SPOTLIGHT (8 page)

Chapter Ten

           
Under the onslaught of a thunder storm, New York City was beautiful, a gleaming spectacle alight in neon and glowing street signs once and repeated infinitely in puddles and beading droplets of rain. NYC glimmered and winked like it was sharing some shining secret. It was beautiful but it was annoying.

            Abby could never really get the hang of navigating the slick city sidewalks in the rain. There were too many people in New York City as it was, but on a rainy day everyone became wider under the awkward circumference of their umbrellas. On the streets, cars and cabs skidded by each other without concern of the peril, and one even drove straight through a puddle sending up an arc of dirty rain water that Abby just narrowly avoided. It hardly mattered anyway, she was already soaked through.

            The skies had been blue and cloudless when she'd gone into her shift at work earlier that day. But life was as unpredictable as the weather; one cloud had appeared and then another and by nightfall a torrential downpour had begun. Of course Abby didn't have an umbrella. That would be practical.

            Lately her life had been filled with this sort of chaos. She had decided that if she couldn’t resist spending all her free time with William, she would make up for it by going on even more auditions. That plan had clearly worked for Noelle. Her coworker would be leaving the next day and Abby had already been picking up the extra shifts. The combination left her feeling beyond exhausted but once she started she couldn’t stop. She had to maintain this pace to make her dreams a reality, never mind if it cost her a little sleep and a few meals.          

            Abby reached her apartment building, shivering and dripping in the lobby. She looked wearily at the elevator then decided against it. Three people had gotten stuck in it for an hour last week she had heard, and the last thing she needed right now was to be the next. She headed for the narrow, un-air-conditioned stairs and gripped the handrail tightly as she ascended, weary of the steps that were becoming slick with her every step. Abby reached the eighth floor, out of breath and light-headed, and went straight to William's door.

            The door was unlocked as it usually was for her lately and she went right in. Music was playing faintly as she entered, that same soft classic song.

            “Valle symphony number 94,” she said, humming along to the song. “Surprise Symphony.”

            William had finally told her the name of the song he liked to play while he wrote. He would get so immersed, almost in trance-like state and the song seemed to add to that condition. It was a lovely song and she imagined it was what kept William so cheerful all the time. She'd taken to humming it to herself at work and it did keep a smile on her face, not so much because of the sound of it but because it kept her thinking of William.

            He was sitting at his desk and as she entered he stood to greet her. First they hugged and then he kissed her tentatively but oh so sweetly on the lips.

            “Got caught in the rain?” He asked.

            “Oh just a little,” Abby said. She flicked her wet hair at him playfully to emphasize just how soaked she was.

            “Why don't you go change?”

            “I wanted to see you right away,” she said sheepishly. It was true. Ever since they'd made their relationship official with a firework-fueled kiss two weeks earlier they had been loath to be apart. They were both very busy pursuing the beginning of their careers, but between their hectic schedules they'd managed to find a little time to see each other in passing, and each moment was precious for its brevity. This movie night in fact had been William's idea for them to do something a little different and the damp weather was an even more perfect excuse to stay in and cuddle through some silly scary movie.

            “You're crazy,” he said. He kissed her on the forehead. “But I suppose I am too.”

            “We can be crazy together,” Abby grinned.

            “Let me at least get you a towel before you catch pneumonia or worse.” He headed towards his bedroom.

            “I'll put on the popcorn,” she called to him.

            William's kitchen was just as narrow as Abby's but she maneuvered it gracefully on the balls of her dancer's feet. She put the popcorn bag into the microwave before heading back out into the living room.

            Abby had only been in William's apartment three times thus far and each time she discovered a new little detail that told her more about her boyfriend. The other day she'd been reading the spines of the books on his bookshelf, only to find a pile of old comics tucked between his old college textbooks. She had picked on him mercilessly all that day about his Batman obsession.

