Evidence of Life

Chapter 13



A few mornings after Abby’s arrival, Dennis stopped by. He was in uniform and looked official; he looked like the police and not at all like the man Abby had come to know through weeks of phone conversations. This man was a stranger. It was difficult to meet his eye; she couldn’t say his name. When he smiled, her face warmed. When he asked how she’d been, she said, “How did you know I was here?”

“Kate called me after she heard from your mother. They were worried, ready to put out an APB on you.”

Kate brought Dennis a mug and filled it with coffee.

Abby offered the pitcher of cream.

He said, “Thanks, but I take it black,” and kept her gaze. “I thought maybe you’d like to go horseback riding this afternoon.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so.” Abby looked at Kate.

“Well, I meant George and Kate, too. We could meet at my place, maybe pack some wine and cheese, ride downriver, make a party of it.”

“Sounds like fun,” Kate said, “but George and I have to go into town to the courthouse. We have an issue with this year’s taxes.” She looked at Abby. “You go; it’ll do you good.”

Abby made a face. She could only imagine the planning behind this invitation. The discussion they’d all had about her. What could they do to distract her from her fixation? Her obsession? Considering the extent of some of her wild imaginings, Abby might have laughed. They’d lock her up if they knew, she thought. She caught his eye. “I’d like to go,” she told him. “It’s been a while since I’ve ridden, and I’ve missed it.”

He rapped his knuckles on the table and said, “Good deal,” and from the light in his eyes, she knew he was pleased.

* * *

She was nervous later, following Dennis into his barn, but as she stepped around, helping him with the routine of saddling the horses, she became aware of a welling sense of joy. And she paused a moment to study it, this strange, half-remembered, sweet contentment that seemed to be stealing through her. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to climb into the saddle, and just as suddenly, tears pricked her eyelids.

How could she be happy?

She didn’t notice the rifle Dennis had loaded onto his mount until they were some distance from the corral, and even then, she didn’t ask. She didn’t want to disturb their silence. Abby had noticed this about Dennis before, that silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable or awkward.

They were crossing a field when he asked her if she was aware that Mormons were some of the first settlers around.

Abby answered she hadn’t heard that.

“There were German immigrants, too, Dennis said, “and a few Polish families. There was so much timber back then, they built mills and manufactured lumber. Lumber and furniture mostly.”

“Huh,” Abby said, and they fell silent again.

Above them the day was all blue air, cool breeze and fall sunshine so warm down Abby’s back that she took off her new red jacket and tied the arms at her waist. The horses picked their way over the parched ground, around clumps of prickly pear and wedges of brush that Abby decided was some kind of thistle in its dying season.

She said, “I thought this was ranch country.”

“Not at first. Not until the late 1800s when the ranchers south of here started banding their herds together. They drove the cattle up this way and stopped on the banks of the Medina, right there in town where it makes that big bend? Guess it seemed a natural place to rest the herds and fatten them before hitting the trail north.” Dennis paused. “The land’s been overgrazed now in places.”

In the distance, Abby saw what appeared to be buzzards circling the sky. Dennis saw them, too. “If you don’t mind, we’ll ride that way and see what’s up.”

She shook her head, aware of the rifle again.

“It might be nothing,” Dennis said, sensing her distress. He asked about her house. “Didn’t you tell me you designed it?”

“Yes,” she said, knowing it was an attempt to distract her and glad for it.

“That porch is something, the way it wraps all four corners.”

“That was Nick’s idea,” Abby said. “He very nearly blew our budget on that porch. It surprised me, too. He’s usually so frugal. You have to be when there are two—two children to put through—to—” She couldn’t finish. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, blinking furiously. Please don’t cry, pleaseplease. She felt the horses stop, felt Dennis bend toward her, felt him wondering whether to touch her.

He didn’t.

Finally, when she thought she was all right, she said, “I don’t know how to talk about them.”

Dennis straightened, and they started the horses walking again. He seemed to understand there was nothing he could say.

Abby concentrated on the sound the hooves made as they swished through rough yellow grass. The leather saddle creaked beneath her. She listened to her mount breathe. From somewhere close by four songbird notes shimmered up a scale and died.

“Mockingbird,” Dennis said.

“I thought so,” Abby answered.

They spotted the blood almost as soon as they entered the thicket. Dennis dismounted and swiped his fingers over the glossy stain in the leaves at his feet. “Fresh,” he said. Handing Abby his reins, he unholstered his rifle and disappeared into the woods.

