Chapter 2
The weather had been a constant feature in Abigail’s childhood. She loved it most of the time in Newport because it never got very hot—at least by her measure—but the humidity had always done a real number on her. Emotionally and physically, she used to say jokingly, but it was true. When the heat and humidity conspired to make her feel perpetually damp, her skin felt itchy and every item of clothing she owned felt like a winter sweater.
It was one of those days that she set out towards the beach to try and convince herself that she was having a good time, and take her mind off everything in the house. There was only so much stewing and glaring at locked gun cabinets you could do before it started to feel like self-flagellation.
Putting a smile on her face, Abigail propped her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose and took a quick selfie to send to the girls.
From Mom: Guess who decided the most relaxing way to get to the beach was to walk several miles!?
She smiled, then decided to send it to Shelley too.
From Abigail: is this the health and wellness thing you always nag me about?
Slipping her phone into her pocket and securing the ball cap on her head, Abigail headed off down the street, determined that, at the very least, she’d get a half decent workout in on the way.
While she was definitely puffing and focusing on ignoring the nagging thoughts about what had been going on, something Cleo had said to her that morning poked its head up within five minutes and she couldn’t shoo it away. Cleo had slept over a few times since they found the gun, and Abigail was only half sure it was because she genuinely was too tired to cross the street to go home.
As she power walked, Cleo’s face as they’d sipped coffee together earlier kept popping into her mind. The lighthearted and offhand way she’d said, ‘I get that it’s good for you to have something to do with your time while the girls are in London, was there nothing at home to stop you?’.
Cleo had been asking, genuinely, and that was what flustered Abigail so much. There hadn’t. She’d stopped working, then gone part time, then consulted. Since the separation, she’d been consulting a little more to try and make up the difference of being a single instead of double income household, and the last contract she had completed for her old nine-to-five boss had basically covered her for these few months. She was so incredibly grateful for her job and had always recognized the privilege that she had—not having to worry about her financial security or how she’d provide for her daughters—and that made her sadness over Cleo’s comment taste like guilt. She had no reason to be down on her life... But in truth her best friend back home was her divorce lawyer. That... That was a painful thought. Her stomach twisted as her deceitful brain reminded her of how pathetic that sounded, and Abigail turned up the volume of the music in her ears as if that could drown it out.
She hadn’t gone running since before the girls had been born, but there was a familiar itch in the back of her mind that made her feel like if she wanted to—she could. She was wearing running shoes after all...
Checking that her keys and wallet were securely lodged in her pockets, Abigail gingerly picked up the pace and tested out a slow jog.
The feeling had been right, she could handle this pace. She realized this with a little thrill, as it overlayed the memory of her first attempt at running after the twins had arrived. Out of everyone she knew, Abigail should understand better than most about following doctors’ orders. She knew, logically, that she had only just been stitched up, and that even a double delivery that goes well takes a massive toll on the mother. Her delivery had not gone well. Within ten minutes, she’d become faint, thrown up, and nearly passed out on the grass near her house. Luckily, no one had seen and called an ambulance. The other thing no one tells you about having twins was that there was no 2-4-1 discount on the hospital bills.
Just the thought of medical debt made her cringe and, counterintuitively, she upped her pace a little to try and distract herself from it. She had spent so much time in hospital, seeing specialists all her life, being tested for basically everything under the sun. She had always felt secretly bad that her parents must have had to work so hard to pay it off but they never let her feel the pressure. She knew some of the initial costs had been taken care of by a charity whose particular focus was traumatic brain injury affected amnesia, but there was so little funding that her tests and initial care had used up her allotment quite quickly.
She received bills from Doctor Lavender, but her insurance took care of almost all of it. The cosmetic surgery had been the most painful, ironically. All of the healing from surgery she went through after the crash had happened while she was unconscious or drugged up beyond noticing, but the nose job to fix her messed up breathing from breaking it so badly had taken weeks to feel like she hadn’t been beaten up. One of the biggest insults was that the laser treatment on the scar that ran down the back of her skull, out of her hairline, and down her back had hurt even more than that. It wasn’t supposed to—they told her it wouldn’t—and yet it did.
Her lungs were stinging now, painful, and hot, just thinking about how much she’d had to spend because of the crash. Money wise, sure, but emotionally and psychologically too...
Tears pricked at her eyes and her vision blurred.
The last thing she needed was another hospital bill. She stopped abruptly and wiped her eyes. Jeez... How did her parents afford it all? Maybe the rental was a lot more successful back in the day.
A hand on her shoulder made her yelp in surprise, caught between turning to run again and lashing out at the person who had grabbed her.
Bee held her hands up in the air, a suspiciously familiar set of keys in one hand. Bee was panting hard.
“Woah! Sorry! You... Run... So fast,” she said, “you dropped... Didn’t mean to scare you.”
A mix of relief and embarrassment crashed through Abigail’s system as she realized what must have happened. Had she really been running fast?
Her screaming lungs and legs would support the theory.
“Sorry,” Abigail said, “I...”
“You should turn your music down, or get some open ears,” Bee said, recovering her breath, “I literally yelled after you, like three times—people were staring.”
“Oh...”
She felt her face reddening, she hadn’t heard her at all.
“Yeah,” Bee said, “are you all right?”
Abigail faltered, caught somewhere between trying to laugh it off and shaking her head—she realized as soon as she had done it that Bee’s face grew more concerned.
“Sorry, I’m... I dunno, embarrassed, I guess?”
“Embarrassed?”
“Yeah... I really didn’t hear you shouting for me and honestly I feel like I should know better than running with my headphones in.”
Bee’s face softened, “don’t be embarrassed, it’s crazy that women can’t even go for a run without worrying about self-defense.”
Abigail knew there was something else, something left unsaid at the end of Bee’s sentence, but she didn’t want to think about it right now.
“So... How’ve you been?” Bee asked, shifting her weight to her other side.
“Hah!” Abigail laughed, “it’s been... A weird few days. Are you working today?”
Bee gestured to the food truck in the distance, “I was helping them set up for the lunch rush but now I’m off for a few hours.”
Abigail weighed up how much she wanted to share with Bee... She wasn’t ready to talk about the gun yet but it might be a good thing, she decided, to get the input of someone who never knew her dad...
“Did you want to talk weird secret safes hidden in walls?”
The doubletake Bee did was comical, the little silver stud in her nose had a tiny chain hanging off it today and it swished back and forth in time with her movement.
“Literally always—do you mean your wall!?”
Nodding, Abigail took out her other headphones and placed them in the charging case, “yep, in the office. Did you want to supervise...?”
She gestured towards the food truck questioningly.
“Nah,” Bee said, “My day manager is actually incredibly competent but he’s a tiny bit scared of me, so if I hang around too much, he’ll think he’s in trouble. Beach? Coffee?”
“Beach coffee sounds good. I haven’t actually been down here since I’ve been back...”