Evidence of Life

Chapter 20



The neighborhood was old, not more than a handful of crumbling dead-end streets and ramshackle bungalows poked into a frayed pocket on the edge of downtown Houston. Abby would never have found it without the map Hank had drawn for her. He’d said the house was a yellow brick one-story, but pulling into the driveway, she thought the color was more drab. She thought it was as drab and sad-looking as Hank himself. Apprehension knotted her stomach. She wondered if she could go through with it, her fool’s errand. It’s not like you, Abigail…. Her mother’s caution rattled through her mind. Her ordinarily rational mind. But that word...ordinary...what did it mean anymore?

Abby got out of the car into air that was thick and still and too warm for November. The cloud cover had thickened, too, and grown darker like a ripening bruise. It would rain later just to spite her. She picked her way across the haphazard row of stepping-stones that led to the front door and paused at the front stoop, a misshapen, flatish chunk of rust-stained concrete pushed against the house. It looked like leftover construction, as if it might have fallen off the back of a truck bound for the city dump. It wobbled when Abby stepped up onto it. She glanced at the BMW and thought of going home. But that seemed as impossible now as staying here, and she turned, ruefully, to the old, metal screen door that rattled obnoxiously when she knocked. Abby expected Hank to answer, but instead it was a woman, a tall, angular, plain-faced, female version of Hank, who said she was his sister.

“Kim.” She gave her name, and Abby sensed aggravation and unhappiness.

It must run in the family, she thought. “Hank didn’t mention having a sister. It’s nice to meet you. I’m—”

“Abby Bennett, I know.” Kim continued her scrutiny and her silence, and Abby was unsure what to do.

“Shall I come in?” she asked finally. “Is Hank here?”

Kim’s answer was to thrust open the door so abruptly that Abby was forced to step down off the stoop. She looked at Kim in bewilderment, a bit of alarm, but Hank’s sister only rolled her eyes. “Come in,” she said, “before the mosquitoes do.”

Reluctantly, Abby obeyed, losing her vision for a moment in the dark confines of the tiny entry hall.

“Caitlin and Hank have allergies. You aren’t wearing any wool, are you?” Kim looked Abby up and down.

“No,” Abby said. “It’s a little warm today for wool.”

“They’re very sensitive. I have to be careful.”

“Of course,” Abby said. She stowed her keys in her purse, taking her time, uneasy under the weight of Kim’s gaze, her intensity that was reminiscent of Hank.

Kim said she was taking Caitlin to school. “I drop her off every morning,” she said, “on my way to work. I’m a teller at First Century Bank, the one near Caitlin’s school. Hank picks her up after. I don’t like her to ride the bus. Too many bullies. Who knows what could happen? I don’t trust a single one of those drivers anyway.”

Abby nodded, as if Kim’s concern seemed natural when it didn’t. It seemed possessive, more like fear-driven obsession. But fear of what? Bullies and bus drivers? Abby didn’t think so. Some instinct said it went deeper.

“Hank tells me you believe your husband’s run off with his wife.” Kim said this bald-faced, without so much as the blink of an eye.

Abby’s mouth fell open a little.

“We’re close,” Kim said. “We talk about everything.”

You’re rude. Abby wanted to say it. “I’m not sure what I believe actually. What Hank and I are doing, making this trip to the cabin, it’s probably crazy.”

Kim sniffed. “Since Hank brought Sondra into this family, I’ve had to raise the bar on what’s crazy. You know they were separated?”

“He mentioned it.”

“Well, did he tell you the sort of work she found for herself after she moved out?”

“He said she opened an interior-design business.”

Kim hooted. “That little venture lasted less than a month and cost my brother half his savings to set up. I told him he was a fool. Sondra can’t balance her checkbook, much less run a business. She’s got the attention span of a gnat, never sticks with anything. As soon as she ran out of money, Hank caught her stripping again, and I’m not talking wallpaper. She refused to come home, even to see Caitlin. Now she’s gone. Poof. No one’s seen her since. Good riddance, I say.” Kim peered at Abby, but if she wanted a response, Abby didn’t have one.

“Well, come along then.” Kim turned. “Hank and Caitlin are in the kitchen. This way.”

