wondering if you’d like to watch with me.” The words cartwheeled over each other in their rush to escape. I did it! Abigail thought. Now all he has to do is say . . .
“Sure. But I thought you were sick.”
“I’m feeling better.”
Tyler’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
“I’m making amends.” Abigail took a tiny gulp.
“Okay . . .” Tyler drew out the syllables, stalling. “Where and when?”
“Somewhere high, away from light pollution. Anytime after eleven.”
Tyler checked his watch. “I’ll meet you in two hours, right here. We can walk the vineyards to the ridge at the border of Warkentin’s orchards.”
Abigail nodded. Tyler mimicked her assent, then closed the door slowly, as if he half expected her to say something more. She didn’t.
†
The two hours passed quickly for Abigail, for what were mere minutes in light of all the weeks and months that she had waited to confront Tyler? A solitary journey to the service shed to retrieve the gun erased nearly an hour because although Abigail tried to convince herself that stealing the Glock from its hiding place was no big deal, she stood in front of the cabinet for many long minutes before she worked up the courage to reach for the key. By the time Abigail returned to the little trailer, there was nothing left for her to do but turn the weapon over and over in her hands, turn everything over and over in her mind.
Abigail was arranging the hood of a bulky sweatshirt around her neck when Tyler emerged from Eli’s darkened house. She felt like a gangland thug in the silly ensemble, but it was chilly, and the only other long-sleeved shirts she had were either dressy or in the wash. All the same, she hoped she didn’t look like she was hiding something. Even though she was.
Tyler mumbled hello and Abigail responded similarly. They didn’t wave or smile or greet each other with enthusiasm; they sized up the situation warily, hesitant to set the tone for what was ahead.
When Tyler took off on a path that led away from the winery, Abigail fell into step beside him. She tucked he
r hands in the large front pocket of her hoodie so she could mangle her fingers in secret. It was dark and her hands were hidden, but she was sure that she was white-knuckled around the chill of the weighted metal.
They walked in silence for several minutes, stepping on their own shadows cast by the dirty yellow rays of Eli’s yard light. The dim, narrow ghosts that lay before them got smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter until they disappeared completely and the pair found themselves shrouded in the utter blackness of a stark, moonless night.
“Good thing I took this,” Tyler said, pulling a flashlight from the cargo pocket of his frayed shorts.
He clicked it on and trained the beam on the ground in front of him, but Abigail reached over to stop him. For a moment it seemed as if she was going to put her hand on his arm, but she couldn’t do it. Instead she pointed up and instructed, “Turn it off.”
Tyler complied without argument and raised his eyes heavenward, following the line of her finger.
The sky above them had the same luminous quality as the ebony marble-topped cabinet in Eli’s bathroom. It shimmered. It pulsed and breathed and hummed like a lovely, living thing. The enormity of darkness was stunning, a sable pool of fine ink spilled across the heavens, but it was also staggeringly bright. It glittered with a million points of light, a million distant fireflies that flickered endlessly against the black.
As they watched, a handful of meteors trembled free from their jeweled settings and careened across the vastness, disappearing into the horizon or flickering out unnoticed in some far-flung universe. Just as one meteor faded into nothingness, another took its place and began the swift fall to oblivion. Abigail wondered, as she always did, if and where they landed, these little pieces of heaven. These so-called falling stars.
“Wow,” Tyler breathed, and Abigail was surprised to hear real wonder in his voice.
“This is the peak,” Abigail explained. “We should be able to see fifty to eighty meteors an hour tonight.”
“I’ve never seen so many falling stars in my life.”
“They’re not stars,” Abigail corrected Tyler before she could stop herself.
The air was thick and viscous, impenetrable, but Abigail could make out the contour of Tyler’s face as he turned toward her. “Meteors,” he amended. “So you’re an astronomer in another life?”
“Among other things.” Abigail paused, considering how much to disclose and how much to hold tight. “Actually my sister had a thing for the sky. Anything I know about stars, constellations, meteors . . . it all came from her.” She waited for Tyler to say something in recognition, to tell her that he once dated a girl who loved stars, who was born beneath the standard of a well-known comet, but he didn’t say anything.
Tyler switched on the flashlight again. “Let’s find a place to sit.”
Abigail fell in step behind him, single file, and tried to keep pace as his long legs swallowed up the path in front of them. Tyler was tense; she could sense it—she could trace the outline of his nervous energy as surely as she could feel the sharp rim of the gun’s sight beneath her fingertip. But she didn’t know what to say to him, and she didn’t know how to put him at ease nor did she necessarily want to. So she walked in silence, listening to the thud and shuffle of their feet on the ground, and waited for Tyler to tell her that they had arrived.
The hike took about fifteen minutes, and as they emerged on the lip of a small cliff above the straight rows of gnarled cherry trees, Abigail turned a slow circle. As far as she could tell, there were no farms nearby, no homes lit up with the glow of a television or maybe a nightstand lamp. What would a gunshot sound like in this place? How far would it echo? Would anyone be close enough to hear and wonder, What was that? A rancher shooting a coyote? A crow cannon going off accidentally?
“I didn’t think to bring a blanket,” Tyler said.
Abigail spun to see him standing there, arms akimbo, the flashlight pointed at the ground uselessly. She flipped up her hood. “Me either, but this will work just fine.”
