The Moment Between

by Nicole Baart

  Tyler interrupted her deluge of thoughts before she could do anything. “What are we doing here?” he asked, his voice edged with something tough, unflinching.

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Abigail, seriously. You’ve avoided me all summer. You look at me as if you can hardly stand the sight of me. . . . What are we doing here? Why did you all of a sudden invite me to watch the stars with you?”

  “Meteors.” The word slipped out in a whisper before Abigail could stop it.

  Tyler laughed. “Meteors.”

  “Why did you come?” Abigail asked, her voice barely loud enough to hear.

  She held her breath, convinced that Tyler hadn’t heard her. But then he said, “Because I wanted to.”

  Tyler sat up and extended a hand to help Abigail up, too. When she didn’t reach for it, he snagged her under the elbows and pulled her into a sitting position. “Listen, maybe I’m feeling brave because it’s so pitch-dark out here that I can’t see your face. And maybe you’ll hate me forever after tonight, but I’m going to talk for a few minutes and you’re here without a flashlight, so I guess you’re stuck listening.”

  Abigail was rendered speechless. This had been her idea. She was supposed to be gathering the information she needed. She was supposed to be in control. How had he hijacked everything? Abigail’s knees felt hot where they touched his legs, and the horizon dipped so low behind the hill where they were sitting, it seemed a few stars were sprinkled like sparks in Tyler’s hair. She could feel everything about him radiating heat. He was a flame to her, burning.

  “I came tonight,” Tyler began, “because I happen to like you. Interpret that however you want to. I don’t care. But I’ve liked you since the first time you came to Thompson Hills—and not when Eli hired you, when I waited on your table.”

  “You recognized me?” Abigail choked.

  “I’m not a romantic sort of guy, so don’t think I went home and pined over you. You’re really not even my type.”

  Understatement, Abigail thought in spite of herself, her mind flashing over a fading memory of Hailey.

  “But there’s just . . . well, there’s something about you.”

  For the first time all night, Abigail abandoned the gun and put her hands to her face so she could rub her tired eyes. She was sick of straining to see him in the darkness. She was sick of trying to make sense of this.

  “I’m not trying to ask you out—we’ve been through that,” Tyler clarified. “But I can’t help feeling that we have this . . . connection.”

  Yeah, we killed Hailey. You and me. We have a connection.

  Tyler laughed again, his voice ringing out in the stillness with such intensity that Abigail wanted to cover her ears. “Why am I telling you this?” He put his elbows on his knees and rested his head on his forearms. He exhaled loudly and it ended in a quiet shout of angst. “Look, my mom died a few months ago, and before that I extracted myself from the most dysfunctional, codependent mess of a relationship you could ever imagine. I guess I’m still dealing. And now I’m babbling nonsense to you. A virtual stranger. A woman who doesn’t even like me.”

  Dysfunctional, codependent . . . “That bad?” Abigail breathed shallowly, aware of how close they were to brushing up against the edges of her. Of saying her name.

  “You tell me: how much do you dislike me?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Abigail struggled to rewind the conversation in her mind. “I mean, your ‘mess of a relationship.’ It was . . . awful?”

  “Worse. But I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s go back,” Tyler said, pushing himself to his feet. “The stars are nice. The meteors are nice. But I’d like to go back.”

  Even in the dimness Abigail could see him offer his hand. The gun was heavy against her stomach, but she ignored it and reached for his fingers. She had never touched him, not in all the weeks she had been at Thompson Hills. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Now, she had to know if his fingers smoldered, if there was something elemental and inescapable in his touch. She wanted to know if he would burn her.

  Tyler’s hands didn’t burn. They didn’t fill her with loathing or rage. Instead, they were large and strong and they covered her own small hands as if she were a child. He pulled her to her feet carefully, aware of the unfamiliar footing and the blackness all around them. Though he could have let go the second she was on her feet, he held her for just a moment, making sure she was steady, that she wouldn’t stumble or fall.

