The Moment Between

by Nicole Baart

  “I’m so . . . I’m so sorry,” I whispered once my tears were gone and there was nothing left for me to do but face the man before me.

  Eli was standing, obviously uncomfortable with my emotional display but unable to bring himself to abandon me in such a terrible state. When I spoke, he started to lower himself to his haunches, but he stalled halfway down and groaned. “These old knees can’t handle that.” He pulled the coffee table a little closer and sat on it.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered again.

  “I know.” Eli sighed heavily. “That definitely wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done.” He pulled the gun from his waistband with a flourish. “Thanks for finding this for me. I’ve been looking for it for years.”

  Confusion must have creased my face because he rushed to explain. “When I quit the force and moved back here, the only thing I took with me was the car that I was driving and my backup piece tucked in a cardboard box in the trunk.” The corner of Eli’s lip pulled up in a sardonic grin. “Border patrol never thought to ask.”

  I watched him, waiting for him to continue. Why keep his backup? Before I could open my mouth to ask, it clicked. He kept the gun just in case . . . Just in case he found that he couldn’t live with himself and decided to take the coward’s way out. Just in case he decided to end things like Hailey had. I felt a rush of fury blaze bright and hot in my eyes and knew that Eli had seen it when he raised his hands in defense.

  “It’s not like that,” he said, acquitting himself before I had a chance to accuse. “Not anymore. At one time I believed the only way to end the suffering was to end it. I know it sounds cliché, but I believe that God works in mysterious ways.”

  I glared at him, but his gaze was guileless.

  He considered the gun for a moment. “And I can’t help also believing there’s a purpose in everything.”

  “In aiming a gun at someone? trying to gather the courage to pull the trigger?”

  “Even that.” Eli laid the Glock on the coffee table beside him and leaned close to me. “But I don’t think you would have done it.”

  I brushed my hands across my cheeks and took a long, steadying breath. Sitting up, I pulled my legs beneath me and sat cross-legged in front of Eli. “I don’t know what I’m capable of anymore.”

  “Great things, Abigail Bennett. You’re capable of great things.”

  “So was Hailey.”

  Eli clasped his hands in front of him and gazed at the carpet. “She was a beautiful girl. I saw her once in a tiny photo on Tyler’s phone before he deleted it.”

  At the mention of Tyler, I looked around the room. I don’t know if I expected him to be hovering in some corner, waiting to abuse me for what I tried to do, or if I imagined he’d be penitent, filled with sorrow at the loss of someone who could have been everything to him. “Where is he?”

  “He left.”

  There were so many questions tied into that one small statement, I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Tyler can’t handle something like this,” Eli said, rescuing me from the pain of trying to articulate all I felt. “Not now.”

  “But . . .” What had I expected? Did I really imagine he’d stick around to talk this through?

  “He’s growing, but he’s got a long way to go.”

  “I—”

  “You know, I should have seen it coming.” Eli put a hand to his forehead and rubbed the weathered skin of his temples. “Do you know why we keep rosebushes at the end of every row of vines?”

  The sudden shift in conversation unnerved me, and I shook my head as if to clear it.

  Eli interpreted my gesture as an invitation to continue. “Grapevines are delicate plants, but roses are even more fragile. If we see fungus, insect damage, mildew—you name it—on one of the rosebushes, we know that our vines could be in serious trouble. And then we can take the appropriate steps to prevent anything really horrible from happening.” He sighed. “I saw so many signs. . . . I should have been paying attention.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I muttered, shifting as if to get up. “Where is he? I need to . . . I just—”

  “Someday,” Eli interrupted me again, but this time his tone was commanding. “There will be time to put this all to rights someday. But not now. Not today.”

  That wasn’t quite enough for me, but I could tell it was all I was going to get out of Eli. I sank back and picked at the seam of my running shorts. “What happened between them? Did he ever tell you?”

  “He’s kind of a private man,” Eli said. “But I know that he carries a lot of deep hurts. Tyler never got over his father’s death, even though he was young when it happened. And he never quite accepted Murray as his dad. Nice enough guy but not much interested in being a father.”

  I bit my lip, stared at my fingers as they curled and uncurled in my lap. “He just . . . he seems so arrogant, so in charge.”

  “Isn’t that often the case when people are trying to cover up for their own self-perceived inadequacies?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “When Tyler’s mom was about to die,” Eli continued, “I think it made him reexamine everything. He told me that he came home because he wanted to start over.”

  “He said Hailey pulled him down.”

  “Doesn’t misery love company? Doesn’t brokenness beget more brokenness? I can only imagine how two hurting people like them could wallow together in some sad pit of their own making.”

  “She wasn’t miserable,” I told him. “She thought he was her redemption.”

  Though he had been tender with me from the moment he walked in the door, Eli fixed me with a hard look. “She was wrong.”

  “Hailey was lost,” I replied. “She spent twenty-six years trying to stifle herself, trying to control what was uncontrollable. For some reason, she believed that Tyler could fix what was broken in her.”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She pinned everything on him.” I scowled at him, daring him to contradict me. “It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “When he broke up with her, I’m sure she panicked. Pregnant and alone? Hailey couldn’t take care of herself. How could she take care of a baby?”

