The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  He saw Darryl tending the other end of the bar and he wanted a drink but he went directly to the small office in the back.

  Morrie was sitting at the cluttered desk, his body hunched, his elbow on the desk, forehead in his hand.

  This pose did not give Colt a good feeling.

  Colt closed the door behind him and Morrie jumped.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckin’ hell, I’m glad you’re here,” Morrie said, getting up and moving swiftly.

  For a big man he was surprisingly fast and agile. This probably had something to do with the fact that they played one-on-one basketball together every Saturday or, when the weather was shit, they’d play racquetball. They’d both been athletes all their lives even though, when they were young, they’d intermittently get drunk, high and smoke. Still, they’d both always stayed obsessively fit.

  For Colt, this was because he spent most of his youth watching his mother popping pills, chain-smoking cigarettes and sucking on a bottle of vodka. She didn’t even bother pouring it, drank it straight out of the bottle, uncut. He never remembered a time when she wasn’t zoned out or hammered, mostly both. She was thin as a rail, rarely ate and, even when she was young, her skin hung on her like old lady flesh.

  His father wasn’t much better. He didn’t pop pills but he smoked weed and snorted coke when he had the money to buy it. He remained sober during the day when he had a job but at night he’d get hammered right along with Colt’s Mom. Most of the time he didn’t have a job so Colt’s memories of his dad were pretty much filled with him less than sober.

  For Morrie, he stayed fit because he’d been around Colt’s mom and dad not to mention grew up in a bar.

  Morrie picked up a Ziploc bag with a piece of lined paper in it and handed it to Colt.

  “This came in the mail today, addressed to Feb,” Morrie waved his hand at the paper. “I put it in that thing, the bag. I didn’t want it to get tainted. Once I figured out what it was, I barely touched it.” He jerked his head to the desk. Another bag containing an envelope was lying there. “Did the same with the envelope, it’s here too.”

  It was good Morrie watched cop shows.

  Colt looked at the paper. He hadn’t seen paper like that in a long time. It was something you’d have at school. It seemed old, the writing faded. On the top in pencil, Feb’s name was written.

  He read the note, not understanding it. It sounded like teenage girl bullshit, a handwritten pissy fit. It even mentioned Kevin Kercher who’d gone to IU after high school and never came back, not even for reunions. Colt got to the bottom where the sender signed her name.

  Angie.

  “What the fuck?”

  “What the fuck is right!” Morrie exploded. “Look at the back!”

  Colt flipped the paper over and saw, again in pencil, this darker, newer, different handwriting, the words, For you.

  Something heavy and disturbing settled in his gut. Something he didn’t want there. It felt like it felt when he was a kid in his room, listening to his mom and dad fight. Knowing exactly when it would escalate by the change in their voices, being able to count it off to within seconds before he heard her head hit the wall or her cry of pain before her body hit the floor. He hadn’t had that feeling in years, not in years. Not since he sat on that toilet seat with Feb wiping away the blood his father caused to flow from his face while Morrie got the ice and Jack and Jackie left their kids to take care of him, knowing they’d raised good kids who’d know what to do while they went about the business of rocking his world.

  He wanted to open his own flesh and tear the heavy thing out. It didn’t belong there. He’d worked for years making himself into a man who didn’t carry that kind of weight around. Jack and Jackie had helped him get rid of it, and Morrie and Feb. He didn’t want it back, not ever. But particularly not when it being there had to do with Feb.

  He looked at Morrie. “Bring Feb in here.”

  “I don’t want her seein’ that.”

  “Bring her in here.”

  “Colt—”

  “Morrie, this has to do with a homicide, bring her . . . the fuck . . . in here.”

  Morrie held his eyes for too long. So long, Colt thought the situation would deteriorate. He’d fought with Morrie, too many times, but the bad blood never lasted long.

  But this was about February.

  Finally, Morrie muttered, “Shit,” and he walked out the door.