            Now Abby glanced at his desk. It was cluttered since he'd just been working and he had a tendency to fling about papers and notes while he was compiling a story. There was a book next to his computer about New York City history. She knew he'd been working on an article about the old subway system and the book he'd gotten from the New York Public Library was a relic, practically an antique onto itself.

            Abby picked it up gently, not wanting to damage any of its fragile pages. William had shown her a few of the black and white photographs of the workers and she had found it fascinating. She flipped through it now, looking for one in particular that they had spoken about. As she looked, shuffling past the dog-eared pages, she hadn't expected an actual photograph to fall out. Abby placed the book carefully back on the table then bent to scoop up what she'd dropped. Off in the kitchen the popcorn began to pop in earnest.

            The picture wasn't nearly as old as the ones shown in the book, though it was a bit bent and weathered from time. Abby imagined that William had been using it as a bookmark. It looked to be a photo from a birthday party. Three small children stood in a row on someone's front lawn, all wearing matching party hats. Two girls and a boy. Abby squinted at their little faces and then her heart stopped.

            She recognized her own gangly frame first. She realized she was the girl on the left side of the picture, standing a little bit apart from the other two. In the photo she was smiling but only that half grin kids did at the behest of adults. She seemed to be tugging on the elastic of her party hat, looking away from the person taking the photo.

            Angelica was beside her and looking nearly identical but her full missing-tooth grin was real. They were even dressed alike as their mother insisted they be until the age of ten. But Angie's individuality shined through as she charmed the camera and simultaneously grabbed the hand of the little boy next to her.

            He was a little pudgy thing, shorter than them both with big thick glasses too large for his round, freckled face. His blonde hair fell shaggy over his ears and the rims of his glasses. He didn't look at the camera but at Angelica beside him, and his sweet smile was the biggest and most genuine of them all.

            Billy. That had been his name, Abby suddenly remembered. He had lived down the street from them in South Meadow for a few years, a playmate of Angie's more than hers.  Abby only remembered him as being sweet but shy, and she had never paid him any more attention than that.  The house behind them in the photo was a different color than she thought it ought to be, and she had no memory of the picture being taken or the party they were at. So why had it shown up now?

            “You're lucky,” William said behind her and Abby nearly jumped like she'd been caught at something she shouldn't be doing. “It's laundry day so you got the very last clean towel. Also I found you an old t-shirt of mine if you want to get out of those wet things.”

            Abby looked up at him, just as he tossed the towel to her. She didn't move to catch it, she couldn't move at all. The towel landed on the floor in a pool at her feet and suddenly she knew.

            “We used to play catch,” she said, her voice weak. “In your backyard. You tried to teach me how to throw and I was terrible at it. Angie was better.”

            William looked at her strangely for a moment and for a mere second she thought she had it all wrong. But then he nodded slightly and his unruly hair fell in his eyes and she knew for certain.

            Abby looked down at the photo that she clutched that in her hands so hard she was bending it. She wished the boy in the picture was turned around so she could see his pretty blue eyes but he was forever frozen sideways, gazing at her sister.

            “You're Billy Harrow,” Abby said, looking up at William, the boy grown into the man.

            “I am,” he said.

Chapter Eleven

           
In the distance Abby could hear the microwave sounding, its insistent beeps alerting them that the popcorn was done. But eating was the last thing on her mind. The night was ruined and they both knew it. Everything was ruined.

           
“You lied to me,” Abby said. Her mind was whirling with a million questions and accusations, words of betrayal and disbelief, but that was the first thing that came to mind. She had trusted him and he had lied.

            “Abby, please listen, that wasn't my intent,” William said, his expression pleading. He took a step forward and she took a step back. He looked hurt at that.

            “Don't you at least want to hear what I have to say?” He asked, his arms outstretched to her.

            Abby nodded but didn't move. “How long?” she asked. “When did you realize that it was me?”

