The Space Between

by Dete Meserve

  “Look, we’re going through a rough patch with the problems with Zack and our crazy schedules—”

  “And we argue about every single little thing. We can’t agree on the big stuff or even the stupid things. Even the color of the pool tile.”

  “That was six months ago.”

  “We didn’t talk for a week after.”

  “So this is about the color of tile in the pool.”

  “No. This is about everything.”

  After I say it, I realize it’s unfair. It’s not about everything. Even if it feels like it. The more I focused on how he stopped noticing me, the more I saw of it. I noticed the way he looked at me—as if he sometimes saw right past me. I felt him withdraw from my attempts at silly jokes. And he rarely got excited about the things that made my heart leap—he seemed so disinterested in the Trojan asteroid that I stopped talking about it, even though it monopolized most of my waking thoughts.

  But was that the way he truly felt about me?

  The doorbell rings, startling us both.

  I rise. “That’s the driver for the car taking me to the airport.”

  His blue eyes plead for understanding. “Wait, you can’t tell me you’re thinking about divorce and then just leave.”

  He was right, but I was too stubborn to admit it. “Let’s talk about it when I’m back on Tuesday.”

  Ben reaches out and clasps my hand. “All I want is for us to be happy together again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  BEN

  A loud bang. Like the sound of a car backfiring. The first shot shatters the glass on the driver’s side. His heart skips a beat. And then a few more.

  He jolts awake and gasps for breath.

  The first signs of sunlight peek through the slats of the wooden shades, piercing the darkness. He blinks against the harsh light. He’s in the bed, but he cannot remember exactly how he got there.

  In his dreams, the story unfolds differently each time. Sometimes a winged creature carries him off. Or his son is standing there on the freeway, still in diapers, grasping a worn blanket as cars weave around him, barely missing him. When he’s asleep, it’s as though his brain cannot make sense of what really happened and manufactures alternate and disturbing storylines. Only in the waking moments are the memories reliable.

  He thinks he knows what happened. And there are no winged creatures, or Zack, or missing limbs.

  Two shots—rapid-fire—through the driver’s side. Glass penetrates his skin like icy bullets. Antonio slumps over the wheel. Blood spatters on the windshield, puddling on the gray carpets. Turning them black.

  A breathy hiss then hot pain in his upper arm. But there is no time to feel.

  The car careens then smashes into the wall, jolting him forward and slamming his head hard against the windshield. Why didn’t the airbags go off?

  He unbuckles his seat belt. Hurls open the door, but it feels like it moves in slow motion.

  His phone falls out, crashing on the pavement. Dead. He spies Antonio’s phone on the floorboard and seizes it.

  No thoughts. Only the need to run.

  Cars are honking. In the dark, he’s lost his bearings. Where did the shots come from? He has no idea if he’s running away from them.

  Or straight to them.

  He hurdles the guardrail and lands in the field. It feels warmer, safer to be in the open, away from the streetlights and the buzz of the freeway. In the thick, dry grass that hasn’t been mowed in weeks.

  He’d made it easier to shoot him, of course. Like shooting fish in a barrel. That thought makes him run faster than he ever did, his feet barely touching the ground, skimming through the stiff grass, bounding over the gully. He feels invincible.

  A single shot grazes his left thigh. Sharp pain shoots through his entire body. He falls. Lies motionless, unable to will his body to move.

  This can’t be how it’s going to end.

  The smell of loamy earth, warmed by hours in the sun, rises up. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a scraggly bush ablaze with purple flowers. Inch by inch, he drags himself through the tall grass to the bush. Its branches scrape his face and arms as he coils himself inside. Waiting.

  His breath comes in heaves now. Hands shaking, he dials 911. Shouts at the dispatcher that he needs an ambulance. Babbles his location, but he’s not so sure it’s right. Which freeway on-ramp is it? No response. They can’t hear him.

  Then he’s on the move, ignoring the blistering heat in his thigh, the sticky blood that soaks his pants. He pushes through the prickly acacia, dials her number.

  No answer.

  He hangs up and dials again. And tells her his plan.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I don’t like how I looked on that clip with Ben. Rigid and inflexible. Frustrated. Is that who I’d become? What happened to the person who used to tease him in Klingon, who would bake his favorite chocolate-raspberry cake, and would snuggle with him on the couch watching really bad sci-fi movies?

  I suspect there are more clips from the meeting in the office, but I can’t watch them. They’re a harsh reminder of what happened to us. What I’d become.

  I close the laptop and gaze instead at the Perseid meteor shower photo that I’d taken from Ben’s office. The photo captures that night with perfection—the way the stars blossomed above us like brilliant blue and white forget-me-nots. The buzzy, electric feeling of his hand on my skin. If I could pick a night to relive, it would be that one.

  “Have I ever told you how happy I am to be with you?” I’d asked him as the meteors streaked across the sky in front of the creamy Milky Way. “How lucky I am to share my life with you?”

  “Almost every day.”

  I laughed. “Actually, I don’t really say it every—”

  “You don’t need to. I know it.”

  “How do you know it?”

