Evidence of Life

Chapter 18



Abby found the puddle of water on the floor of the downstairs hallway, and her heart sank. She had forgotten when she used Lindsey’s shower the night before that it leaked. One more item on the never-ending to-do list. She was searching for the plumber’s telephone number when Hap Albright returned her call. She let it ring. She didn’t want to go back to work. To go anywhere. The phone rang again, and she covered her ears. What if she forgot them? What if the day came when she couldn’t remember how Nick loved classic jazz and the shape of her feet or that Lindsey loved backrubs and the smell of new hay? Abby saw it in her mind’s eye, her forgetfulness rising like water over their images, softening her connection to them, erasing every bond.

The phone rang and rang.

Hap left a message, and when she didn’t return his call, he phoned again that evening. And she realized he wasn’t going to leave her alone, that if she didn’t speak to him soon, he was liable to appear on her doorstep. He was jovial when she answered. So glad to hear from her, he said.

“I’d love to have you back in the classroom,” he told her. “When can we meet?” he asked. “How about tomorrow morning? Say, around ten?”

“Tomorrow?” Abby searched her mind frantically for an excuse, but found none.

“The quicker we get the ball rolling, the quicker you can be back to work.” He was cheerful, certain he was offering her the opportunity she wanted.

Abby thanked him; she even managed to sound pleased, but after she hung up, she went to the kitchen sink and stared out the window. She saw them there, the four of them together in the yard. She could smell them, feel them in the air all around her. Her family.

Real. The word dropped into Abby’s brain, and she turned, facing the empty room.

It was real, she told herself. “Real,” she whispered.

* * *

Hunting for something suitable to wear the next morning, Abby went through her clothes, the dresses and skirts, blouses and vests she’d worn when she’d taught before. They looked awful to her now, out of date and frumpy. Finally, she pulled out a navy plaid skirt that fell to the knee and a white tailored blouse. She tossed a navy blazer on the bed, returned to the closet and hunted for shoes. All she found that would work was a pair of scuffed, low-heeled black pumps. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even worn heels.

In the bathroom, she pulled her hair into a chignon, and for the first time in months, applied lipstick, blush and mascara. She examined herself in the full-length mirror. Even with the blouse tucked in, she’d lost enough weight that the skirt gapped. She made a pleat in the waistband and secured it with a safety pin. The skirt bunched over her backside, but with the jacket on, no one would see. Too bad there wasn’t a way to camouflage the circles under her eyes or flesh out the hollows beneath her cheekbones. At least she hadn’t cried.

The phone rang as she was on her way out. She looked at the Caller ID, and recognizing Nick’s office number, her hand rose. She drew it back. It would be Nina calling on behalf of Joe or Joe himself. Now that she was home, there were steps to be taken, papers to sign, financial matters to discuss. In voices thick with regret, they would acknowledge the circumstances were tragic, but the partnership was a business. And as unfeeling as it seemed, the practice was more than the sum of the partners. After all, didn’t she know, and better than most, that the needs of the clients took precedence? That Nick, of all people, would want their interests considered before all others—blah blah blah. Abby left the house.

* * *

Hap waited for her in the doorway of his office, eyes alight with pleasure, smile warm with sympathy. Too much sympathy. Abby’s steps faltered. She didn’t want to be embraced by him, and luckily he only took her hand in both of his.

“Girl, how’ve you been?” he said.

Drawing her inside, he closed the door behind them, motioned her into a chair, propped his hip on the front corner of his desk. “You look good,” he said. “Damn good, considering.”

She murmured her thanks, made a show of putting her purse on the floor beside her chair.

“I never could figure out whether to call or come by or what.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine. Really.” She wished he’d sit down in his desk chair. She’d forgotten what a big man he was. Bigger now, thicker than she remembered. “I appreciate your taking the time to see me. It’s so close to the holidays. I know how busy it gets.”

He held her in his gaze. “You know I’ll always make time for you.”

She felt her face warm and examined her knees. She could see the shiny pointed tips of his cowboy boots, the hem of his Levi’s worn white at the crease. Some women considered Hap attractive, and she supposed he was, in a beefy, athletic sort of way. He’d played professional football once, linebacker—or was it running back?—for the Dallas Cowboys, but the muscle under the heavily starched cotton of his western shirt had lost definition.

“How long’s it been since you were in the classroom? I was trying to remember.” Hap rounded his desk and sat down, and Abby relaxed a bit.

“Not since Lindsey was born.”

“Right, right.” Hap grinned. “I remember now—” he made an arc with his arms “—out to here when you quit.”

Her face warmed again. She didn’t know where to look.

He laughed a bit as if her discomfiture delighted him. “I think I’ve got a place for you.”