Abby followed in Kim’s wake. They passed a dining room, crossed the den. The white walls and scuffed floors were bare of any adornment other than a sofa covered in plastic and the vinyl blinds that were pulled low over every window. There was a definite smell of disinfectant that made Abby think of hospitals and isolation, that made her think of loneliness and depression. Her heart tapped nervously against her ribs.

Kim paused before a closed door and rested her hand on the doorknob, facing Abby. “I should warn you Caitlin might be upset. She doesn’t like it when Hank leaves, not since Sondra went off. She’s afraid of losing him, too.”

“We won’t go then.” Abby was hopeful.

“But you have to. Hank won’t see the truth otherwise.”

“The truth?” Abby was at sea.

“About Sondra.” Kim was impatient. “I’ve tried since high school when he had the misfortune of meeting her to get him to listen to me, to see reason. We’ve always watched out for each other, you know? Since we were kids. But he’s totally blind when it comes to Sondra. He can’t believe a woman like her would look at him twice, much less marry him. As if she’s the prize. Hah! If you could see her, nothing but blond hair and cleavage. And Hank? Well, we’re plain people with simple tastes, that’s all.”

Abby lifted her hands. “I don’t know—” what this has to do with me. That’s what she intended to say, but Kim huffed a short syllable of disgust.

“Let me tell you something—” she bent toward Abby “—the first time Sondra left Caitlin, the child was scarcely six weeks old, and Hank called me to come and change her diapers. Sondra was gone the day Caitlin spoke her first word, took her first step. When Caitlin nearly died from an asthma attack, who do you think took the time to learn about it and how to protect her?”

Kim thumped her chest. “Me! I’m the one who knows she can’t live in a house that’s cluttered with the pillows and throw rugs and drapery that Sondra insists on dragging in here. I know green is Caitlin’s favorite color, not pink—everything Sondra gives the child is pink—and that she hates the Barbie dolls Sondra insists are her favorites. I keep this house clean and dust-free and see to it that Hank and Caitlin are properly fed and when that—that whore deigns to show up here, she cries to me and promises she’ll do better and thank you very much but go home.” Kim paused, pressing her lips together. Still, her chin wobbled.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Abby said.

Kim spoke as if Abby hadn’t. “I am the reason Caitlin is alive and well. I am the only mother—decent mother—that child has ever known, and do you know, she made Hank put a lamp in the window and she turns it on herself every night before she goes to bed. ‘For Mommy,’ she says. She waits and waits. It makes me sick. Sondra makes me sick. She isn’t fit to be anyone’s mother, much less Caitlin’s.”

Raw envy and a threat of tears ached under the hotter current of Kim’s indignation, and it worried Abby. It made her sorry for Kim, and she didn’t want to be sorry.

Kim pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “Do you want to know what I hope for, what I pray for?” She dropped her arms abruptly. “That she’s dead. And in case you were wondering? I don’t care if I go to hell.” Before Abby could respond, before she could act on the thought of escape, Kim thrust open the kitchen door. “Go on,” she said, and it sounded like a dare.

* * *

Hank turned from the kitchen sink. The little girl beside him crowded against his legs. Still, Abby saw that she was beautiful, as beautiful as Hank and Kim were homely. Angelic, Abby thought, and yet so solemn beneath her chin-length cap of thick, shiny blond hair.

Hank said, “This is Mrs. Bennett, Caitlin,” and he asked if she could say hello.

But Caitlin shook her head. “Daddy, don’t go.” She was begging him.

“I’ll be back before you can miss me, ladybug, I promise.”

She stepped in front of him, tugging his hand. “But I already miss you.”

Without a word, Abby wheeled and retreated, walking fast, retracing her steps.

Hank caught her elbow near the front door and spun her around. “You contacted me, remember? You set this up. You can’t leave now.”

She yanked her arm out of his grasp.

He brought his hands up and backed off. “I’m sorry, but, please, please don’t go.”

“This was a mistake.”

“You know better.”

Abby eyed the front door, watching herself walk through it. She’d call Hap, apologize for missing her appointment yesterday; she’d say she was ready now to go to work. Ready to get on with her life. And she would do it. In time, she would forget. Everyone said so.

“What if your husband wasn’t alone in Bandera last winter like your friend said? What if he was with Sondra, and your friend can’t tell you because she thinks you can’t handle it?”

Hank was talking about Kate. Kate, who never thought Abby could handle anything. Kate, who had lied to Abby in the past. “Everyone I know thinks this is a bad idea,” she said.

