Evidence of Life

Chapter 15



Late in the afternoon, they started dinner. Kate washed a chicken, patted it dry and seasoned the cavity. Abby cut limes into quarters and stuffed them inside. They tied the legs with twine, covered the dish with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator. Kate went outside to clean and light the grill, and Abby snapped the fresh green beans Kate had bought that morning.

“There’s enough here for an army,” Abby said when Kate returned to the kitchen.

“We can make green bean sandwiches for breakfast,” Kate said.

“Layer them with a fried egg.” Abby grinned.

Kate put her hands together. “Add grated Swiss cheese, slap it all between two pieces of wheat toast and voilà.”

Abby laughed. They’d used to do it on purpose, see who could come up with the most outlandish breakfast sandwich combination. Pulled pork barbeque on day-old waffles layered with coleslaw, meatloaf and bacon on a croissant. Peanut butter and sweet pickles sandwiched between pancakes. The air was thick with their silly memories.

Abby said, “Sometimes everything feels so ordinary, you know? As if they’ll walk in the door and everything will be the way it always was when we came for a visit. Jake will be hunting through the pantry—”

“Foraging.” Kate had no trouble following Abby’s train of thought.

“Lindsey will have straw in her hair from playing with the cats in the barn.”

“That kid would live in the barn if we let her,” Kate said.

Abby pressed the backs of her wrists to her eyes, and Kate came and circled her shoulders. She bent her head until it touched Abby’s.

“Sometimes I let myself drift—” Abby resumed breaking the beans, stem end, blossom end “—way up. I go higher and higher until the earth is just a tiny glowing speck, and it’s as if it never happened.”

Kate brought a small mesh sack filled with new potatoes to the sink and started washing them.

Abby leaned her hip against the counter, giving her room. “What was Nick really doing in Bandera?”

“I told you.”

“I want to know what you think, what exactly you saw.”

“Him. I saw him on the courthouse sidewalk. That’s all.”

“I don’t believe you. I know you think you’re protecting me, but you aren’t.”

Kate scrubbed a potato vigorously, flushing away bits of peeling under the running tap, and then, abruptly, she shut the water off so hard, the pipe knocked in the wall. “He was never the man you wanted to believe he was, Abby.”

“He was too experienced for me, right? Little sheltered Abby Carter and Big Bad Nick Bennett. Miss Mouse and the Wolf.”

Kate groaned. “Let’s drop it, okay? It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Why? Because you think he’s dead?”

Kate jerked on the water taps and again shut them off. “You have to accept it,” she pleaded. “You’re killing yourself and I can’t stand it.”

“Well, it isn’t about you, is it? For once. This isn’t some college romance, Kate.”

“You think I don’t know that? God, Abby, can you give me no credit?”

Abby didn’t answer. She waited for Kate to finish scouring the potatoes, and taking Kate’s place at the sink, she rinsed the beans and put them in a pan. She added water and seasoning and set them on the stove to cook. Somehow they got through dinner and the rest of the evening. Abby went to bed early and, lying sleepless, thought of going home. It wasn’t as if she was accomplishing anything here other than wearing out her welcome waiting for a return fax that would likely never come. Curled on her side, she pictured herself going through her own back door, and it was a relief when she didn’t feel the customary wash of horrible dread. She could do it, she thought. She could go home. Try and start over. It was the right thing to do, and she felt better for having made the decision.

* * *

The next morning, once she was showered and dressed, Abby scooped her belongings from the chair in Kate’s guest room and stuffed them into her canvas tote. She got clean bed linen from the closet in the hall, stripped the bed and remade it. Kate was already in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a mug of coffee, immersed in reading the morning newspaper. Abby hesitated in the doorway, holding the bundle of sheets. The bowl that held the leftover green beans was out on the counter, along with a loaf of wheat bread and the toaster. All they needed were the eggs to make the sandwiches they’d planned. Abby’s mouth watered. She’d have hers slathered with real mayonnaise, she thought.

Kate looked up. “What are you doing with those sheets?”

Abby carried them into the laundry room. “Want me to fry the eggs?” she asked, retracing her steps into the kitchen.

“I thought you’d have coffee first.”

Abby filled her mug and sat down at the table. “I’m going home. I need to take care of the house, start looking for a job. I think I’ll teach again. Maybe junior high this time. How bad could it be?”

“You’re angry at me.”

“About—?”

“I don’t know. Any number of things, I guess.” Kate spread her fingers, knuckled them over her mouth looking puzzled, anxious, some combination.

“You keep secrets, Kate. You always have.”