“Oh?” Abby’s heart sank.

“Do you know Charlotte Treadway? She teaches second grade at Clark Elementary where you taught. Same classroom even. Must be something in the walls because she’s going out on maternity leave, too, next week.”

“So soon.”

“It’s perfect, don’t you think? You’ll be comfortable starting there, and who knows, it could turn permanent. Charlotte might not come back for fifteen years either.”

“Well,” Abby said. “Thank you. I don’t know about it being permanent, though.”

“We can cross that bridge down the road. How about if we get you started on the paperwork? You can fill in the application online and then I’ll call you later in the week to work out a time for you to visit Charlotte’s classroom. How’s your schedule?”

“I’m flexible,” Abby said.

His phone rang. He put up a finger. “Can you wait a minute?”

Reluctantly, she nodded. To use the interruption to leave would appear rude in the face of his kindness. She clasped her hands in her lap, examining them to give Hap privacy. He was making it so easy for her, and she knew why. She wished she didn’t, that she could somehow forget.

That awful New Years Eve party when Hap, having had too much to drink, wept and rambled drunkenly on and on to Abby about his poor wife who was dying of brain cancer. Abby told Nick she thought it was Hap’s loneliness and despair that had led him to try and kiss her, to put his hands on her. She squirmed a little now at the memory. She remembered her shock, how for a matter of seconds, she had been paralyzed, and when she finally had managed to extricate herself from him, she’d done it quickly, without a word. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but she’d been so embarrassed.

Hap’s call ended, and he sat quietly looking at her, heating her face with his scrutiny.

Causing her to feel even more regret. “Is—is something wrong?”

“I’m happy to find work for you, but I need to know if you’ll be staying in Hardys Walk, if you’re keeping your house and all, because I have to tell you, I heard different. I heard you mean to sell, move back home with your mom.”

“Who told you that?”

He shrugged. “Several folks, but it’s not like anyone blames you, Abby. It’s a mystery how you can stand up under what you’ve been through. Not another woman I know can carry herself like you do.”

She touched her eyes.

Hap half rose, as if he meant to come around his desk and comfort her.

She lifted her hands. “No, it’s all right. I’m all right. Truly.” She managed a smile. But she could see he felt badly for her. She could see his bewilderment, too, and his desire. And as she left his office, she thought how much she hated trading on his sympathy, some long-ago feeling he had conceived for her.

* * *

“I never imagined being single again,” Abby told Kate on the phone later.

“He always did have a thing for you.” Kate sounded delighted.

“I’m not interested.”

“Not in him, I know, but you’re young still.”

“Don’t go there, Katie.”

“Okay, okay.”

Abby bit her lip, on the verge of apologizing.

“So when do you start?”

“After Thanksgiving.”

“Do you really think Hap will be a problem? Will you have to see him every day?”

“I shouldn’t, but you know, he visits the different schools. He sits in on classes. There’s almost no way to avoid it.” Abby rubbed her forehead. “This is ridiculous. I’m going back to work, that’s all. He’s just being kind.”

“I doubt it, Abby. Now that you’re eligible, still very attractive, an experienced woman...ooh-la-la. Who knows what can happen?”

“Ooh-la-la yourself.” Abby glanced down to her bare feet. She was still in her blouse and skirt, but she’d taken off her jacket and peeled off the hated pantyhose the second she’d cleared the backdoor. She had ignored the message from Nick’s office, too. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, let alone Joe and Nina.

“I thought you were mad at me the way you took off the other day,” Kate said.

“Did you send Dennis after me?”

“No.”

“But you told him about the fax.”

“I was worried. I wanted his opinion.”

“He offered to check into it.”

“Better Dennis than you. I don’t want you to call that man.”

“You think Nick was up to something, don’t you?”

“I never said that.”

“But you think it, and you talked it over with Dennis and with George. Don’t say you didn’t. You’re speculating, which is what you’ve accused me of doing, and you don’t know any better than I do.”

“No. But I don’t think that guy who wrote that fax knows anything either. You aren’t going to call him, are you? The world is full of kooks, Abby.”

“I threw his number away. I cleaned. I shopped for groceries, I called a plumber. I’m going back to work. I’m trying to get on with my—aaagh—” Abby groaned.

She looked out the window past her reflection to the barn. “I wonder if I’ll ever know,” she said.

“You might not, as hard as it is.”

“The mystery is what’s so hard to take, Katie. Can you understand that? It’s why I can’t lay it down. I want an answer.”

“What if there isn’t one?”

“So, is this a test, then? Is this God or the universe or whatever doing this to see how tough I am?” Abby pulled the pins and the rubber band roughly from her hair and shook it out with her fingers. “It seems cruel. I keep wondering, why me?”