“But it’s not their life, is it? It’s easy for them to sit on the f*cking sidelines and dish out a lot of bullshit advice about how we’re supposed to live with this. Without knowing what happened. As if they could handle it better.”

Abby opened the front door, then paused on the threshold. She couldn’t have said why.

Hank’s voice drilled her back. “How often do you see it on TV, people pissing and moaning about how all they want to know is the truth. All they want is someone to say what happened, how their loved one died. Or they say, please, bring them home, we just want to bury them. Or what about when somebody gets sick and they don’t know what’s wrong? They go to doctor after doctor. They go crazy, they go insane until they know. How is this different?”

Abby turned. “I’m not sure I can stand to know.”

“Yeah? Well, me either.” Hank looked intently at Abby, and she couldn’t look away.

Because he was right. If she walked out now, she would have nothing but suspicion and conjecture, the half light of maybe. Even worse, she would have to live with the knowledge that she hadn’t done every last thing she could to find her family, to find the truth, and she would hate that. Hank would go on his own to the cabin anyway. Abby could see he was resolved, and if there was something to be found there, he would be the one to find it. Somehow she couldn’t stand that either. She took in a hard breath and let it out. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Hank nodded shortly, and when he retraced his steps down the hallway, Abby followed in his wake.

* * *

He drove an old-model luxury car, one of those big-fendered boats. The blue was sun-spotted and bleached like worn-out jeans. From the rough sound of the engine, Abby couldn’t imagine they would make it to the edge of town, much less all the way into the Hill Country.

“Get in,” he said through the open passenger window.

She bent down. “We can take mine. I have to move it anyway for you to get out.”

He flicked a glance at the rearview mirror taking in the image of the shinier, newer, pricier BMW. “I can go around,” he said, and his voice was inflected with elements of resentment and desire. He couldn’t look at her.

And Abby acquiesced because of this. Because he seemed mortified and furious with himself for it, and more protest from her would only unman him further. This man who had already been so unmanned. The passenger door screeched violently when Abby shut it. The seat belt stuck and Hank had to help her with it. He backed down the drive, maneuvering around her car, heedless that he was driving over the front yard. Abby guessed it didn’t matter. It wasn’t more than a square of weed-choked, scorched earth anyway. She watched the BMW until it was out of sight, wondering if it would be safe, if it would still be here for her when they returned tonight.

Hank said, “Sondra wouldn’t be caught dead riding in this car, much less driving it. I’m always wishing I could afford something better. Better house, better neighborhood, better schools for Caitlin, but selling insurance these days, it sucks, you know? I own my own agency, and business is lousy. It’s always lousy. I did manage to get Sondra a new car a couple of years ago. Lexus, loaded. Real classy. Cost a fortune. I keep making the payments, too, like I know where it is.”

They were at the western outskirts of town when the rain Abby had dreaded began. Hank fiddled with the knob that controlled the windshield wipers. Nothing happened. He tried again, and when the blades picked up, lumbering across the glass, he smiled uneasily as if to suggest that Abby shouldn’t put her faith in them. Or him, or this journey they were undertaking at her insistence. But for all she knew, he could have some alternate plan in mind; he could take her anywhere, do anything to her. She couldn’t stop him. And if she were to disappear, no one but his sister Kim would know where to begin to search for her. And Abby wasn’t certain that Kim was right in her mind.

“I guess you got your ears burned off.”

“Excuse me?” Abby turned to Hank.

“I’m guessing Kimmie unloaded on you about Sondra. My wife and sister don’t get along, not even when Sondra’s acting right.”

Abby didn’t want to know what Hank meant by “acting right” as opposed to not. She didn’t want to hear the history behind Kim’s hostility. Kim wasn’t “right” either, nor was Hank, really, and Abby was already unnerved enough. “How long have you been married?” Abby asked the conventional question and hoped Hank would follow her lead, that he would confine their talk to matters that were small and of little consequence. But even as she hoped for this, she knew it was impossible, that their situation had already broken every civilized boundary. Abby somehow sensed that Hank would be as hell-bent on spilling the family drama as his sister.

He answered that he and Sondra had been married nearly twelve years, and he went on as Abby had known, had feared that he would.

“I fell in love with her the second I saw her,” Hank said, “even though I knew I didn’t stand a chance. She was gorgeous. I was nobody. Second-string junior varsity football benchwarmer. She never gave me a second look. She was too busy working her way through first-string.”