At first Abby could hear him, then after a bit, she couldn’t anymore. She jumped when he emerged on her other side, his expression grim. “Oh, no,” she said.

“Some bozo shot a doe and left her,” he answered. “She’s hurt pretty bad. Her fawn is close by.” He went to his saddlebag, took out a rope.

Abby dismounted.

“No,” he said reading her intention. “Stay here with the horses. They might spook.”

“You have to kill her?”

“Nothing else to do.”

“The fawn?”

“I’ll try and get a rope on it first.” He looked disgusted and furious enough to cuss, but he wouldn’t, Abby thought, out of regard for her.

He glanced off as if he needed a moment to gather himself, and she thought he would go, but he didn’t. His gaze returned to her, and their eyes locked. She could not have said who moved, but somehow they were standing closer together, so close she could smell the sun on his skin, the minty warmth of his breath, a fainter undercurrent of pine. He slid his fingers from her elbow to her wrist, then loosely cupped her hand and she felt her knees weaken. She felt herself sway. The moment elongated, shimmered. It was sensual but not. And then it was over. She caught herself, broke their gaze and stepped back. Or Dennis did. Abby wasn’t sure.

He plowed a hand over his head. He seemed abashed, chagrined, some combination.

Abby didn’t want him to feel badly. “You’ve been so kind to me,” she said, and she wasn’t sure what she meant. More than was on the surface, she thought.

“You’ll be all right,” he said.

She nodded. Was he telling her or asking her? She didn’t know that either.

He left her then, and she watched him thread his way into the woods until he was lost to her view, and then, only a moment later, she flinched when a single shot rang out.

* * *

For dinner that evening, George grilled salmon; Kate made scalloped potatoes, and she and Abby steamed fresh asparagus and tossed a salad. While they ate, Abby chattered about her day, ignoring the voice in her head that said she wasn’t entitled to have a good day, a relatively happy and peaceful day. She told the story about the doe and her fawn, becoming caught up in it. She assumed Kate and George would have some response when she finished, but neither of them said a word. They didn’t even look at her.

Kate stacked the dirty plates and took them to the sink.

Abby looked from her to George, uncertain, a bit on edge. “Dennis brought the fawn home.” She carried the bowl of leftover scalloped potatoes to the counter. “He’s going to hand feed it until it’s old enough to care for itself.”

Now George smiled. “He’s always rescuing something, isn’t he, Kate?”

But she didn’t answer, and the look she shot George would have frozen hell.

Abby ducked her head. Clearly they’d been arguing, and she wondered about the cause, hoping it wasn’t her.

George found a container for Abby to stow the leftover potatoes in and said he was going to light a fire in the outdoor fireplace.

“What is up with you two?” Abby asked as soon as he was gone. “I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but I’m worried it’s me, that I’m in the way here.”

Kate rinsed the plates, started in on the silverware. Her back was to Abby, and she kept it that way.

Abby felt a frisson of unease loosen along her spine. “Kate? Tell me.”

She shut off the water, picked up a kitchen towel and turned to Abby, looking anxious, winding the towel around her hands. “You’re going to be so furious with me. George is already pissed. No way I go with this is right, but you have to know.”

“Know what?” Abby’s unease flared now into full-blown panic.

“I should have told you when I first remembered, but George said it didn’t mean anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw Nick last December in town, the week before Christmas.”

“You saw—what are you saying, Kate?”

“I’m sorry, I should have told you before now, but I honestly didn’t remember until we—until George and I started talking about the property taxes for this year. That’s what I was doing when I saw Nick last year. I was paying our taxes, and I came out of the courthouse and he was just there, walking up the sidewalk. I did a double take. He said he was in town to do a title search on some land. I think he mentioned a client, but I’m not sure.” Kate’s gaze was distraught, pleading. “I was so surprised, I didn’t pay close attention. I’m sorry.”

“He mentioned a client? Was he with someone?”

“I didn’t see anyone else. I asked about you, why you didn’t come, and he said it was sort of a secret his being there. He said the land he’d looked at was going for a song, and he was thinking of buying it as a surprise for you. He asked me not to tell you. I think that’s part of why I lost track of it, because I had it in my head I shouldn’t say anything. I sort of made myself forget, you know, because it would fall out of my mouth before I could stop it, and I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”

“But when the flood came, when he disappeared—it’s hard to believe you didn’t remember then.”

“Well, I didn’t, and I am telling you now, even though George is dead set against it. He thinks telling you is only pouring gasoline on the fire.”