Kate’s eyes widened. Abby rarely lost her temper,.

“Ever since college, I’ve never known whether I can trust you. Even before—” Abby broke off unwilling to get into it, how she had always felt the ground between them was wormed with Kate’s secrets. She found Kate’s gaze. “You lied about Baylor. How do I know you aren’t lying now about Nick?”

“You don’t. But I’m not this time, Abby. I wouldn’t—I learned—” Kate looked away, blinking, and in a moment, her cheek was limned in the silvery light of her tears.

Abby bit her lips, angry still and rueful, too, because she knew what it cost Kate to cry, and she’d always hated being the cause. “I’m sorry,” she said, wobbly voiced.

“No, don’t. Don’t say that.” Kate wiped her eyes, sniffed. “What I did was terrible, and I’ve never said how lucky I feel that you forgave me, that you let me back into your life, let us be friends again.”

“You went through so much.” Abby hesitated, remembering how fragile Kate had looked the first time they’d met after Kate had returned to Houston. She’d been horrified to hear the suffering Kate had endured at Baylor’s hands.

“You felt sorry for me.”

“I felt sorry about all of it,” Abby said truthfully.

“Think what I saved you from,” Kate said wryly.

Abby ducked her chin. She had thought about that, and she had been relieved and then felt shame for it, and for all the times she’d wished Kate ill. She said, “I would have been there for you, if I’d known.” Abby had said this before, and it was easier every time she repeated the words. But buried in her mind was a sharp sliver of wonder. Would she have listened if Kate had called her about Baylor’s abuse? Would compassion have warmed itself in the bitter fire of her hostility? Abby wanted to believe she would have been there for her friend, but she had her doubts.

“How could I come to you?” Kate asked. “When Baylor hit me, I was convinced I deserved it. I felt like I was an awful person and not only for taking him from you the way I did.”

“No, Kate. No one deserves that kind of treatment and the truth is you couldn’t have taken him if he hadn’t wanted to go.”

Kate found Abby’s gaze and held it. “I have been so jealous of you, so filled with envy each time you were pregnant, holding your babies. Baylor took that from me.” Kate’s eyes filled again. “I lost my baby, my little girl. I’ll never have children because of him and he—he—” Her voice broke.

Abby bent forward, grasping Kate’s forearms, swiping at her wet cheeks, murmuring, “Kate, Katie, hush now, it’s all right....”

She bowed her head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this now when Nick and Lindsey are—but I’ve wanted to say it for so long. I’ve always felt as though we never talked it through, never worked it out between us.” She looked at Abby. “I don’t think I can ever make it up to you.”

“That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing to make up.” Abby went for a tissue and handed it to Kate.

She blew her nose. “I’m sorry I ever said anything to you about Nick, as if I was an expert with my track record.”

“Look at George. He’s one of the kindest men I know.”

“I got lucky. Don’t ask me how.”

Now in the silence that fell, in the wake of Kate’s honesty and tears, the air seemed to ease, and Abby was swept with gratitude. She felt lighter somehow and less burdened by doubt. She shook her head slightly. “It’s weird that neither of us saw that side of him.”

“When we first married and he acted jealous, I thought it was cute. I had no clue the sort of monster he would turn into.” Kate went to the sink and filled a glass with water, sipping it.

“He could have killed you.”

“You don’t know how close he came,” Kate said.

Instead it was Baylor who had died. Five years ago in prison where he’d been incarcerated for his final assault on Kate that had resulted in the loss of their unborn daughter. He’d had a massive stroke in his cell one week before he was due to be released on parole. Kate had called Abby to tell her. She’d been confused that at his passing she could feel both elation and sadness.

Abby picked up her mug and set it back down. Kate dampened a dishcloth and pressed it to her face.

“Abby?”

She looked up at George framed in the kitchen doorway. His face was a mirror of consternation, and then she saw the paper in his hand, and her heart sank.

“Abby’s gotten a fax,” he said.

“What? How would anyone know to fax her here?” Kate came to the table.

Abby took the fax from George. If he noticed Kate’s disheveled appearance, her red face, her scoured-looking eyes, he gave no sign that Abby saw. He, like Kate, was looking at Abby.

She looked at the fax. It was handwritten, but she had no trouble deciphering it. My wife Sondra, has been missing for nearly a year, it read. I don’t recognize the name Nick Bennett. May we talk in person? At the end of the note there was a signature and underneath that, a phone number.

“Who’s Hank Kilmer?” Kate was reading over Abby’s shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Abby said.

“Well, if you don’t know him, how did he know to contact you here?” Kate asked.