The pause that came was as disconcerting to Abby as Hank’s speech.

“She’s that kind of woman, you know? She could dress in a potato sack and guys still wouldn’t keep from seeing, from wanting to—” Hank’s voice crumpled. He cleared his throat, raised his hand, resettled it. “She wants you to. She likes attention. Craves it, actually.”

Abby thought of what Kim had told her, that Hank had caught his wife stripping in a men’s club. Again, Kim had said, as if Sondra had a habit of doing it. Abby studied the windshield, the one unwipered corner where the rain-formed rivulets broke into fat veins of polished silver. She wondered if Hank would talk about that next. She wondered if she asked, would he stop the car and let her out?

“You probably want to know what she saw in a guy like me,” he said. “It’s okay. Everybody does. It’s because I’m safe, see? She can trust me, trust I’ll be faithful, like the family dog.” He switched on the radio, punched the row of buttons, got nothing but a voice swimming in static that reminded Abby of Lindsey’s call from Boerne. “It’s about Daddy—” “I’m in the restroom—” Followed by sobbing. Abby was convinced of it now, that Lindsey had been crying.

“Sometimes my wife goes on, like, these benders. She goes to the men’s clubs and you know—” Hank broke off.

Their gazes collided and quickstepped away.

He said, “It’s what scares me, that some pervert got hold of her. She didn’t do it all the time; she’s not hardened to that life like a lot of those women. In fact it had been almost three years when Sondra went back to it this last time. I thought she was done with it. She was working for the judge and she seemed settled. She seemed normal, you know what I mean? More normal than I’d ever seen her.”

Another pause dithered. Abby twisted her wedding rings on her finger.

“Sometimes I think if I was just a more exciting guy, if I could just keep her entertained, then I think, how can she do it? Why does she? She’s so smart. She’s got a f*cking degree in psychology, for Christ’s sake.”

Surprised, Abby looked at Hank, then away.

“After I found out she was dancing again, I tried to talk sense to her. I wanted her to come home,” he said.

“She wouldn’t?” Abby was resigned now. There was something about riding in the car, being pinned up, a captive audience. Somehow it implied intimacy, confession. As if the situation needed further inducement for that.

“Nope. She refused. She stayed in touch with Caitlin, though, through maybe the middle of February, but then nothing. Her house in the Heights was locked up. Nobody’d seen her there or at the club. None of her friends had seen or heard from her either. It was like she vanished right off the face of the earth.”

“You called the police?”

“They didn’t give a damn. They were like everybody else, they figured she got tired of the wife-and-mother routine and took off.”

“Because you were separated.”

“Because she’s done it before. I didn’t think too much about it myself until she didn’t show up for Caitlin’s birthday last April. Sondra wouldn’t have missed that. She wouldn’t have.”

“Poor Caitlin,” Abby murmured, remembering the little girl, her small angelic face, the anguished way she’d clung to Hank. He shouldn’t have left her. Abby regretted her part in it.

Hank said Sondra’s landlord had called him to come and clear out the house in May. “Took me half a day. Besides all the office equipment and business crap, sample books and fabric and doodads everywhere, the upstairs was stuffed with her furniture. The closet and dresser drawers were full of her clothes, there was makeup strewn everywhere. Even her toothbrush was still there. None of it meant a damn to the cops. They said she could buy new stuff. I told them there was no activity on our credit cards, no withdrawals from our joint account. They said she was making her own money, she could get new cards. They said she probably had a new guy and a new life. A*sholes.”

After a moment, Abby said, “It’s good you have Kim to help out with Caitlin,” even though she wasn’t sure it was good at all.

“Yeah, we’ve always been close. Even though she’s younger she looks after me. When we were kids, she was always taking up for me and getting whaled on for it. One day when my old man was whipping her with his belt, I went off on him. I couldn’t stop myself. I get like that sometimes. Get pushed to a certain point and can’t think straight, you know? I just explode.”

Abby looked at him. She didn’t know.

“I see red. Literally. It’s like a mist.” He brushed the air in front of his face. “That day? When I took on my old man? He landed in the ER. I was gone by the time they fixed him up. I never went home after that.”