“What fire?”

Kate turned away. She wiped the countertop.

“Come on, Kate. This is you and me here.”

“It’s just, you’re having such a hard time getting past it, Abby. I mean, you have all these—I don’t know—suspicions or something as if you can’t— You don’t want to accept the obvious, and my telling you about seeing Nick, well, George says it’ll just keep your mind racing.”

“My mind is not racing, Katie.” Abby regretted ever sharing her doubts with Kate. She ought to have known better.

A difficult silence grew.

Abby broke it. “Did Nick stay here with you and George?”

“Oh, God, no!”

Abby’s eyes widened. “Well, I know he isn’t your favorite person, but I always thought he was as welcome here as I am.”

“Of course he is. That’s not what I meant.” Kate took a moment.

And Abby thought she could deny it all she liked, but the truth was Kate had never cared for Nick. “He’s not your type,” she’d said soon after they met.

Kate found Abby’s gaze. “I’d surely have remembered it if he’d come out here, if he’d actually stayed with us. That’s what I meant. And I did say something to him about it, but he said he wasn’t spending the night. I thought it was odd that he would make such a long drive in one day, but I assumed he was going home, that you were expecting him.”

Abby looked at her shoes. Had she been? Had she even known where he was?

Kate pulled a tray and a big thermos out of a cabinet. She poured coffee into the thermos, set it on the tray, added a pitcher filled with cream, a sugar bowl, spoons and three mugs. She disappeared in the direction of the great room and returned bearing a decanter filled with amber liquid. “Grand Marnier,” she said. “It’s cold outside. We can use a shot.”

Abby held her gaze. “Looking at land can’t be the reason Nick was here.”

Kate picked up the tray. “Can we finish this conversation later? As you said, it doesn’t involve George, and I don’t want him overhearing. He’s mad enough at me as it is.”

“No! Kate! For God’s sake, my family is missing. No one knows where they are, and now you’re telling me you saw Nick in Bandera last December? Why would he be there? He wasn’t buying land. Even at the price of a song, we couldn’t afford it.”

“All right. All right.” Kate turned sharply.

Abby steadied the thermos, the cream pitcher.

They were both startled when George came through the back door. “Can you bring another cup? Dennis is here.”

Abby stepped back, putting her fingertips to her temples, running them up to her chignon, pushing at the pins there. She followed Kate and George outside; she couldn’t think of a plausible reason not to, and had it not been for Dennis’s presence, there would have been hard words said. Abby could feel them heating her teeth. She thought even Dennis was aware of the friction because he immediately launched into a funny story about a cat rescue call he’d had in the neighborhood earlier in the week.

“He’s talking about May Dean Hennesey. She lives down the way. She’s always calling 911.” Kate was explaining for Abby’s benefit, to distract her. Abby could feel Kate’s glance, the weight of her distress. But Abby would not relent, not this time.

George said, “May Dean’s got the hot pants for Dennis. She runs the cat up the tree so she can get him over to her house.”

“She’s eighty-one.” Dennis’s half-sheepish protest made Abby smile in spite of herself. He said, “The worst thing was that after I got the cat down, I had to go inside and eat her tuna casserole for lunch.”

Kate laughed. “May Dean’s tuna casserole is the biggest joke in this county.”

Abby didn’t laugh; she sipped her coffee. She wanted so badly to turn to Kate and say she didn’t give a damn about May Dean whoever and her pathetic tuna casserole. She wanted to say: How dare you keep such a secret? Abby didn’t believe that Nick had come to Bandera to buy land. In December, Kate had said, the week before Christmas. What was going on then? Abby tried to think. Jake would have been coming home from college. She remembered telling Lindsey they’d wait for him to get their tree.

Their last tree. Their last Christmas as a family. She remembered decorating that tree, she and the kids had done it together on the Friday evening after Jake arrived.

And Nick hadn’t been there. Abby remembered now he’d gone to Dallas that weekend to take care of some legal business for Louise, something to do with her estate. At least that’s what he’d told Abby he was doing. He and Louise had an appointment to see their family attorney and when they finished, Nick brought Louise home for the holiday. She’d spent the week of Christmas with them and nearly driven all four of them insane. How could he have been in Bandera unless he’d driven there first and then gone up to Dallas? And even so, Nick would never have made such a huge decision without consulting her. He would have insisted they do research. They would have looked at dozens of properties, talked to any number of Realtors.