“Why is he contacting you?” George crossed his arms over his chest.

Abby explained with as little drama as possible about the matchbook and what she’d been led to do about it. She wanted that to be the end of it and said, briskly, “I need to get going. I want to be home by dark.”

“You should have breakfast first,” Kate said.

“You aren’t thinking of meeting this guy?” George came to the point.

Abby said, “You don’t think it’s strange that Nick wrote down the name of a woman who went missing too?”

“Abby!” Kate knelt and grabbed Abby’s hands; she locked Abby’s gaze. “They drowned. They are gone. You have got to accept it.”

Abby looked at George. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, darlin’. Kate’s right. It’s time to move on. I know—”

“No!” Abby stood up, raising her finger at him. “Don’t say it. You don’t know how it feels.” She spun on her heel, left the kitchen and retrieved her tote. She was gone from the ranch within minutes. She did not look back, not once.

* * *

Dennis caught up with her on the highway west of Pipe Creek. She didn’t realize it was Dennis who was behind her, not at first. She saw the flashing lights in her rearview mirror, glanced at the speedometer that registered eighty-five and said, “Shit,” under her breath, easing off the gas pedal. “Shit shit shit.”

She pulled off the road, turned off the ignition and lowered the window. Cold air pushed in around her, blanketed her thighs, pooled around her ankles. She jammed her hands into her jacket pockets, and her fingers closed over the folded edge of Hank Kilmer’s fax.

“Abby?”

She whipped off her sunglasses. “Dennis?”

“What are you doing?”

She tossed her glasses into the passenger seat. “Why is everyone always asking me that?”

He leaned down, folding his arms on the window ledge.

She looked at him. Their faces were so close she could smell the mint flavor of his chewing gum. “I could ask you the same thing. Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction?”

“Kate called. She said something about a fax?”

Abby felt a stab of irritation. What right did Kate have talking about Abby to Dennis? How much had she said? Had she filled him in on every detail of Abby’s private life and her private thoughts and her private pain? Damn her, Abby thought. God damn them all to hell.

“Abby? If you think there’s some connection, I ought to check it out.”

“No. It’s nothing, a mistake.”

“Kate’s worried.”

“She shouldn’t be. I’m fine. I’m going home. I’m going to go back to work, start looking after myself.” Abby straightened up. “It’s what everyone wants, isn’t it? For me to accept what’s happened? Move on?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, that’s what I’m doing. I’m moving on.”

“Too fast.” Dennis shifted, stiffening his elbows, putting an arm’s length between them.

“Are you going to write me a ticket?”

“No, I’m going to offer you some advice.”

“Slow down, I know.”

“No,” he said. “Let me do my job. Okay? Let the sheriff’s department do what we’re trained to do. If there’s more going on here the way you think, we’ll find it.”

“And if there isn’t?”

He stood up. An eighteen-wheeler roared by, leaving a curtain of dust and the smell of diesel fuel hanging in the air.

“Dennis?”

He met her glance. “Have you found out something I should know?”

Circumstantial. The word rose in Abby’s mind. A cop word, a detective word she’d heard on television. It meant when evidence wasn’t solid, when it couldn’t connect the dots. Hers didn’t. She was dealing in hunches, intuition. Matchbooks and fax numbers. There was the hearsay about a difficult client; there was a tenuous connection to missing settlement money, some fuzzy surveillance footage. There were the phone calls. None of it was proof of anything, and no one, including Dennis, believed the phone calls were even real. And anyway, Abby wasn’t so sure she wanted to know the truth.

Because once it was known, she couldn’t unknow it. She would have to live with it.

“What makes you think they’re not dead, Abby?”

She shook her head. The threat of tears tangled in her throat. If only she could, she would bury her face against his uniform shirt. She imagined it, the starched feel beneath her cheek, the relief of his arms around her. If only she could lean on him just until she could feel her own strength again. If only she could forget a little while.

“I’m going home,” she said, blinking in the clear morning light. “I’m going to try to put my life in order and that’s all.”

Dennis rested his hands on his belt. The butt of his gun jutted from his hip. “You won’t do anything crazy?”

Abby shook her head.

“You’ll call me first?”

She nodded and started the car, then before he could walk out of earshot, she put her head out the window. “The little fawn, how is she?”

He turned. “Missing her mama,” he said and saluted. He’d put on his sunglasses; she couldn’t read his expression. But she knew he was unhappy with her as well as she knew he wouldn’t stop looking for her family. Because it was his job; he wanted the facts as much as she did.

And he wasn’t afraid of the truth.