Hank fiddled with the buttons on the dash, bumping up the fan speed on the defroster, and Abby looked at his misshapen knuckles; she slicked her gaze along the tight line of his jaw, where a tiny pulse needled the flesh near his ear. Her heart tapped insistently.

Ahead in the near-distance, a huge flock of geese angled across her view, and she focused on them, their undulating vee-shaped flight. Headed for the coast, she thought. If the weather was good and Nick was driving, she’d ask him to pull over. She would say she had to hear their song. The sound put her in such awe. Lindsey, Jake and Nick had always poked fun at her for it. Abby remembered feeling in such moments as if the four of them were knit into a single fabric from one thread. Now her throat knotted with tears.

They stopped for gas and bought cheese and crackers to snack on in the car, rather than take time for a real lunch. Neither of them commented on it when they passed the Riverbend Lodge on their way through Bandera. North of town, Hank turned west on an unmarked asphalt road. A ranch road. The Hill Country was networked with such roads. The natives knew them as well as they knew the creases on their palms. But someone who didn’t know the land could get lost, utterly, irrevocably, especially today without even the sun to define direction.

After several miles, the land gained a gentle incline. The road surface changed into a jolting bed of caliche and crushed rock. The rain softened. Limestone outcroppings loomed from the mist, pencil sketches in charcoal and gold. Sound was muted, as indistinct as the view. For all Abby knew, the world had disappeared except for this narrow stretch of road they traveled on.

“Eerie out here, isn’t it?” Hank seemed to read her thoughts. “Kind of gives you the creeps. Almost anything could happen. Nobody’d find you, maybe for a long time. Maybe never.”

Abby felt the twitch of his glance. Was he making conversation? Baiting her? Warning her? She didn’t know. She left the pause alone.

“I remember once when I was a kid, my old man brought me and Kim out here camping. He took us to see this place called Boneyard Draw. You ever hear of it?”

Abby said she had, that she knew the story behind it, but Hank paid no attention.

“It’s where Indians drove an entire herd of wild horses off the canyon edge rather than let the U.S. cavalry have them, and they rotted there until there was nothing left but their bones. That’s how it got its name. They say sometimes you can still hear the horses screaming.” Hank snicked his tongue against his teeth. “You want to talk about eerie.”

No, Abby thought, and she turned to the passenger window, but rather than the view, what confronted her was an image in her mind’s eye of all those bones. Bones strewn in careless heaps, unclaimed, unmourned. But it was so easy out here for such things to happen, for an animal or a car—a car with her husband and daughter in it—to fly off the cracked lip of some bluff and tumble into an abyss. And whatever life survived such a fall was then left to suffer horribly and to die alone without comfort.

Despair boiled right under the surface of Abby’s skin; she could feel the heated pressure mounting and she fisted her hands. She could not do this, could not lose her composure, not now, not in front of this man, this near stranger. She groped in her mind for something else, a distraction, and remembered the fawn. Dennis’s fawn. She wondered how it was doing, if it had grown. She wondered what Dennis would say if he could see her now. He had told her not to do anything crazy. He had said she should call him first.

The car slowed; they turned again to the west. Ground up an even steeper incline. The engine shuddered as if it might stall. Abby glanced at Hank. “Not much farther,” he said.

“Are there neighbors?” she asked.

“Not in any direction for maybe five miles.”

“So you can come and go without anyone knowing, I guess.”

Hank’s brows rose as if he wondered what she meant.

Abby wasn’t sure herself, only that she felt anxious, but along with that, she felt a certain sense of fatalism, too. She guessed she’d come too far now to be afraid. So what if Hank had dangerous intentions? Life itself concealed dangerous intentions. You could never know them ahead of time. Uncertainty was adversity’s companion. Or maybe it was calamity’s companion. Hadn’t she heard that somewhere?

The car stopped, and the cabin materialized out of the mist, a snug-looking, unassuming little house made of logs. A neatly kept house. A house that looked cared for despite its great age, that even looked loved. Abby could love it, she thought, in some mix of wonder and consternation. She studied the wide front porch, trying to imagine Nick seated on the rough wooden bench by the door. If she put her hand on it, would she intuit his presence? Feel some vibration? But she avoided contact with it altogether when she followed Hank through the front door.