But there was an even more compelling reason why the whole thing was impossible: Helix Belle. Those ridiculous allegations against Nick had been made only weeks before the holidays. He’d been in such a terrible mood, Abby had been afraid Christmas would be ruined. Certainly he’d been in no frame of mind to look at land, much less plan a surprise around buying it.

Abby let her gaze drift. Everything led back to that time, the trouble with Helix Belle. She remembered after he was cleared, Nick said it didn’t matter, that there were always going to be people who didn’t get the message, who would feel hostile and angry at him, who would hate him. What people? Why would they feel that way? She didn’t know because she hadn’t asked. Instead, after repeated attempts to buoy his mood, she’d left him alone. She had assumed he’d come out of it, whatever it was—a funk, a bad patch. Everyone had them. Every marriage had them. Now she wondered what she’d been thinking.

“I hate these stupid, jackass, gun-toting yahoos. Most of ’em are from the city and don’t know shit about hunting. Pardon my French, Abby.”

She blinked in George’s direction, momentarily blank. “Oh, the doe. You’re talking about the doe we found this afternoon.”

“I’m really sorry you got dragged into it,” Dennis said.

“I’m sorry you had to put her down,” Abby told him.

Kate went inside and returned with more coffee. George put another log on the fire. Conversation lagged, and in the lull, other noises became audible, small scurrying sounds, the night-doings of animals. Far below, at the foot of the slope, Abby could hear the lake water sliding against the shore. The sense of peace was pervasive, and she wanted it, wanted so badly to yield to it, but what right did she have? Everyone wanted her to resume her life. To make plans for Thanksgiving dinner, next summer’s garden. But it was wrong. Disloyal. As if she were giving up on her family, willing to walk on and forget them. Willing not to know the truth.

Abby turned to Dennis. “Kate ran into Nick in Bandera outside the courthouse last December when I had no idea he was there.”

“You told her? I thought we agreed you wouldn’t.” George sounded every bit as pissed at Kate as she had told Abby he was.

“I had a right to know, George,” Abby said.

“I told you she did,” Kate insisted to her husband.

No one spoke, and when George got up and said he was turning in, Kate stood up, too.

“I don’t know what good it does you,” George said, not unkindly, when he paused beside Abby’s chair.

“I’m just confused about why he was there, what he was doing,” Abby said.

“That’s what I mean.” George squeezed her shoulder. “It only puts fuel on the fire, causes you to ask more questions when what you need to do is to let go, Abby. You need closure. You need to be able to get on with your life.”

“Well, maybe she can’t, George,” Kate said following him into the house. “I mean, can you imagine how hard it is to live with—”

The door closed behind them severing the rest of Kate’s argument.

“They almost never fight,” Abby said.

“I don’t think they’re fighting so much as trying to decide the best way they can help you.” Dennis settled an ankle atop his opposite knee.

“Kate said Nick was here to buy land. I don’t believe it, but I don’t know what else would have brought him here.”

“You don’t believe that’s what he told her or—”

“Could we find out? Would there be a record of what he did at the courthouse?”

“Are you sure he went inside? You said Kate saw him outside.”

“But we could still ask, couldn’t we? You, your deputies, they could—”

“Abby,” Dennis said her name gently, so gently she winced. She knew what was coming. “I know it must be hell having so many unanswered questions about what happened to your family and why, but please trust me when I say we have looked very carefully into your husband’s and daughter’s disappearance, we have gone over every detail with a fine-tooth comb, and there’s nothing to indicate anything mysterious or criminal happened other than what is evident on the surface.”

Abby felt Dennis’s concern. She waited a bit, and when she thought she could speak without breaking into tears, she said, “I wish it were ten years from now.” And then she wondered, why ten years? Did she think she would recover by then? She said, “Kate knows more than she’s telling.”

“Okay.” Dennis went along. “What makes you say that?”

Abby shook her head. She didn’t want to tell Dennis about Baylor Gates, the man who had broken her friendship with Kate years ago. But that didn’t stop the memory from rattling around in her brain, from warning her that friends could be faithless. Friends could betray you. “She thinks she’s protecting me,” Abby answered. “But I wish she wouldn’t. I wish everyone would stop doing that and tell me the truth.”

But maybe that was the problem, Abby thought later as she was falling asleep. She was too caught up in waiting for someone to come to her with the answers. Maybe her plan should be to find them out herself. She could talk to the gas station attendant in Boerne, for instance. She could try and find Adam Sandoval’s wife. Abby knew Sherry Sandoval, not well. They’d met through their husbands; the four of them had had dinner once or twice years ago.