  In his head Colt went over the crime scene.

  Angie’d been done by the dumpster, murdered not dumped, right behind Jack and Jackie’s bar.

  Lab results weren’t back, autopsy not finalized, but there’d been no apparent struggle. Her eyes were closed naturally which meant she was probably out but not bludgeoned. There were no head wounds. She had maybe been drugged when she’d been slaughtered, which was good. At least it was for Angie.

  Bloody footprints leading away from the body, that much blood, what he did to her, the killer had to get messy. Footprints ended abruptly five feet away. He’d gotten into a car, his clothes and hands likely covered in Angie’s blood, and drove away.

  The hatchet was found not far from where the footprints ended. He’d tossed it aside. No prints on the hatchet, no DNA left at the scene that they could find, though, considering it was an often used alley, they were still sifting through all the shit they found.

  But it appeared it was just the footprints and the hatchet and Angie’s body. That’s all he left.

  And it had to be a he. No woman had the strength to hack those wounds, clean and precise, like he chopped wood for a living and knew what he was doing.

  Unless she was a German shot-putter, it had to be a he.

  Colt’s thoughts shifted to Feb and Angie.

  It hadn’t escaped him as he went through his day they’d once been good friends.

  Hell, even as recently as a few nights ago he’d watched Feb wander over to Angie’s table and stand beside it, looking down at Angie, saying shit he couldn’t hear but it made Angie laugh.

  Angie didn’t laugh much, never did unless she was flirting or unless Feb wandered over to her to shoot the shit with her to draw Angie out, to make her melancholy face alive again, even if for a few minutes.

  But a long time ago, it used to be more.

  When Angie and Feb were in junior high, Angie was at Jack and Jackie’s nearly as much as Colt was. Jack and Jackie, and Morrie and Feb for that matter, collected strays. Jack and Jackie’s house was always filled with kids and people for as long as Colt could remember. Angie’s home wasn’t much better than Colt’s so, like Colt, but unfortunately for Angie only for a while, she’d been adopted.

  Something had happened though, in their freshman year. Something that made Angie quit coming over.

  Colt looked at the note.

  Kevin Kercher happened.

  Feb appeared in the doorframe and leaned a shoulder against it. She took him in but her eyes didn’t meet his.

  He had a sudden impulse to wrap his fist in her hair and make her look at him like she had that morning, like she used to do when they were partners in euchre. Or sitting across the dining room table one of the thousand times he’d been over at her house having dinner. Or when she was underneath him in the backseat of his car, her deep, brown eyes looking direct into his, nothing to hide, nothing to escape, nothing to fear.

  Before this impulse could take hold, she lifted a hand and swiped back the hair from her face, pulling it away, holding it at the back of her head, exposing her ear and that silver hoop dangling from it.

  There was something about that earring in her ear, the same something that said what the choker said. And Colt understood it then.

  It highlighted the vulnerability of her body, enticed you to curl your hand around it, get your teeth near it, at a place where you could do your worst or you could do something altogether different.

  Her voice came at him. “Morrie said you wanted to talk to me?”

  Colt looked from her ear to her.


  She’d changed clothes since that morning. Colt knew Morrie took her to her place to pack and move to Morrie’s, Colt had checked in. She was now in her bartender clothes. Tips were probably better in those clothes rather than the light, shapeless cardigan she had on that morning. Though Feb could likely wring a good tip out of you with a glance if she had a mind to do it, no matter what she was wearing.

  Still, she looked beat, drawn. Her shoulders were drooped, her eyes listless.

  “Sit down, Feb.”

  She didn’t argue, just dropped her hand, pushed away from the door and headed to the chair.

  Colt walked to the door, closed it and moved back to her.

  She tipped her head back to look at him, shoulders still sagging, her arms straight, her hands loosely clasped together resting between her slightly parted thighs. Angie’s death had cut her deep, as it would anyone, particularly if you found her hacked up, bloody body. But it would especially cut up someone like Feb.