            “From the first day I saw you,” he admitted. “When I kept that bike from hitting you. I put your hat back on and I looked into your face. And I thought, 'Angie. She's alive. She came back to me.' That's why I left so abruptly. I was stunned. When I got back home I thought I'd dreamed it all. That I'd finally completely lost my mind. It wasn't until I got back home that I remembered that Angie had a twin.”

            Abby shook her head processing that. It was all too much.

            “Then I saw you again, in front of the apartment building though it never occurred to me that you lived here,” William continued. “But you were in your work uniform. Only the Home Sweet has those bright 1950s uniforms, so I knew from that that you worked there. I wanted to see you again. So I waited.”

           
And I thought it was God's plan,
Abby thought to herself.
I believed we were meant to meet again, that it was fate. How naïve of me.

            “
You knew my sister,” she said, because that was all she could think to say. “How well?”

            William stooped to pick up the discarded towel. He stepped forward and Abby eyed him warily as he wrapped it around her still wet shoulders.

            “I'll tell you everything. But at least sit down, please, you're shaking.”

            Abby
was
shaking and she couldn't tell if it was from her damp clothes or from the twisting in the pit of her stomach. She sat, as William had asked her, on the furthest end of his couch. He sat at his computer desk taking a moment to bury his face in his hands before he continued.

            “I lived in South Meadow for about six years, from ages nine to fifteen. My father was stationed overseas and my mother and I went to live with my grandmother. The picture you found shows my tenth birthday. I didn't have a lot of friends, being the new kid in town. The other boys would make fun of me. You know, the way boys do. I was at that age where I thought girls were icky. But Angie was different.”

            Abby tried to think back to the boy she had known. Angelica had always had a revolving door of friends; such was her popularity with boys and girls alike. Billy Harrow, at least from Abby's perspective, had just been another face in the crowd and a pretty ordinary one at that.

            “We got older and we became better friends, best friends,” William continued. “When I moved away, we stayed close. We'd write letters.”

            Abby nodded. She remembered Angie sometimes getting letters in the mail that she'd run off with and read in secret. It all made sense. If William had been fifteen when he moved away then the twins had been thirteen or so at the time. And that was when the trouble had started, Abby remembered, that was when they had started keeping things from each other.

            “I moved about three or four times between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. It was hard to make friends when you never lived in one place for very long. But wherever I was being shipped off to, Angie's letters followed. They kept me grounded. She kept me going,” William smiled sadly at some old memory and the expression made Abby's heart hurt.

            “Then we moved to New Jersey and just over the bridge was New York City; I had just turned eighteen and I knew that I didn't want to live anywhere else. Especially because I knew that's where Angie eventually wanted to be.”

            “It was her dream. It was the only thing she ever talked about,” Abby said, putting the pieces together.

            “We were young,” William told her, shaking his head like he was dispelling ghosts. “And we were dumb. But we were in love. We thought we'd get married. We had this idea that we didn't need money or a place to stay. We just need to believe in each other. It was all going to work out as long as we could be together again.”

            “You were what she was keeping from me,” Abby said, her voice thin and hollow.

            “Angie believed if your parent's knew they'd keep us apart. She believed we had to keep our plans secret, at least until things were settled. I was looking for an apartment for us. Then she turned sixteen and the calls and the letters stopped.”

            Abby had never seen William look so pained. His posture was defeated, his gorgeous eyes were squinting and unfocused like he was looking into the past and didn't like what he saw there. Abby wanted to cross the room. She wanted to bridge the distance between them and hold him like he had held her so many times when she needed it. But she couldn't. William was not hers anymore.

            “For a full two months I didn't know what had happened. I thought I had ruined it somehow, that I had wanted too much or that I had pushed her away. Maybe long distance had finally become too much or maybe she had met someone else and didn't want to tell me. I finally got the idea to call the town newspaper. I knew she was always singing at this or that event and getting herself in an article. It was a long shot but it was all I had. I was her secret after all, I couldn't call her family or her twin.

            “When I called, they told me that the last article about Angelica Dawes they had run had been her obituary.”