  When Abigail was upright, she stood there, feeling the warmth of his breath on her hair and taking in the proximity of him: the spread of his shoulders above her, the slight scent of soap.

  He was a man. He was just a man. Not a monster or a murderer or even as cold and heartless as she had once imagined him to be. Abigail could almost picture him at six, losing his father, or at ten, finding himself thrown into a new family. He was a twenty-something leaving home and a wiser man coming back. He was the man in Hailey’s photograph, loving her maybe, leaving her for sure, but probably never intending for things to end the way they did.

  For a second it seemed that Tyler leaned toward her. Abigail held her ground, felt him enter the close circle of air pressing against her, and held her breath. But then he backed away and turned around. He clicked on the flashlight almost sheepishly, as if the brightness would make his shadowed confessions appear as silly as he seemed to fear they were. It didn’t. Abigail didn’t feel like anything about the night had been silly at all.

  Tyler didn’t say another word and neither did Abigail. He just struck off in the direction of home and she followed him, feeling a sort of hollowness carve her from the inside out.

  Abigail wondered if Tyler even knew that Hailey was dead.

  †

  “I feel hollow when I’m on my meds,” Hailey tried to explain. “Empty, cavernous, vacuous. Otiose, even. Do you know what otiose means?”

  “I’m not in the mood to play spelling bee with you.” Abigail threw the car into park in front of Lou and Hailey’s quaint trailer.

  “I’m not spelling anything. I’m expanding your vocabulary. Otiose means useless or futile, lacking value, use, or substance.”

  “Fine. I know what otiose means.”

  “You’re not listening.” Hailey twisted around in her seat and grasped Abigail’s hands, made her sister look at her. “I don’t feel like myself when I’m on medication. I feel . . . sterile. Like I’m living in vain—like I’m not really living at all.”

  Abigail closed her eyes. Her head was so heavy, so weary from always being the strong one, from bailing her sister out of problem after problem. Hailey was before her, gripping her wrists and showing way too much skin in a miniskirt that had crept up and up as they drove home from Sawgrass Sands, and Abigail simply couldn’t bring herself to look at her anymore. She let her aching head fall until her forehead rested on Hailey’s shoulder.

  “Hey,” Hailey said softly. “I’m trying to be transparent here.” She jiggled her arm.

  “Don’t,” Abigail whispered. “Just don’t.”

  “Don’t wiggle my shoulder?”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Go off your meds, get into fights, do crazy things, smoke . . .” Reminded by her final plea, Abigail sat up with a sigh and reached for Hailey’s purse. She yanked it open and took out the pack of Camel Lights. Hailey didn’t even try to stop her. “Don’t smoke these.”

  “Okay.”

  “And please don’t go off your medication.”

  Hailey took her purse back hesitantly and pressed it against her stomach. She wrapped her arms around it as if it gave her strength somehow, as if it could offer more protection than the cheap piece of fabric that passed for her tank top. “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

  “Please no.” Abigail’s voice hardly rose above a whimper.

  “You’ll see. I’ll be good. I’ll be better than ever. I’ll be myself.”

 
Abigail had to remind herself that beneath the tough girl exterior, beneath the instability and sometimes even ruthless nature of Hailey’s personality, she was still a fragile little girl.

  “You are yourself,” Abigail told her. “You know we love you, Dad and me.”

  “I know. But I have to do this.” Hailey punctuated each word by softly hitting her purse with a closed fist. “I mean it. You can’t stop me.” Then she opened the car door and eased out gradually, inch by inch as if she fully expected her big sister to try to do exactly that: to stop her.

  Abigail didn’t. She didn’t even bother to watch Hailey go. Instead, she slammed the car in reverse and left a skid mark on the cracked concrete of the short driveway.

  †

  For over a year, Hailey was more or less okay off her medication. She did all right in school, and Abigail never had to deal with another aggravated mall security guard—or any security guard for that matter.