  “When you pick up my favorite coffee beans at the store even though you hate coffee. Or the way you laugh—sometimes snorting unattractively, I might add—at my really terrible jokes.”

  That’s when I realize the combination for the safe. It’s not our anniversary date, one of our birth dates, or even Zack’s birth date. It’s the date Ben wanted to make sure I’d always remember.

  “I want to remember this night forever,” he had said. “Years from now, when we’re both really, really old, I will make sure you remember it, too.”

  “How are you going to do that?” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist.

  “I have my ways,” he said slyly, then kissed me as the Perseid meteor shower rained above us.

  The answer was hiding in plain sight. My hands tremble as I turn the dial: 08-07-05. The date he wanted me to remember forever.

  I grasp the safe’s cool steel handle and pull down. Without a sound, the heavy door glides open.

  Inside, there are the expected documents, and only one set seems unfamiliar: the seven-million-dollar life insurance policy. I remember signing the application, but I hadn’t paid attention to how substantial the benefit was.

  The second shelf houses boxes of jewelry from Ben’s grandmother, including a fourteen-carat-gold charm bracelet with airplane, scissors, and Happy Birthday charms, each engraved with a date from her life. It’s Ben’s favorite, because his most treasured memories of his grandmother were of her wearing that bracelet all the time—while kneading her infamous rye bread or playing Broadway show tunes on her upright piano.

  I set the charm bracelet back inside the safe and notice that nestled in the corner is a black velvet ring box that I don’t recognize. I open the box and bring it into the light to see what it is.

  An infinity ring.

  It’s a look-alike to the ring I lost the day Ben asked me to marry him. With one breathtaking exception. Instead of two diamonds encased in the infinity symbol, Ben had replaced them with blue zoisite.

  Zoisite.

  The gems appeared blue in the light from the fluorescent lamp. But zoisite has dramatic color shif
ts depending on lighting conditions, and this otherworldly stone can also appear violet or burgundy.

  I’d been obsessed with the gem ever since a geologist friend at Caltech showed me a zoisite crystal that appeared muddy reddish-brown until he heated it to about 650 degrees Fahrenheit. Then it turned rich blue, purple, and violet. I was awestruck, and I’m pretty sure I went overboard talking with Ben about it, fascinated by this rare stone found only in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, under geological conditions so rare that the chance of finding a similar gem anywhere else in the world is more than a million to one.

  Tears sting the corners of my eyes. Ben remembered how much I loved this stone. He could have afforded diamonds or expensive jewels. But he’d chosen the one stone that held the most meaning for me.

  Was this his answer to the discussion about our broken marriage? A way to bridge the gap between us and start again?

  I close the jewelry box and hold it in my hand. Then my mind races to the black jewelry box I’d seen on the security footage. Is this the same one? Was this what he was hiding? Not a piece of jewelry for Rebecca Stanton, but something for me?

  I head upstairs to my office and replay the five-second clip captured on Tuesday, the day Ben went missing. He walks in the front door and sets a small black box on the foyer table. It looks identical to the one I’m holding in my hand.

  I play it a second time, and this time I zero in on Ben’s face. He’s smiling.

  But like gazing at the stars, I’m looking into the past, glimpsing a moment in time. He had no idea that tragedy would unfold in the coming hours.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  BEN

  The expensive bourbon shots had launched the room into a tight spin. This, he remembers. He may not recall all the events of the days since the shooting—how many has it been?—but he remembers that night in detail.

  He rose and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar. He should’ve known better than to drink so much bourbon so fast. Especially on an important night like that one. At least his reflection looked confident and assured. Even if inside he felt like a horrid failure, returning to LA empty-handed after torturous months of negotiations. Everything he’d been building—everything he’d worked for—had evaporated. Six words had decided his fate: “I can’t sell you the restaurant.”

  He was surprised by his white-hot anger and the blistering words that burst from his mouth. His chest was clamped in a vise, adrenaline rocketing through his body.

  He’d been betrayed in business deals before, but this one scorched his confidence and detonated his dreams. It’s what happens when you crave things too much. He had already imagined owning the restaurant, renovating the nineties-era bar, and bringing his signature style to the place. He’d told his investors he’d soon have restaurants in Los Angeles and Manhattan. It had a nice ring to it. And this one would be all his. His first time without partners to wrangle. No one to steal from him.

  He spied her purse on the seat across from his. The seat where she’d told him she wasn’t going to sign the deal. He’d seen her lips moving but could not believe what she was saying. Her high cheekbones seemed almost contorted as she spoke, her mouth wrenched into a tight, grim frown. He felt rage swell up inside him, a harsh bitter taste in his mouth.

  The purse was smooth brown leather with a debossed butterfly pattern. No doubt expensive. She’d fled quickly, leaving it behind.

  He picked up the purse, deciding. Should he give it to JJ the bartender for safekeeping? Or might he take it to her himself?

  He decided he would take it to her apartment. Maybe he could use it to change her mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “So would you call yourself a planet hunter?” Kate asks. It’s evening and we’re in my living room, sitting in the glow of the Christmas lights, and I hear myself laugh for the first time in many days.

