On Tenterhooks (31 page)

“Me too,” said Martin. “Welcome to the club, ma’am!” He tipped a
fantasy
hat in her direction.

“Why
,
thank you
,
kind sir,” said Abby
,
dipping
low into a mock curtsy
in her chair
.

“So Abby,” said
Steve
, “w
hat’s your take on all this? 
There seems to be no question in your mind that
what’s going on
is real
.
How can you be so sure?”

Abby nodded
,
“Have you ever heard about that
special bond that twins share?
You know, like
about how close
they are
to each other? L
ike they can almost read each other’s mind and stuff
?
Well,
Zack and I were like that.
We weren’t twins
,
though
.
W
e were almost four years apart
, but
we had always been close
, e
ven as little kids
.
I mean
,
sure, we had some stupid fight
s
.”

Her face became more animated as the memories took over.
“
But we were always best friends
.
In fact, it wasn’t until I was older that I learned that it wasn’t normal for a boy to want his little sister tagging along to neighborhood touch football games or
riding
bikes in the dry ravines behind our neighborhood
.
I never knew
that most boys
thought that’d
be
‘weird
.
”
His friends never gave him any grief about it either, at least not
out
loud
.
He would
have stomped them if they
had
.

“
Maybe that’s why they never said anyt
hing
.
Anyway, we were close, as little kids,
teenagers .
. .
e
ven after he left for college.
He had
lots of
friends there
,
and college kept him crazy busy
,
between classes and football practice
.
But we talked or texted almost every day.
”

She patted the phone in the pocket of her jeans.
 
“
Mom and
d
ad would get updates on him from me every night at dinner
.
He’d help me with homework sometimes
.
We’d talk about college life and football and our girl and boy problems
.
We’d drive up
,
and
he’d usually come home once a month
.
On those weekends when he was home, we’d map out movie marathons at our local theatre
.
We’re both big movie buffs
.
H
e’d sit through a romcom for me, although he loved to make retching noises at all the wrong times.”

She chuckled
.

“A
nd then I’d try not to get too skeezed out watching his horror flick pick
.
It was
just .
.
. natural
I guess. We talked all the time, sometimes just a quick “hello
.”
  Right up until
he .
.
. well .
.
. you
know.”

She
drifted into silence
and
took the last bite of her banana
,
suppressing
a sniffle
.
After a moment,
Veronica
gently prodded.
“Last night,
y
ou sounded pretty convinced that the message was genuine.”

“Absolutely,” said Abby, nodding.

“
Why
are you so sure?” asked Steve.

“Well, for one thing, he called
me Gabbsalot in the note
.
That was like this teasing nickname he had for me when we were kids, ‘cause I
talked all the time apparently
.
But that was not something that was
well known
.
And he stopped doing it a while back, so nobody else even knew about it
,
except my parents.
”

She
pulled the folded note from her hip pocket
,
opened it and scanned the content
yet again
.
“And second
ly
, look near the end there,” she said passing the note to Steve and pointing to the bottom of the
page.
“See that phrase
in the middle of the third paragraph
, ‘madness abounds’?
Well
,
Zack always had these colorful catch phrases that he used to annoy me with
.
His senior year in high
school
,
he could not
leave the room without saying ‘I’m off like a prom dress.’
  At
first,
I thought it was funny
.
But after a month or so, it got old
—
really old
.
But by the spring, it was funny again
,
because I had to laugh at him for being
stupid enough to try to
get so much use out of an already
-
tired joke.”

A grin played around the edges of her mouth as she continued,
“
When he was
15
,
he
and all his
friends
took to calling
each other
things like
Skunkbag, Toejam
and Turd Bucket
at any opportunity.
It annoyed my
m
om
and me
to no end! Some of their names for each other
I didn’t understand
,
and I ha
d to go look
them
up on
line
!” 

She
stuck her finger in her mouth with
a fake retching sound
.

“I’m sorry
. . .
did you say “
Skunkbag
?” asked Martin.

Abby nodded sagely
.

“
Anyhow
, I am big into literature,” she continued. “
Shakespeare, Tennyson,
the classics
. Last year Zack claimed to have read an obscure writing from Shakespeare in which he used the phrase “madness abounds.” He told me that if I could tell him
where
that was from,
he’d give me a hundred bucks!
I searched and scoured, even asked my
teachers
,
but I couldn’t find it.
So
,
all year he teased me about it, working it into the convo whenever he could
.
Although he never told me for sure, I think he made the whole thing up.”

“But that was
the
bet
—
a
secret bet
.
Not
even the ‘rents knew about it.
A
nd
the
most important
thing is,
I just know it was
Zack
.
I
have
this gift for sort of knowing things
.
My
d
ad calls it intuition on steroids. It’s kinda hard to explain, but it
’
s just like
. . .
I know things.”

“When we got to your house last night, you said you knew we would come,” Martin said.

Abby nodded. “Yeah. But d
on’t freak out on me
. I
t’s not like I can read minds or something, but I can just kinda
get an early lock on things, ya
know? So,
yeah, that
’s
how
I just know
the letter
is
his
.
I
feel
it.”

“So
that’s
why your
m
om was so upset then?” asked Martin
.
“Because you were so certain about it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” replied Abby
shrugging
.
“In the last couple of years, she has started to treat me with a lot more respect
.
I mean she always listened to me, but
now .
.
. it’s
like, she knows I am an
adult. When I make a statement, she doesn’t dismiss it
.
She doesn’t always agree with it
,
mind you, but
she
gives things a lot more thought when I give her my opinion.”

“And your
father
,
too?” asked Steve.

“Well, my
d
ad is a l
ittle different.
He
has always, always,
always
had my back
.
Between him and Zack, nobody ever messed with me.
And yeah, he trusts me like my
m
om does, but Zack
’s
dying changed us
.
My
d
ad is generally the strong silent type
.
He
’s
always had our respect and our love
.
In his mind, his job
is
to support us, all of us, in whatever we want to do
.
He
is
always there, at our backs, coaxing, encouraging, teaching, protecting.
”

Abby paused and cleared her throat loudly.
 
“
Zack dying on some stupid football field a hundred miles away was not something he knew how to process
.
In some crazy way, I think
he
believes
Zack’s death was his fault
,
l
ike he wasn’t there to protect him
.
Like he
should’ve
known Zack’s football helmet was gonna come back down like it did and hit him
so hard
.
It’s crazy
.
It messed him up
.
So now he does a lot more to protect us, especially my
m
om.
”

Steve saw the tears that
welled in her blue eyes.

“You know what’s funny?
The thing is, when I get to feeling all sad about losing Zack, I think about my
m
om and
d
ad and what it must be like for them. And then I feel very, very selfish and ashamed about missing him so much.”

Martin didn’t know if
she
were
crying for Zack or for her parents
.
I
t didn’t matter.
He
put his hand on Abby’s shoulder.
 
“Sweeti
e,
y
ou can’t be ashamed about that
.
Grief is a tremendous burden to bear
.
Believe me, I know
.
We all do.
”