  But there were small things that hinted at the inner turmoil Hailey lived with every day. She didn’t sleep much and she didn’t eat much. Hailey got so thin her figure rivaled the gaunt, skeletal frame of a runway model. And she jittered a lot. Sometimes her hands trembled when she reached for something, and whenever she was sitting, some part of her had to be moving, moving, moving. She crossed her legs and swung her foot. She drummed her fingers. She tapped her thighs like they were djembe drums.

  “You need lessons,” Abigail teased her once.

  Hailey just gave her a thin smile, a bland look of disinterest, as if she hadn’t even heard her. Then she stopped drumming and a moment later began to tap her toe. She was a bright spark of constant, directionless energy.

  Abigail seized the occasional opportunity to suggest that Hailey should go back on her medication. Or see a new doctor to determine if there were other courses of treatment. But Hailey demurred, and Lou didn’t back Abigail up in her infrequent but heartfelt pleas.

  I can’t do it for her, Abigail told herself over and over again. I can’t make things right for her. I can’t fix her problems. I can’t do the work that only Hailey Anne Bennett can do. But even though she knew those things, accepting her helpless role didn’t lessen the burden of guilt that had secured itself around Abigail’s shoulders like a shroud. When she was feeling sad and weak, the voice in her head whispered, If only I could love her more. If only I could say the right things. If only I keep trying . . . If only, if only, if only.

  But all of Abigail’s if onlys crumbled to dust the day Lou called her shortly after Hailey’s eighteenth birthday.

  “I need you!” he croaked, his voice shattering.

  They were words Abigail had never expected to hear from her father, words that left her feeling a strange mix of powerful and powerless. “I need you.” Why her? Why now? What could he possibly need?

  And then, all at once, she knew.

  In the span of a moment Abigail grieved, wondered how Hailey had finally done it, and endured a momentary vision of Hailey’s funeral. She could almost hear the deep, resonant song of the tenor bells.

  The world flickered, like a candle sputtering out, and Abigail felt her insides writhe with the tingle of all her fears. This was it. This was the event that would be the axis of her life—everything that had

  been and everything that was yet to come would forever hinge on this event. Hailey was gone.

  Abigail drove as fast as she could to the trailer that Lou and Hailey shared. Some isolated part of her mind wondered at her ability to handle a car, stop at the stop signs, observe traffic patterns, and stay between the dotted line and the curb. But then again, maybe she only convinced herself that she was doing okay. Maybe she only arrived at the trailer in one piece by the grace of God.

  When she pulled up, Lou threw the door open and stood in the rotting frame, waving his cane at her like the frantic encouragement could make her move faster. “I went to sit by the lake today, and when I got home, she was gone!”

  “Dad,” Abigail said firmly, cutting through the wheeze and grind of his rattling sobs. She felt frighteningly calm, detached. “Have you called 911?”

  Lou stepped back to let Abigail in. He slumped onto the chintz couch and covered his face with his hands, leaving Abigail to shut the door on the blistering Florida heat and take charge. She stopped just inside the musty-smelling home, wondering where Hailey was. Her bedroom? The bathroom? The thought made Abigail’s heart heave and pitch.

  She shook her head to clear it and forced herself to focus on Lou. “Did you call 911?” she asked again.

  “I did! Of course I did. What do you think I am?”

  “What did they say? Is somebody coming?”

  “They can’t really do anything. . . .”

  Abigail could tell that Lou was on the very edge of reason. Dropping to her haunches on the matted carpet, she placed her hands firmly on his knees. She squeezed, hoping her touch would ground him in reality.

  Lou let his hands drop from his head, and Abigail moved her face toward his, filling the line of his vision with herself so he had no choice but to look at her or close his eyes.

  “What do you mean they can’t do anything? That’s their job. Did you call 911? Are you sure?” Abigail cast around for the phone, reasoning somehow that if it was still in its cradle, Lou was probably only imagining the call that he had intended to make.

  “I talked to a dispatcher and then to an officer,” he whimpered.

  The concrete answer snapped Abigail’s attention back to her father. “Tell me what they said.”