  “I gotta show you something.”

  She nodded.

  He handed her the Ziploc bag and she unclasped her hands and took it. He watched vertical lines form on the insides of each of her eyebrows as she scanned it. Her eyes moved down the paper then back up, then down again.

  “I don’t get . . .” The lines by her brows disappeared and her lips parted right before her head jerked back. “What—?”

  “Do you know what that is?” Colt asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered then suddenly surged to her feet.

  Her hand came out and grasped his shirt, her fist curling into it so tight he saw her knuckles were white, the skin mottled red all around. Her head was tipped down, looking at the note and her hand at his shirt was moving back and forth with force, taking his shirt with it as she beat his chest, not knowing she was doing it.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God,” she chanted, the hand holding the note was now shaking.

  “Give me the note, Feb.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Hand me the note.”

  “Oh my God.”

  He took the note from her at the same time his hand covered hers at his chest, stopping the movement, holding it tight against his body.

  Her eyes were glued to the note in his other hand.

  “Look at me, February.” She did as she was told, he saw her face was pale and he ordered carefully, “Tell me about the note.”

  “That note doesn’t exist.”

  He lifted it and gave it a shake and didn’t want to say what he had to say but he had to say it. “It’s right here, Feb.”

  “I mean, I threw it away, like, twenty-five years ago.”

  Fucking shit. Goddamn it all to hell.

  That was what he was afraid she’d say.

  “Tell me about the note,” Colt repeated.

  She shook her head sharply side to side—in denial, trying to focus, he didn’t know. Her hand tightened further into his shirt, he felt it under his own hand and she leaned some of her weight against it, pressing her fist deeper into his flesh.

  He waited, giving her time. She took it.

  Then she told him, “We used to be good friends, you know that.”

  “I do.”

  “Angie used to come over all the time.”

  “I know.”

  “She liked Kevin.”

  He didn’t know that but he wasn’t surprised. Kevin was a good-looking guy; a lot of girls liked him. He was a year ahead of Colt, a senior when Feb and Angie were freshman. In their school, at that time, an impossible catch for Angie.

  “He asked me out.”

  Colt felt that weight shift heavily in his gut.

  “She was furious. She liked him, as in really liked him,” Feb continued.

  “You didn’t go out with him,” Colt stated this as fact, because he knew it was.

  “Of course I didn’t,” Feb replied quickly.

  And there it was. The web shot out and snared them both.

  Of course she didn’t because, at that time, Feb was his. Colt knew it. Feb knew it. Fucking Kevin fucking Kercher knew it, the fuck. Everyone knew it.

  Her words kept strumming in his skull.

  Of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.

  Quick. Fierce. A statement of fact, just like his. If they were anything else but what they were now, if they were what they should have been, it would have been terse, dismissive, and that was what it sounded like. The faithful partner stating her commitment when she shouldn’t have to. It was a given, fundamental. Their relationship formed on bedrock which would never budge, no matter what the temptation. It wasn’t worth it if it threatened what they had, which was the world.

  Colt fought against the web. He had to. It was his job and with Feb gone and after Melanie left him that was now his world.

  “Do you remember this note?” he asked.

  “Yes, but barely.”

  “You threw it away?”

  “I guess so,” she shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably. It was twenty-five years ago.”

  “Think, Feb.”

  “I am, Alec!” she snapped. “But it was twenty-five years ago!”

  Good Christ, he hated it when she called him Alec. He had no idea why she did it, she knew he hated it, but she did. She’d never called him Colt, even after that night when he’d told her that Alec was gone, that the name his parents gave him and called him was something he didn’t want any claim to anymore. He wanted to be known as Colt, the name he and Morrie made up for him when they were six. The name he’d given himself. He’d begged her to stop calling him Alec, but she never did.

  “Just take a minute and think,” he urged, setting his anger aside.