He disappeared through an archway on Abby’s left. She closed the door and looked around, bemused. The room had low ceilings with beams that gave it a cozy feel. But it was the way it was furnished that captured Abby’s attention, or rather it was the little touches that drew her, how the light coming through the lace curtain hanging in the front window showed off the delicacy of its pattern. She didn’t mind that the edges were frayed. It only added to the charm. The wood floor was scarred and uneven, but there were rugs, floral-patterned in soft faded colors of rose and green and gold.

Abby crossed the room to one corner where someone had set a gorgeous seashell, a huge conch, on a tiny ornate table. She ran her fingertips lightly over the unfurled lip that was ruffled and tinged a shade of pink as delicate as the curl of sea foam at dawn. On the wall above it, a small, framed oil painting led her eye through an open garden gate and down a flower-bordered path. There were shelves on another wall filled with books and photographs, and in a windowed alcove that gave a view of the back of the property, a dining table for two in front of the window held a green glass vase filled with dried grasses.

She could have chosen these furnishings herself, Abby thought; she could move into this little home this very instant and be comfortable, delighted even, to live here. She thought of Hank’s house in Houston, its drab, sterile environment created by Kim to keep Caitlin well. The comparison to this home, to this shabby but studied, soft elegance, was more than curious; it was disconcerting. Did Caitlin not come here? Abby went around the high, rolled arm of a sofa that was pulled at an angle near the iron-bellied stove. The dark, tufted leather was worn, but the sofa looked well made, heavy and durable. An afghan matching the faded colors of the area rug was tangled among the cushions as if someone might have recently lain beneath it and tossed it aside.

Abby couldn’t take her eyes off it. If her nose wasn’t full of the smell of dust, if the wood stove behind her wasn’t cold, she would think someone was here, that they had only straightened up and gone out for a walk.

Hank reappeared.

“You said Sondra was into interior design. Did she do the decorating here?” Abby asked. “It’s so different from your home in Houston.”

Hank said she did. He said, “Some of the things were her grandmother’s.” He crossed the room and picked up the conch. “We found this in Spain, Marbella. Sondra had to have it. Cost a fortune. It’s perfect, did you notice? Not a break anywhere. We found the painting there, too. She was on a bender that trip.”

“A bender?” Abby remembered Hank had used the word before when he’d mentioned Sondra and the dancing.

Hank put the shell down. “Kitchen’s through there.” He gestured toward the archway. “Bedrooms and a bathroom are down the hall.”

All at once, Abby realized how much she needed a bathroom. “Could I...?”

“Last door on the left,” he said.

The bathroom was colder than the rest of the cabin but very clean. The porcelain fixtures, a vintage, claw-footed tub, pedestal sink and toilet, were stained from hard water, from age and use, rust-edged, like the floor tiles, but still, the surfaces had a just-scrubbed gleam.

Abby hung her jacket on an iron hook on the back of the door and used the toilet. A sense of foreboding stood up in one corner of her mind; she pushed it down, washed her hands, patted cold water onto her cheeks, her closed eyes.

She looked into the bedrooms on her way out. A pair of old iron, twin-size beds furnished the smaller of the two, and a handsomely carved, antique four-poster, a double, sat in the larger bedroom. A wedge of ash-colored light fell across the matelassé coverlet. Two flattish pillows cased in crochet-trimmed cotton lay at its head. She didn’t want to imagine Nick in this room, that bed, and she left before she could.

Hank had started coffee when Abby joined him. “So, what’s next?” he asked. “Do you want to search the place?”

She laughed nervously and tucked her fingertips into the back pockets of her jeans. “Everything is so clean.”

He looked around. “Yeah, I guess no one’s ever here enough to make a mess.”

He went back into the kitchen. Abby studied the collection of photographs. They were mostly candid shots of Caitlin: on the bank of a lazy stream balancing an inner tube around her middle, sitting in a boat with an outboard motor, standing on a dock, dimpled arms encased in floaties, holding a fishing pole. Obviously she came here. Abby lifted a photo that had been taken outside on the porch. Hank was sitting on the bench. Caitlin was on her knees at his feet, holding up a Barbie doll, grinning into the camera. Other Barbie things were strewn around her, half concealed in nests of brightly patterned wrapping paper. It looked like a birthday party. Kim had said Caitlin hated Barbie. But it didn’t look as if she did from the picture.