“I tell myself that at some point, we’ll find the answers.”

“When?” Abby flung her arm wide.

“Oh, Abby, I don’t know.” She paused as if to consider, then said, “Maybe this won’t help, it’s not the same as what you’re going through, but when I found out I couldn’t have children I was devastated. I felt so hopeless and furious, too, because it wasn’t my choice.”

“No.”

“So I could hate, be full of anger, and for a time I was, but then what? I had to get past it.”

“How? How did you get past it?”

“I don’t know exactly. I remember waking up one day not long after I met George, and I had this burning in my gut, you know? I was just shaking and furious. I was that way all the time then, and it was getting worse. There George and I were, seriously in love, everything perfect, except I would never have our children.

“There was no end to my hate for that man. George said we could adopt, but I didn’t want someone else’s child. I wanted our child. He suggested we could find a surrogate mother, whatever I wanted, he would have done it, but I couldn’t have what I wanted, and I wouldn’t see reason. I’m surprised now that George put up with me.”

“He adores you.” They shared a silence before Abby continued. “You never told me how bad it was,” she said, as if that were entirely Kate’s fault, and Abby knew better. The truth was she didn’t want to hear Kate’s woes. She didn’t want to hear how badly Kate had been hurt. What about my hurt, Abby thought.

Neither of them spoke, then Kate said, “Remember how skinny I was when George and I married?”

“I remember I was worried about you.”

“How much have you lost? Ten pounds? Fifteen?”

“Twelve,” Abby said.

“I know it’s hard to eat when you’re sad, but try, would you?”

Abby said she was getting better about it.

Kate said, “We could write a diet book.”

“What will we call it? Sob Your Way to a Slender You?”

“Cry Off Those Thighs You Hate.”

“How to Grieve That Gut to Death.”

Kate laughed. “It would be an overnight sensation.”

“Best seller for sure.”

“We’re living proof that it works.”

“I’ll see you, Katie,” Abby said.

“Promise you won’t call that man,” Kate ordered.

But Abby didn’t promise. She laughed.

* * *

The plumber came the next morning to caulk the leak in Lindsey’s tub, and while he was finishing up, Abby rooted through her desk hunting for her checkbook. She searched her purse and then, remembering the day she’d put on Nick’s jacket and found a checkbook inside, she went to the front hall closet. But the jacket wasn’t there. She pushed apart the hangers, searched the floor, poked into the far corners. Nothing. It was gone.

Abby closed the closet door, leaned her backside against it, mystified.

“All set.” The plumber came down the stairs.

Abby said, “Good, thank you,” and beckoned him into the kitchen, where she opened a new box of checks, tore one off, wrote it out and handed it to him.

She was back inside the coat closet again a few minutes later when she heard the sound of tires and thought the plumber was back, that he’d forgotten a tool. But it was Jake’s Mustang she saw when she opened the front door, and her heart lifted. He pulled to a sharp stop. She crossed the porch to greet him.

“Gramma said you were home.” He grinned at her over the hood of his car.

Abby leaned on the rail. He looked so pleased to see her here. Then she remembered the trouble he was in at school, and she frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just had to see for myself that you were back. Got anything to eat?”

“I do, as a matter of fact, if it isn’t too early for a sandwich.”

He came around the front of the car. “Never too early.”

He put his arm around her and walked with her into the house. She’d forgotten how tall he was, how much of a man he’d become. Or had this happened in the past seven months and she’d failed to notice? She said he’d just missed the plumber.

“You got the tub fixed?” Jake went to the refrigerator.

“I did.” Abby leaned against the countertop. “You didn’t, by any chance, borrow Dad’s leather bomber jacket, did you?”

Closing the refrigerator door, Jake said, “He’d kill me if I took that jacket. Why?”

“It’s not in the closet, and I know I saw it there.”

“Did you get the locks changed like Charlie said?” Jake asked.

“Not yet. But you don’t think someone broke in here and took it, do you?”

“Is anything else missing?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. My laptop is there on the desk in plain sight. The TV is still here. Isn’t that what crooks take?”

Jake poked his head back into the refrigerator. “Yeah, but I’d call the cops if I were you.”

Abby shook her head. She brought down a plate from the cabinet. “I probably moved his jacket myself. Half the time I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

“Tell me,” Jake teased. “But you’re getting better. I’m impressed.”

“With what?” she asked.

“Everything.” He hauled out the package of chicken, the small head of lettuce, the tomato. “Look at this place! It actually smells good in here.”

“Nothing like a little spring cleaning,” Abby said. “I’m even going back to work. Did Gramma tell you? I start teaching again after Thanksgiving.”

“It’ll be good for you.”