  She closed her eyes, tilting her chin away, pressing more of her weight into her hand at his chest, still not cognizant she was touching him there and he was touching her back or he knew she’d move away. Distance for Feb, since it all went down, was important. Not just with him, with everyone. But he’d noted, and it never failed to piss him off, especially with him.

  She opened her eyes. “Mrs. Hobbs’ class. Geometry. Second period.” She shook her head but said, “We had that class together. She passed the note to me then. I think I threw it away.”

  It hit him and Colt remembered.

  “You fought in the hall,” he said.

  Her eyes widened and she nodded. “Pushing match. Angie started it. Mrs. Hobbs broke it up. Shit!” Her head jerked to the side. “I totally forgot.” She looked back at him. “Angie was crying and screaming but more crying. She was out of her mind. They sent her home.”

  “You were crying.”

  That’s what he remembered. He’d seen her eyes red from the tears when she was at her locker. He’d walked her to class. He’d been late to his own. At lunch he’d told Morrie but Morrie had already heard about the fight from someone else. After school they’d made her sit through football practice so they could drive her home. Colt even remembered putting her in his car. She’d been silent. She’d never said why they fought. Feb could be like that, hold things to herself forever, a personality trait she had that was a nightmare he’d lived for way too long. It was just Angie was there one day and the next she wasn’t. Feb had been devastated. Then Jessie’s folks moved to town and Feb and Jessie hooked up, hooking Mimi with them, and Angie was a memory as it was with teenage girls.

  “I still don’t understand. Why’s that note back now?” she asked.

  He was now going to have to ask her the impossible and tear her up doing it.

  “Do you remember anyone from school, anyone from that time, anyone . . . a teacher, a kid, a janitor, a regular at the bar, anyone, who seemed partial to you?”

  The lines came back at her brows. “Partial to me?”

  “Interested.”

  There it was. The impossible.

  Everyone was interested in Feb, then and now. Everyone was interested in the family; Jack, Jackie, Morrie, Feb, their grandparents before they all passed. Susie Shepherd and he
r wealthy daddy may have been King and Princess of Diamonds in that town but Jack and Jackie Owens, their son Morrison and daughter February were King, Queen, Prince and Princess of Hearts.

  Who knew? Feb may have dozens of sick fucks following her, taking pictures of her, stealing her notes, going through her trash, building shrines to her. Hell, Colt knew dozens who jacked off to her regularly.

  His hand tightened on hers.

  “Interested?” she asked.

  “Unnaturally.”

  “Alec, what are you saying?”

  Colt skirted around the issue. “Someone who would take a note you threw away. Someone who would keep it for twenty-five years. Someone who’d mail it to your family’s bar. Feb, someone who was unnaturally interested in you.”

  Her whole body jerked, even her hand then it twisted on his shirt.

  “No,” she answered, sliding straight into the pit of denial.

  “Think.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Take time, Feb. Think.”

  “What’s this about, Alec?”

  He pried her hand from his shirt but gave it alternate purchase, forcing his thumb into her palm and curling his fingers around her hand at the same time he flipped the note and showed her the back.

  Her hand went to her mouth cupping it, what was left of the color in her face draining clean away. He watched her sway and he used his hand in hers to push her back and down, forcing her into the chair. He let her hand go and put his to her neck, shoving her head between her knees.

  “Breathe deep.”

  He listened to her suck in breath.

  Colt crouched in front of her, keeping his hand at her neck.

  After a while he asked, “You with me?”

  She nodded and put pressure against his hand, lifting up just a little, her neck arching so she could look at him, her elbows going to her knees.

  He kept his hand where it was.

  “He killed her for me,” she said, her voice hollow.

  Colt shook his head. “You didn’t ask him to kill her. He did it because he’s not right in the head.”

  “We made up,” she whispered. “Angie and me. It wasn’t the same but we made up. We danced to Buster Poindexter’s “Hot, Hot, Hot” at prom. You were there. Angie and me started the conga line.”