Abby returned it to the shelf, took down another, an eight-by-ten, that showed Caitlin holding hands with a woman who was dressed in a flamingo-pink bikini top cut low to reveal her generous cleavage and a matching sarong tied to showcase her sleek torso and pierced navel. Abby carried the photo to the window, tipping it toward the light. The woman had to be Caitlin’s mother. This was Sondra, slim and lithe and lovely. Abby could see now where Caitlin had gotten her angelic beauty. Sondra’s features were as delicate, and her blond hair, like Caitlin’s, cupped her finely molded jaw. A wisp of bangs fell provocatively across her dark eyes. Sondra was bent slightly at the waist, gazing adoringly down at Caitlin, who was smiling up at her. A fashion advertisement couldn’t have been more intimately posed.

Or a centerfold out of Playboy.

She likes attention. Craves it, actually. What Hank had said about his wife trailed through Abby’s mind. He had looked half-killed with shame and lustfulness when he’d said it; he had been agitated. Abby set her fingertip near the image of Sondra’s face. She couldn’t put this woman together with this cabin, couldn’t make sense of any of it.

Abby put the photo back, knocking over a smaller photo in the process. She fumbled to rearrange things, feeling clumsy and furious. The awful foreboding, that terrible prescient monster in her mind, was growing, pushing an image at her of Nick and Sondra together. And it seemed so possible. On a certain level, Abby saw Sondra as Nick’s sort of woman. All elegance and dazzle, but not flagrant, not in-your-face. And she was adventurous, clearly up for anything. Sondra would take risks; she would embrace them. Nick would go for that. He’d be intrigued by it.

But, no. Abby gave her head a small, firm shake. Nick having a fling with Sondra was no more possible than Nick having partnered with Adam Sandoval, no more possible than the ridiculous notion that the three were involved in some kind of outlandish corporate robbery scheme. That was the stuff of television crime shows or Hollywood thrillers. She crossed the room to the dining alcove and looked out the window. A shed stood in a clearing some fifty feet away, but the woods were reaching for it, would soon reclaim it and the land it sat on, if cutting wasn’t done. It relieved Abby somehow to think of the upkeep on this place, what it must cost in terms of time and money. Didn’t Nick complain that he never had enough of either? Wasn’t it silly to think he would hide himself away here—but suddenly her attention was diverted by a flash of movement.

Abby focused on trees clustered nearest the shed. A person, she thought. But who would be out there? It was so damp and freezing.

Hank joined her, handing her a mug. “Couldn’t remember if you took sugar or anything.”

“Black’s fine.” Abby was glad just to cradle the warmth in her hands. “I thought I saw someone out there.”

“Hunter, probably. It’s the season.”

She thought of the fawn again. She started to tell Hank the rescue story, but then she couldn’t bear being so close to him. She felt a renewed sense of pity for him, that he was so homely and morose, so dull. Insurance, she thought. Why didn’t he find a better occupation than selling insurance? He might keep Sondra’s interest if he made more money. Or why didn’t he join a gym and work out? If he got into shape, maybe Sondra wouldn’t have to go off and dance naked for other men. Maybe she wouldn’t have to go after someone else’s husband. Abby went to the sofa, unsure of herself and the hot, panicked direction of her thoughts. She yanked on the afghan thinking she would fold it or jam it in her mouth before she screamed.

Something came with it. A pillow, she thought. But when she gave the blanket a sharp shake, what dropped to the floor was a jacket. Brown leather, the same as the couch. Bomber style. Abby stepped back, clutching the afghan to her chest as if she might be in danger of attack. Then thrusting the coverlet aside, she went to her knees, putting her fingers on the jacket, pulling it toward her, turning it over, examining it, finally standing with it in her hands to find Hank watching her.

She held it out to him. “It’s Nick’s. I gave it to him for Christmas last year.”

Hank’s eyes widened. “Are you kidding?”

Abby said she wasn’t. “How did it get here?”

“What do you mean, how? On his goddamn back is how.”

Abby ran a hand down one sleeve.

“I guess that about says it.”

“It could be something else,” Abby said, and when Hank laughed, she hated him for it, for making her feel she was naïve and a fool, for making her think Nick had betrayed her. “But it was at home. After the flood, I mean. I saw it there last summer, in June, or no, it was May, the end of May.” I put it on, wanting him, wanting his arms around me….

“He must have gone back there for it.”

“What are you saying? You think he’s alive?”