Tyler may have smiled, maybe not, but he did switch off the flashlight and lower himself to the ground. Abigail moved beside him, close but not too close, and lay back stiffly, seemingly intent to watch the drama unfold in the sky above them. He stayed sitting, arms looped around his knees.
Instead of looking at the sky, Abigail studied Tyler’s muscular back, the curve of his arms. There were questions she wanted to ask him, things she had to know, but there was no easy way to slip into the role of interrogator. So Abigail just lay there for a while, her heart thrumming a wild beat, and waited for Tyler to say something.
“How do you like working at Thompson Hills?” he ventured after a while. He didn’t turn around, but the question seemed friendly enough.
“It’s nice,” Abigail admitted. “It’s . . . kind of homey and exotic all at once. I didn’t know much about wine before I came. How about you? How is it working for your uncle?”
“Eli was my mom’s only sibling. He’s been like a dad to me.” Tyler laughed a little, but it sounded forced. “So I guess it’s been good and bad. Can you imagine working for your dad?”
“No. No, that wouldn’t go well at all.”
The conversation stalled again. To Abigail it felt like they were walking in thick mud, fighting for every little step, getting dragged down. Or maybe she was getting dragged down. Maybe this would be easy if her mind wasn’t anchored with thoughts of Hailey. Maybe this would be easy if her hands weren’t fingering the hard lines of what she hid in her sweatshirt pocket.
“What happened to your mom?” Abigail blurted without thinking.
Tyler’s pause was heavy with uncertainty. “How do you know something happened to my mom?”
Abigail fumbled. Had she given too much away already? Did Tyler suspect that she knew more about him than he realized? “You said ‘was.’ You said, ‘Eli was my mom’s only sibling.’ I just thought . . . I didn’t mean to pry.”
With a sigh, Tyler sank back onto the ground beside Abigail. He kept looking up, but Abigail could just make out the silhouette of his face in profile. It reminded her of the photo in Hailey’s purse. She could almost picture the longing look in his eyes.
“I’m being oversensitive,” Tyler said. “In answer to your question, my mom died in May after a long battle with cancer.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Abigail forced herself to form the words.
“That’s why I came home. I lived in Florida for four years. But when Mom was near the end . . . it just felt right to come home.”
Abigail tried to forget that she knew Tyler had lived in Florida. What was a logical question? What should she say next if she didn’t know what she had already learned about Tyler?
But thankfully she didn’t have to say anything. Tyler continued talking. “Thompson Hills was my mom’s before my dad died. I grew up here. Family business.”
Abigail guessed that there was a rich history, a long heritage that upheld the small estate. Under different circumstances, she’d love to know. But for now she could only focus on Tyler. “How old were you?”
“When?”
“When your father died.”
“Six. I don’t remember him much. But my mom remarried when I was ten, and Murray was a decent stepfather. He adopted me and everything.”
“But he didn’t want to stay at Thompson Hills?”
“Nah, Murray’s a city man. We moved to Vancouver a week after their wedding.”
“And Eli took over.” Abigail filled in the blanks.
“No, actually. Eli was living in Washington State. He didn’t move back until a few years later. Not until after the—” Tyler stopped and swiveled his head to seek Abigail out of the darkness. “You’ve got me telling stories that aren’t mine to tell.”
Abigail opened her mouth to speak twice before sound finally came out. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You said that already, and don’t worry, I don’t think you’re prying. I’
m going overboard. I’ve been blamed for that before.” Tyler blew a puff of air from between his pursed lips as if this frustrated him. “But if you want to know about Eli, you’re going to have to ask him yourself.”
“Okay,” Abigail said. She decided to try another tactic. “What brought you to Florida?”
“I wanted to get as far away from my family as I could possibly get.”
A wry smile flitted across Abigail’s face. Apparently she had more in common with Tyler Kamp than just a relationship with Hailey. “Pretty bad?”
“No, my mom was great. And Murray was fine, I guess. In retrospect. But I was messed up. Hurt. You know.”
Abigail could feel him withdraw even as he clipped out those few short words. Too personal. They were getting too personal. Though her head was splitting with the effort of trying to hold everything together, Abigail managed to spit out another question. “How can a Canadian just pick up and move to Florida?”
“How can an American just pick up and move to BC?”
“Touché.”
“Actually, I’m a dual citizen. Our family has always lived with one foot in each country.”
Abigail closed her eyes and watched the stars burn like cold pricks of light against the backs of her eyelids. “Did you like Florida?”
“It was hot.”
“It’s hot here.”
“A different sort of hot.”
They melted into silence again. Abigail’s fingers clenched and unclenched. Her heart stopped and stuttered and raced.
Suddenly Tyler moved beside her, propped himself up on his elbow, and leaned over her.
Abigail was too startled to move, so she cowered against the hard earth, searching the darkness for his eyes, trying to understand what he was doing and why. Now. Could she do it now? Should she? Did she want to? Would it solve anything? What would she feel? relief? a sense of completion? the slam of a door forever closing? Yes, she decided, it would be a release . . . even if it was only temporary.
Abigail skimmed her finger over the trigger, felt the firmness of it, the way it resisted her gentle pressure. She couldn’t pull it by accident. It couldn’t be an accident.