  “One final rejection,” Eli said, filling in the blanks. Then he added carefully, “And you . . . you—”

  “I found her,” I breathed, stopping him with a sigh so low he clamped his mouth shut. “I found her in her apartment when she missed our lunch date. I was supposed to be taking her out for her birthday.” I paused, remembering the excited phone call, the happy tremor in her voice when she contacted me of her own volition. “We had set it up a week earlier. She told me that she had big news to tell me. Big news—something that would change everything.”

  Though Eli wasn’t the sentimental sort, I could see this last bit of information strummed a raw nerve. “The baby?”

  “I don’t know, but I found a bridal magazine in her apartment. I think she thought Tyler was going to marry her.”

  “He was going to be the father of her child,” Eli murmured. Then he heaved a long, anguished sigh. “Oh, that poor girl.”

  His reaction stirred me; it made me want to talk. All at once I wanted to remember her, honor her, to take the time to consider all the small things about my sister that made her who she was.

  “Hailey was brilliant,” I asserted. “She loved words, and she had an amazing memory. There was always something going on inside of her that I couldn’t begin to follow or understand.”

  When Eli looked up to meet my gaze, I went on. “Of course she was beautiful, but she was much more, too. She was strong and smart and capable and persuasive. . . . You know, she was born when Halley’s Comet was visible from earth. My mom told her the story all the time when she was little; it was almost a fairy tale at our house.”

  Eli exhaled in something that could have been considered a restrained chuckle.

  “Of course, Hailey grew up loving the sky.
When she was in fifth grade and her teacher read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, she learned that Mark Twain had been born when Halley’s Comet was visible, and he died seventy-five years later when it passed the earth again.” I shrugged as if it made perfect sense. “She always said she wanted to die the same way—beneath the banner of the comet.”

  “Her birthday was a close second,” Eli commented.

  A chill splintered icy fingers through me. “I suppose.”

  “I think it was Mark Twain who called life ‘the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity.’”

  “They were soul mates,” I said dryly.

  We were silent for a while then, and for the first time since Hailey died, I let the full force of it wash over me. I knew how she did it and why, but I would never understand the reasoning that brought her to that place. I would never grasp the pain that she must have endured to find herself curled up in a bathtub, the razor in her hands. And nothing—nothing—could ever erase what she had done, the gap that she had left in my life. Not Tyler’s life. Not even my own.

  “I miss her so much,” I whimpered, my voice collapsing on the words. But even though I could barely speak, I was suddenly bursting with things I wanted to say. “And I’m so angry at her. She had no right. She caused so much pain. She almost made me . . . I almost . . .”

  “You can’t almost do anything,” Eli said, his tone matter-of-fact. “You either do something or you don’t. And you didn’t.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “No, you didn’t. You felt compelled to. You didn’t understand that her debt wasn’t yours to pay.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. My tears were gone and so was my voice, but in the stillness I was gripped by the desire to inhale, to breathe in as much air as I could hold, to let it fill my lungs and expand my chest, because I could. Because when I opened my mouth, I found that I could breathe past the ache. And when I was finally full, something small and fledgling fought to put down tenuous roots. I felt like I had been bled dry, but in the wake of all that loss I could accept the possibility that maybe Eli was right. About many things. Maybe about everything.

  After a long while, I tentatively reached for his hand. When Eli saw me move, he grabbed my hand and crushed it in both of his own.

  “I have to go,” I told him.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Florida?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll take you to the airport tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.” My eyes were on my legs, but I could feel Eli looking at me. I lifted my head.

  “If you need somewhere . . .” He fumbled for a moment and I snuck a peek at him, but the second my eyes met his, he glanced away. “I think that the where matters,” he said, his voice thick.

  I couldn’t help but smile a little, thinking of his terroir, his wine.

  “You have a home here,” he said. And though he got up the very next minute and walked away, I believed that he meant every word.

  But I couldn’t stay in Revell. Not after what had happened. Not after what I had done. Nothing made sense for me but to go back to the place I had called home for over a decade. It was the logical, most Abigail-like thing I could possibly do.

  †

  The day after I arrived in Rosa Beach, I tried more or less to pick up my life where I had left off. When I showed up at Johnson, McNally & Bennett, everyone acted as if I were a conquering hero, returning from some noble quest. It killed me, knowing that they had no idea where I had been or why. How would they react if they knew?

  But I wasn’t about to tell my coworkers a thing, so I accepted their hugs and pats on the back and ducked out as quickly as I could. Even though it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do, at eight o’clock sharp the following morning, I was poised and ready, sitting behind my desk. After all, resuming my life as normal was the reason I had returned.

  I don’t know what I anticipated, but I didn’t think that everything would feel so strange. That first day back at work was an enormous battle for me, a frustrating duel between the part of me that wanted to pretend everything could go back to the way it had been and the rest of my soul that knew such hopes were sheer foolishness.