Abby was up early the next morning. She helped Kate make breakfast, and she was loading the dishwasher when Kate said she needed to go to the grocery store.

“Come with me. Leave the dishes. You’ve done enough slaving.”

Abby straightened.

“You’re still mad.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused between you and George.”

“You haven’t caused any trouble, Abby. George’ll get over it.”

Abby didn’t answer.

Kate sighed. “Look, I really did forget about seeing Nick last winter. Honestly. You know how terrible my memory is.”

Abby met Kate’s glance. It sounded like an excuse, but Abby conceded, saying, “Right, whatever. It’s fine,” because she didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to blow up their friendship. The time for that was past. She couldn’t handle another loss anyway. She said, “I want to drive into Boerne.”

“What for?”

“I want to talk to the kid at the gas station myself.”

Kate groaned.

“I know. It’s probably dumb, but maybe seeing me, he’ll remember something.”

Kate didn’t agree. Abby could see it in her eyes. “You go on to the store. I’ll go to Boerne. I might pop on down to San Antonio, too. It’s not far. I can be back by dinnertime.”

“San Antonio?”

“Adam Sandoval lives there, or he did until he jumped bail. I want to talk to his wife.”

“Abby, this is crazy! Do you even know where she lives? Weren’t they divorced?”

“That’s what Nick said, but—” Abby shrugged. She had no idea what to believe or whom, not anymore.

Kate sighed. “Well, if I can’t talk you out of it, then I’m going with you. At least we can shop for groceries at Whole Foods in San Antonio.”

* * *

It was easy enough to locate the Sandoval residence. Abby drove, and Kate read off the directions she’d pulled from Google. Abby hoped they wouldn’t be wasting their time here the way they had at the Shell station in Boerne. The boy Dennis had interviewed no longer worked there; he had moved to Georgia a few months after the flood with his family. Abby had been disappointed, but when she’d looked at Kate, she could have sworn Kate had looked relieved.

“Slow down,” Kate said. “It’s got to be on this block somewhere. There!” She gestured at a ranch-style home, dark brown brick with cream-colored trim on an oversized lot. The house was low-slung, rambling, yet somehow sharply urban in its design.

Abby pulled into the driveway. “It looks deserted,” she said, and she wasn’t sure why she had that impression. The grass was cut, the shrubbery was trimmed. There was no clutter of newspapers crowding the front door.

“What’s the plan?” Kate asked. “Do we just go up and knock and then what? I left my religious literature at home.”

Abby made a face. “Ha-ha,” she said.

They rang the front door bell and listened to it echo through the empty rooms. Abby walked back down the porch steps. “I’m going to look in the backyard.”

“Abby,” Kate protested, “I don’t think—”

“Yoo-hoo!” a woman called, crossing the street toward Abby and Kate. “Are you reporters or police?” she asked as she got closer.

“Friends,” Abby said.

“Avon calling,” Kate said at the same time, and Abby gave her a look.

“Well,” the woman said, touching her tightly permed gray hair, “if you’re looking for the Sandovals, they’re gone.”

“I’m an old friend of Sherry’s,” Abby said quickly. “We were in school together, but we’ve lost touch. I’ve just heard of all her difficulties. The divorce must have been so hard for her. I wanted to stop by, see if there was anything I could do to help.”

“Oh, but she and Adam aren’t divorced, dear,” the woman said.

Abby’s breath shallowed. “Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure. I’ve lived here forty-three years. I brought the Sandovals an apple pie the day they moved in.”

“So they’ve moved out now?” Kate asked.

The woman looked at her. “Don’t you keep up with the news? Adam Sandoval is a wanted man. He and his wife have left the country, you mark my word. He went first and she followed him. I told the police when they were over here snooping around that they’re probably sipping cocktails on the Riviera about now, living on all that loot Adam stole from those poor children. I’m telling you, you would never have known Adam was that sort from his—”

“Did you ever see this man over here?” Abby pulled the family photograph she had shown to Peg, the waitress at Griff’s, from her purse and pointed at Nick. The woman looked closely at it.

“I might have. There was a man with hair that same dark shade over here a few times. Drove a yellow Corvette. It might have been this fellow.”

Abby’s breath stopped. She could see it, that Nick would rent a car so he wouldn’t be recognized. A Corvette would suit him. Hadn’t he talked occasionally about owning one? “How—how tall was the man you saw? Do you know?”

“Abby, no. Come on.” Kate slipped her hand under Abby’s elbow. She thanked the woman. Abby didn’t protest when Kate put her into the passenger seat of the BMW and said she would drive.