            Abby could feel a tear course down her cheek and then another and then another until it was all too much.

            “She was happy,” she said softly, more to herself than to William. “I didn't know why but I knew she was happy. And I envied her for that like I envied her for everything else.”

            “I should have told you,” William said to her, looking stricken. “Right away, as soon as I realized who you were. But then I saw you at the restaurant and you were laughing with Noelle and smiling at the customers.
You
were happy. And I didn't want to ruin that. But I also wanted to get to know you.”

            “Because I have her face.” Abby suddenly stood a surge of rage coursing through her. She threw down the towel that had been around her and hurried for the door. “You only wanted to be with me, because I look like her.”

            William stood too. His legs were impossibly long, his strides faster and he caught her arm before she reached the door, pulling her towards him.

            “Let me go, William!” Abby demanded but when he did as she asked, she felt cold again, she missed his touch.

            “Abby, please listen to what I'm telling you. At first I waited for you at Home Sweet because I wanted to talk to you about Angelica, it's true. I wanted you to tell me everything about her, about before she passed so I could fill that hole she'd left in my life when she just disappeared. And yes, I was attracted to you because you reminded me of her.”

           
There
, Abby thought, her heart-breaking.
He's finally telling the truth. And I'm alone again.

           
“But then I got to know you,” William continued, his words coming in a rush, a tangled flood of feeling. “And you couldn't be Angie for me because you are nothing like her.”

            “Story of my life,” Abby bit out before she knew she was speaking. “Trapped in the shadows as she stole the spotlight, as she stole everything, as she stole--”

            Abby stopped abruptly; she couldn't dare finish that sentence.
She stole the man I loved even before I ever knew I loved him.

            “
You are nothing like Angie and I don't want you to be. Angelica was wild and uninhibited and she never hesitated to go after what she wanted. But I never felt safe with her, I thought she'd tire of me,” William admitted. He was staring so deeply into her eyes that Abby couldn't run away even if she wanted to. “But Abby, I trust you completely. You're thoughtful and considerate and sweet and kind. You've been through so much but you still come out smiling and you never lose your faith or your ambition. You're patient and you support others. Before I met you I never felt so comfortable with anyone in my life. I never felt comfortable with myself. But I trust you Abby Dawes. And I love you for you and you alone.”

           
He loves me,
Abby thought and she didn't know whether to kiss him or to scream at him.
I love you too,
she wanted to say.

            “You didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth,” she said instead and then she turned and left, slamming the door behind her.

            Outside of his apartment the hallway seemed to sway and for a long moment Abby couldn't move. She was still wet, her uniform soaked through, but she felt hot and a fine sweat was building on her forehead.

            All she wanted to do was go back to her apartment, crawl into bed and cry but she knew William would only follow her to her door with more sweet words and explanations.

           
I love you.
Abby longed to hear him say it again, over and over forever. She found herself in front of the elevator, not knowing exactly when she'd make the decision to move. She stabbed at the button again. It lit up beneath her touch but the elevator did not come.

            She strained to hear the sounds of its mechanic whirring, to hear it rising up from the lower floors but all she could hear was the faint sound of classical music. It had been playing dimly through their entire sorrowful conversation, Abby realized. She began to hum to it and before she knew it her hums had become sobs. Down the hall William's door opened and the song swelled to a loud crescendo.

            “Abby,” he called to her from the doorway and his voice sounded so very tired.

            She felt tired too. She pushed the elevator button again. Nothing.

            “Abby, I just want to apologize. I said so much but I never told you how sorry I am. About everything.”

            She remembered suddenly how much he had apologized when they were first getting to know each other. Had William been apologetic even then about all the things he wasn't telling her?

           
Why didn't he just tell me the truth? Why couldn't he tell me who he was from the beginning?
Abby asked herself. She pressed the elevator down button again and again.
If he'd told me the truth I
would have run the other way,
she realized.
He didn't tell me about Angie for the same reason I didn't tell him about her. We both wanted to escape the past and start over.