Abby tore off a couple of lettuce leaves and handed them to him. She circled Jake’s waist and gave him a quick hug. “What about you? How are you doing? Really,” she added.

He loaded his sandwich onto the plate she handed him and took a bag of chips from the pantry. They sat at the table, and Abby was relieved when he said a solution to his school woes had been hammered out between his professor and the department head. “It’ll mean a lot of extra work,” he said, “but I don’t care.”

“You’re lucky they were so understanding.”

“They took my circumstances into consideration. I told them I wasn’t ready to come back to campus after what happened. I said you pushed me.”

“Jake, I didn’t.”

“You did, Mom.” Jake was determined; Abby could see that. He’d been waiting a long time to accuse her.

“It wasn’t doing you any good being at the ranch. If you weren’t pacing the floor, you were getting George to drive you all over.”

“Like you weren’t?”

“You were better off in school.” Abby raised her gaze to Jake’s, and her breath caught on seeing that his eyes were welled with tears.

“I wanted to be where you were, Mom,” he told her, and he was blinking, furious. “I needed to be with you. We’re all that’s left.”

She could only stare at him, at his clenched jaw and the muscles under his ears that knotted and loosened, knotted and loosened. The idiot part of her brain was busy wondering when she’d last seen him cry. Not in years. Not since he was a very little boy. Not even the weekend their family vanished.

“You think it doesn’t affect me?” he demanded. “Sometimes, I’m so scared. They were here, now they’re gone.”

“Oh, Jake.” She leaned forward, cupping his arms above his wrists, rubbing them.

“I wish it had been me instead of Lindsey.”

“No! Jake, honey!” Abby half knelt, pulling him awkwardly against her. She felt him shaking. “Let it out,” she told him. “Go on, it’s okay. I’m right here,” she promised.

He sagged forward, and, pushing his plate away, he lowered his head to the table and talked through sobs that grew rough and became uncontrolled. His speech was so broken Abby couldn’t get every word, but the gist of it was that he was a bad person, and he’d been a worse brother. He’d ragged on Lindsey something awful, and once, he’d left her stranded without a ride home after school because he was mad at her. He couldn’t even remember now what he’d been mad about.

Abby tightened her grasp, murmuring words of comfort through the tears that were packed like stones in her own throat. How would they survive? The pain seemed so incredible, so never-ending. When Jake quieted, she hunted around for Kleenex tissues, and realizing she hadn’t bought any, she gave him the kitchen towel. He blew his nose, mopped his face. He looked at her, and in his reddened, swollen eyes, she saw a complicated mix of apology and shame, grief and outrage.

“You can’t blame yourself, Jake.” She sat down. “You weren’t a bad brother. You were a typical brother. Maybe you did rag on Lindsey, but you never minded helping her with algebra or telling her when some new hairdo she tried didn’t flatter her. If it means anything, I always agreed, especially that time she gelled her bangs into that shelf over her eyebrows.”

Jake’s grin wobbled.

“You were typical siblings,” Abby said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.” She glanced away. She would never see now how their relationship might have developed as adults, if they would have been close, if they would have ended up friends.

“I’m not going to law school, Mom.”

She whipped her gaze back to his. “What do you mean? Dad would—”

“F*ck Dad.”

“Jake!”

“I’m sorry, Mom, but if it wasn’t for him, Lindsey would still be alive. We’d still be a family. We could have been a family without him, you know.”

Abby might have argued, but instead, she said, “What is it between you and your dad? It’s as if you’ve lost all respect for him.”

Jake looked out the window. “Want me to mow before I leave?”

“I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

He rose and took his dishes to the sink. “Nothing. We didn’t get along, that’s all. You know that.” He came and put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently, putting his thumbs into the sore places at the base of her neck. “Tight,” he said.

She lowered her chin, stretching, feeling the knots loosen under his touch.

“We have to accept it, Mom.” Jake’s hands stilled. “Even if they never find them or the car, we can’t keep on as if they’ll walk back in here any second.”

“When I was at Kate’s,” Abby said quietly, “I went to San Antonio to see if I could talk to Adam’s wife, Sherry.”

Jake came around Abby’s chair to look at her. “Why? What did she say?”

“She was gone. A neighbor seemed to think she and Adam left the country together.”

“So?” Jake started to unbutton his flannel shirt. “I’m going to see if I can get the mower started.”

“I showed the neighbor a picture of your dad. She thought she recognized him. She said she’d seen him at the Sandoval’s, that he was driving a yellow Corvette. Do you know anything about that?”

“Jesus, Mom.” Jake flung his shirt over the back of a chair. “No! I don’t know anything about that. I’m not keeping anything from you. I’m not,” he repeated. But he didn’t look at her. He didn’t meet her eye.