  “They filed a missing persons report, but they don’t suspect—” his voice cracked—”foul play.”

  “Missing persons?” Abigail repeated, trying to make sense of those words. “Missing?”

  “That’s what I told you! She’s gone!” He pointed to the narrow hallway that led to the two small bedrooms and equally tiny bathroom.

  Abigail pushed herself up, accepting the fact that her father was in no shape to walk her through what had happened. She had to make the discovery herself. Sucking in her breath and holding it fast, Abigail left Lou in the living room and headed to Hailey’s bedroom.

  There was her bed, her desk, the posters on her wall of movie stars and rock bands. There was no Hailey. Abigail realized that the bed looked empty to her. She had expected her sister to be on the bed. She had expected her to be gone.

  But it didn’t take Abigail long to learn that gone didn’t mean dead; it meant missing. Disappeared. Vanished. But not without a trace. Hailey had packed a suitcase, taking most of her clothes, all her toiletries, and the stuffed polar bear she kept on her bed and claimed she didn’t sleep with anymore. She took those things and she left.

  Hailey left.

  Abigail seethed with the audacity of it. After eighteen years of giving and giving, eighteen years of worry, sweat, and tears, Hailey repaid her selfless gift with abandonment. Abigail had never asked for anything in return. Never. But she expected better than this. She deserved it.

  Abigail cursed and yelled and spit. She kicked Hailey’s bedroom wall and slammed the door. She hoped that she never saw Hailey again. And for the first time in her life, she actually meant it.

  I went back to work almost immediately, even though everyone tried to talk me out of it. Of course, I didn’t work on the days leading up to Hailey’s funeral, and I didn’t work on the day that I went to clean out her apartment, but other than those brief disruptions in my hectic schedule, life went on as normal. I’m a professional, I reminded myself. And then I donned an indomitable smile and acted the part.

  But after I initiated the process of clearing out my sister’s apartment, something began to nag at the frayed edges of my consciousness. I had tucked the photo of Hailey and Tyler into my purse as a sort of talisman, and though I knew it was crazy, I found myself searching for his face wherever I went. He was on the street, in the grocery store, driving the car beside me. . . . He was everywhere. And nowhere, because each time I turned around, I had
to admit that it wasn’t him. It was never him. But for some reason I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that he held the key to why Hailey finally gave up. I was convinced he had the answers I was so desperately searching for.

  There were other things, too—little things that made me wonder if I was dealing with my sister’s death in a normal, healthy way. Sometimes, in the middle of the day as I was speaking to a client or even doing something as mundane as standing by the water cooler, from somewhere deep inside, I’d feel a warning chill. A single violent pulse of adrenaline would bubble at the core of my abdomen and seep like poison through my body. My fingers, my toes, even my lips would begin to tingle, and then my heart would gallop away from a suitable rhythm, threatening to rise out of my throat and leave my body.

  It was an attack of some sort, I knew that much. An anxiety attack? Maybe. But it didn’t really feel like nerves to me. More often than not it simply stung like a cruel reminder: Hailey was dead and I was alive. I breathed, my heart continued to beat, and though I hated the brutal ache that each attack thrust on me, I had to acknowledge and appreciate the fact that at the very least I was still able to feel something—even if it was the feverish chill of panic.

  I was afraid that other people noticed my restlessness, too.

  “How are you doing?” Colton asked one afternoon, poking his head in my office.

  “Doing good,” I chirped, looking up just long enough to prove it with a smile. “Busy though.”

  He must have taken my response as an invitation because he stepped into my office, pulling the door behind him. “Do you mind if I shut this?”

  “Not at all.”

  The door clicked softly.

  Colton hesitated just over the threshold, his hand still on the oiled bronze knob. I kept my eyes on the papers in front of me, but I could sense his unease and wasn’t surprised when he crossed the plush carpet one careful step at a time. It seemed he was fortifying himself to bring up whatever he had come to talk about, and since I didn’t want to hear it, I wasn’t about to make things easy for him. I didn’t say a word.