  “Yes, I am a planet hunter. But we’re also finding other amazing stuff, too. Like superluminous galaxies that are three hundred trillion times the brightness of our sun. Plus thirty new comets between Jupiter and Mars. And we’ve seen literally millions of black holes.”

  “Very cool,” she says. “Why didn’t I think to become an astronomer?”

  Ben’s attorney, Stuart, had encouraged me to do the interview with Kate Bradley. “It’ll make viewers have sympathy for you instead of just thinking of you as the wife of a murder suspect,” he had said. “And if anyone still thinks you might somehow be involved in all this, it’ll convince them otherwise.”

  I don’t want any more attention as we’re about to submit our two-hundred-million-dollar space telescope proposal. My CIT bosses are still evaluating whether I’ll get to lead the mission, and it won’t help if I’m on TV again, unless I’m talking about astronomy or undiscovered planets. That’s why I told Kate I’d talk with her but she had to leave the cameras behind.

  I keep hoping that I won’t ever have to talk about this anymore. That I’ll wake up from this nightmare and have Ben back. I long to hear him moving about the kitchen grinding coffee beans, to hear his voice telling me about the subzero temperatures he just survived on a trip to Chicago, or to see him bounding through the front door after his early morning run, out of breath but in high spirits.

  I expect her to ask the usual reporter questions about Rebecca Stanton’s murder, but instead, she asks about the work I’m doing to find planets that might support life, how Ben and I met, and the best places in the world to stargaze.

  She seems sympathetic when she asks what it’s like to experience your husband being missing one day and becoming a murder suspect the next. All of it has the effect of making me unwind a little, which I think is her intention. I know she wants me to agree to an on-camera interview with her. And I have said no each time she’s asked. Three separate times. But I’m guessing she’s hoping that if she can gain my trust, I might change my mind. Despite my initial resistance, her plan is working.

  When she asks about the Trojan asteroid, she seals the deal. “I’m fascinated by the fact that we’ve been looking at the solar system for so long in so many ways and yet, still, discoveries like this are being made. And I’m curious, why has this been so elusive?”

  I smile. “Like so many things in the universe, the answers might be hiding in plain sight or obscured by what we see in front of us,” I tell her. “So many of the most remarkable discoveries are made when we look past the obvious, when we find ways around being blinded by light, and when we discover new ways to see in the dark.”

  “You make the stars sound fascinating. Is stargazing something you and Ben like to do together?”

  “Our first date was under the stars.”

  “Tell me about your favorite place to stargaze together.”

  I like that she uses the present tense, even when no one else does. I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but it makes the conversation, and me, feel less somber.

  I tell her about the Summer Triangle Haven and share with her how the stars seem to come alive before your eyes when you stand beneath their canopy in the Anza-Borrego Desert. We talk about how Ben proposed to me there, and I tell her that once she actually experiences the Milky Way arching high overhead she’ll understand why it’s probably one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

  “Sounds like the perfect spot to interview you,” she says.

  “It’s a long drive deep in the desert.”

  “I’d be happy to drive out to this magical place to do an interview. Just say the word.”

  After she leaves, I close the door behind her, filled with aching loss.

  I want to experience the magic of the Summer Triangle Haven again, the place where Ben and I forged forever memories. I long to roam again in the spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space that is the Anza-Borrego Desert wilderness.

  My heart leaps in my throat at the thought of returning there. Maybe even for just one day?

  A single day to relive my memories of being there with Ben.


  To figure out the next steps in my life now that he’s gone.

  To begin the process of letting go.

  “You have every right to be angry or sad or mad about what’s happened to Ben,” my sister is saying. “If I were in your shoes, I’d cry or maybe throw a tantrum . . . or even punch a wall.” She lowers her voice to a tentative whisper. “But don’t do this. Not this.”

  I’d told her I was heading to the Summer Triangle Haven. Without Zack. Without her.

  It makes no sense to her because of course Ben is not there. Maybe he once intended to go there, but now he is dead. The FBI has called off the search for him.

  “You can’t go alone. Not with everything that’s happened. Something bad could happen to you deep in the desert in the middle of nowhere.”

  My sister has always had the ability to picture vivid scenes that are unlikely to actually take place, but she’s not entirely wrong about this one.

  I have a plan. If I leave in the early morning hours before dawn and make certain that no one follows me, I’m probably safer at the remote cabins than I have been at home.

  It’s not just my physical safety she’s worried about, though. It’s my emotions she thinks will shatter if I return alone to the cabin where Ben proposed. She imagines I’ll go there, finally realize that Ben is gone forever, and drown in grief. Again, she’s not wrong.

  Rachel’s voice trembles. “At least let me go with you,” she says, hands on her hips. “And if you want me to stay with Zack, then take Lauren. No running water or electricity. What are you thinking?”

  “I’ll have my phone. And enough backup batteries to light up the mountain for a week. I’ll take five gallons of water. And a case of protein bars.”

  “It’s three days before Christmas,” she says, steadying her voice. “Why don’t you wait until after Christmas before making this decision?”

  “I’ll be back in twenty-four hours. You’ll see. Then we’ll drink eggnog and eat Santa’s cookies . . . like we did when we were kids.”