“That woman is nothing more than a neighborhood gossip,” Kate said as they drove away. “It’s no good listening to her.”

Abby didn’t answer; she rested her head against the seat back. Nick had lied to her about the Sandovals. They weren’t divorced; there hadn’t been money woes, and somehow, knowing this made all the rest of it plausible—that it was Nick the neighbor had seen driving the yellow Corvette, that it was Nick with Adam on the surveillance tape outside the bank. He could have done it, driven here to San Antonio and back home in a day once, twice, a hundred times, and she’d never have been the wiser. You had to pursue it; you wanted to know. A voice in her brain taunted her. But she felt sick and so afraid. Suppose he was involved with Adam and she uncovered the proof of it? What would she do then? Turn him in, her own husband?

* * *

“Please come with me,” Kate said.

They had left San Antonio without shopping for groceries the day before, and Kate was insisting Abby accompany her now, but she said no, that she hadn’t slept well and wanted to lie down for a bit. In truth it was another idea entirely that had taken form in her mind, one that she ought to have acted on long ago. She would have shared it with Kate, if she thought Kate would have been open-minded, but she wouldn’t be, not after yesterday. “I think I’ll have a nap outside on the deck while you’re gone,” Abby said.

“You’ll sit out there and brood. I know you.”

“No. I promise I won’t.”

Kate pulled on her jacket. “Okay. But you can sit by yourself too much. You can think yourself blind.”

They shared a stubborn silence.

Kate broke it. “You can read meaning into circumstance that isn’t there. That could have been any guy that woman saw, Abby. Just think how many dark-haired men there are in the world.”

Abby dried her hands. “I know, but it just seems as if Nick was doing a lot of stuff I didn’t know about.”

“Like what else?”

Abby shrugged, turned her back and looked out the window at the saddle horses grazing in the pasture. She let her gaze travel from the corral along the drive to the barn that housed the livestock, and the hot bite of resentment she felt against Kate was as burning and unexpected as a sharp stick in the eye. Abruptly, Abby jerked her glance inside to her hands. She was gripping the counter’s edge so hard her knuckles were white.

“Abby?” Kate prodded. “What else have you found out?”

But Abby only shook her head, anxious now for Kate to leave. “It’s nothing.” She made herself smile. “Go on. I’m fine. I’m not brooding. I swear.”

“Cross your soul and never cry?” Kate lifted her foot and traced an X on the bottom of her shoe.

Abby did the same. “Never cry,” she repeated. It was the oath and sign they’d made up in their school days.

They walked out together, and Abby waited until Kate’s taillights had disappeared completely before retracing her steps, going straight through the house, first into the bedroom to get her purse, then down the hall to the study. Sitting behind the desk, she pulled a sheet of white business paper from the stack on the table beside the fax machine. She uncapped a pen and wrote FAX at the top edge. Beneath that she copied the number from the inside cover of the matchbook.

She started to write To: and the name Sondra, and then didn’t. She pressed the capped end of the pen to her mouth, and after a moment’s thought, she bent over the desk and wrote: My name is Abby Bennett. My husband is missing. He had this number. But something didn’t feel right. She crumpled the sheet, tossed it into the wastebasket, drew out a fresh sheet. My name is Abby Bennett, she wrote, and after that: I’m sorry to trouble you. But some instinct again said no, and she crumpled that sheet, too.

She headed another sheet, again introducing herself. Then: I hope you can help me. I’m trying to locate a man named Nick Bennett. He’s missing. A record of this fax number was among his possessions. If you have any information about him, will you please call….

She lifted the pen before she could jot down her cell phone number. Instinct warned she shouldn’t give that out. It was somehow too personal, and she copied down the fax machine’s phone number as the method of contact instead. Of course, now she ran the risk of George and Kate finding out what she’d done, and if they did, which was likely, she would have to explain that she’d sent off a fax to a total stranger asking the whereabouts of a man they believed to their cores was dead. But at least they would agree that she’d been prudent about it. A person could be harassed on their cell phone, but who, other than advertisers, harassed anyone by a fax machine?

Abby loaded the page and sent it before she could reconsider. Even so, the urge to wrest it from the machine was immediate and overwhelming. She had no clue what kind of trouble might be on the receiving end. Borrow sugar, not trouble. Her daddy’s advice played through her mind. She picked up the message she’d faxed and tore it in half, then into quarters, letting them drop into the wastebasket.