  Those long, agonizing hours at the job I had once loved ended with me all but running out of the office at exactly 5 p.m. I felt claustrophobic, held captive by my custom Herman Miller chair, and laden with old responsibilities and expectations that only seemed to loom larger after a few months’ hiatus from the real world.

  “It’s great to have you back,” Colton told me as I slipped out of the office. He was leaning against the front desk and laughing about something with Marguerite. But he turned his head to watch me go, and though an easy smile still rested on his face, something in his eyes seemed uncertain.

  I’m not crazy, I wanted to tell him. But you don’t know me. I felt like no one knew me. Not really.

  “Thanks,” I said for his benefit. “It’s great to be back.”

  “Just don’t take off on us again, okay? I don’t think your clients liked me very well.”

  “I don’t think they trusted you,” Marguerite corrected him, winking at me as if we shared an inside joke.

  I didn’t get it.

  Sadly, catching up with my father wasn’t any simpler.

  Since I wasn’t ready to face him right away, I didn’t stop by the Four Seasons until I had been in Florida for a few days. But when I eventually gathered the courage to see him, I was surprised to find that Lou had changed much in my absence.

  The nurses told me that it could be a matter of days or weeks. Maybe months but not likely. Lou’s body was shutting down slowly, system by system. Though the doctors couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was causing his gradual decline, the nurses assured me that my father was dying of a broken heart.

  “Failure to thrive,” one called it. “He’s not interested in food or drink. Actually he’s not interested in living anymore.”

  “He’s lived a long life,” another told me. She laid her hand on my arm and offered me a sad, sympathetic smile.

  “I know,” I said, not sure I could tell her that I was actually happy for him.

  The nurse was right; Lou wasn’t interested in living anymore. But how could I blame him? What’s wrong with submitting to the gentle embrace of death when it reaches to enfold you after you’ve struggled through eighty-three years of life on this planet? I didn’t begrudge my father’s longing one bit.

  Instead of trying to talk him into fighting, I showed up every day at his bedside and loved him the best way I knew how: I was there for him.

  One night as I walked into Lou’s bedroom, I found him sound asleep. I could tell instantly that nothing would rouse him, not my footsteps on the hard floor nor even the subtle movement of my hand covering his. He was succumbing more and more often to sleep of this sort, this steadfast and seemingly bottomless rest. It was the kind of slumber that I knew he might never wake from. Though my heart wrenched to see him lying there as vulnerable as a child, I was also somewhat relieved to find him sleeping.

  Creeping quietly across the floor even though my silence was unnecessary, I slid into the chair beside my father and took his wrinkled hands in mine. Then I prayed over him, reciting the Lord’s Prayer as best I remembered it, and kissed the jumble of fingers in my hands. When I had said amen, so shall it be, over his motionless form, I reached into my purse and extracted a little box. It was a smudged Altoids tin that even after all these years still carried with it the faint scent of cinnamon.

  The metal case opened like a book, and inside I had fitted two photographs—one of me and one of Hailey. It was actually one photo, the print from her nightstand, but I didn’t feel bad cutting it apart. We were still together, face-to-face in the ancient tin turned picture frame. But for some reason, we made more sense to me this way.

  I left the small metal box in Lou’s hands, knowing that he’d feel it when he woke up. He’d see us there, and he’d know tha
t I loved him, that I understood. Or, at least, that I forgave him.

  Walking away from my father that night, I knew that I could forgive Hailey, too. Eli was right: my sister was pursued. Who was I to judge whether or not she was weak, whether or not she should have fought off her attacker longer than she already had?

  I wish that she had continued to fight—there are still many nights when I wake in the midst of darkness because my heart is cleft with a sense of deep loss. And sometimes I ache with a feeling of uncontainable regret—there is so much that she will miss, so much that we could have shared . . . if. There is always an if. But I think I can let her go now. I think I can accept that it wasn’t me. It wasn’t Tyler.

  Hailey’s death, like her life, is an unfathomable mix of brokenness. And, I think, grace.

  Maybe, just maybe, if I in my weakness and failings can forgive Hailey, the God who gave so freely of his own is able to forgive her, too.

  †

  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about snow. It’s October, two and a half months since I left Revell, and for some reason I can’t stand the fact that it’s still hot. The heat, the incessant humidity plagues me, and I find myself longing for the autumns of my youth. I remember the rains that crusted into ice, and later, the snow that gentled the world. That covered a multitude of sins. A part of me wants very much to buy a plane ticket and make my way back to Newcastle, Minnesota.

  But there’s nothing there for me anymore. And in a matter of days, weeks, there won’t be anything for me here either.

  I can’t help wondering, does it snow in the Summerlands?

  I did an Internet image search, typing in just a few keywords: snow in the Summerlands. It seemed like such a strange thing to write, such an obvious incongruity, but sure enough, seconds later my computer screen was filled with images in gray and white. There were long rows of dormant vines, slick with ice and blanketed in a thick, wooly covering of pure, silvery snow. It was a delicious, unexpected irony for me. Snow in the Summerlands . . .