“I got the impression that’s what you’ve believed all along. Why else would you contact me and suggest we come up here, if you didn’t think there was a chance he was alive? You wanted proof, one way or the other, and now you have it.”

Abby couldn’t take it in, what Hank was saying.

“Look, you told me you didn’t stay at home all the time after the flood last April. You stayed with your mom or with your friend at her ranch. Your husband could have snuck back. He could have gotten his jacket. Maybe he got other stuff. You ever check?”

“Not really,” Abby said. She told him how she’d found a window open once, and, on a couple of other occasions, lights had been inexplicably turned on. “The last time I came home, the back door was ajar.”

Hank kept nodding, kept repeating, “It was him.”

Abby ignored Hank. “The jacket was in the closet in May,” she said, trying to sort it out. “I found it and I found this.” She dug into the inside pocket and pulled out Nick’s checkbook, waving it at Hank. “I hunted for this the other day. I needed a check to pay the plumber, and when it wasn’t there, in the closet, I thought I’d moved it myself.” Abby held the jacket away from her by its shoulders, staring at it as if it might offer an explanation. “Now it’s here and there’s no way it’s possible. No way,” she repeated.

Hank snorted. “Get a grip, woman! Don’t you see? Men do this shit all the time. They duck out on their old life, especially when it sucks the way your old man’s did. They fake their death, whatever it takes.”

“Nick’s life did not suck!”

“Hah! You’re the one who told me how down he was on himself, how he wasn’t acting right. Didn’t you say that? So he hooks up with Sondra at work, they get a thing going. Wouldn’t be the first time for her. Goddammit!”

“You honestly believe your wife and Nick have been together here, that they’re—”

“F*cking each other! You’re holding the f*cking proof!” Hank stalked into the kitchen and out again. He returned to the window and leaned stiff-armed against the frame.

Abby dropped the jacket onto the sofa, dropped herself down beside it, dropped her face into her hands and tried to think. She had imagined it was the reporter, Nadine Betts, who was her intruder, and that had seemed preposterous, but to suppose it was Nick? That he had come home at some point between May and now and taken his jacket and possibly other belongings? How insane was it to believe that? Abby remembered her mother saying that when your mind is without an explanation, it will invent one. Is that what was happening? Were she and Hank inventing a story to suit facts that weren’t more than conjecture?

Abby uncovered her face. “You don’t think they’re here now, do you?”

“You see them anywhere? You see a car? Jesus Christ. They’re long gone. If they helped Sandoval rob that settlement fund, you can bet all three of them are out of the country by now.”

“What about Lindsey? Did they take her? Would they take her and leave Caitlin? You said Sondra was devoted to her. None of this makes any sense.”

“It makes perfect goddamn sense.”

Abby could see Hank had made up his mind.

“The cops were right about Sondra when they said she’d run off with some guy and made herself a new life. Your husband was the guy; he’s done the same thing. That jerk Sandoval, too.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Abby said, but now she felt uncertain. “We should call the police.” She looked around for her purse where she’d stowed her cell phone, and when she realized she’d left it in the car, she started for the door. “If it’s even remotely possible, what you’re saying—” Was it? “It means Lindsey is with them. She could be—Oh my God, Hank! She could be alive!”

Abby turned to him, feeling almost manic in her excitement, wanting to see his reaction. He met her gaze, but his expression was troubled, intense in a way that was unsettling. It was as if he didn’t see her.

“Hank?” she prompted.

He didn’t answer.

His breath was audible and the pulse she’d noticed earlier was jittering under the skin at the corner of his jaw again. She would think later she should have realized what was happening; she should have remembered what he told her about his temper. She might have remembered if he hadn’t turned away and rested his forehead against the window, if he hadn’t in that moment seemed so defeated.

Abby saw his shoulders heave. She heard a small sound of distress, but that might have come from her. She was still holding Nick’s jacket and she lifted it to her face to stifle the noise.

Hank said something about Caitlin and the light she put on for Sondra in the window at home every night. “How can a mother do this to a kid who loves her like that?”

Abby thought he was addressing her, that he wanted an answer, but when she looked, Hank’s back was still turned, his forehead still pressed to the window. She wondered if he was crying, if she should go to him, if she could, but then suddenly he wheeled on her.

“What kind of—?” he began, but then his voice broke and before Abby could register his intention, he spun back to the window and drove his fist through the glass, shouting, “That f*cking whore!”

The noise as the window shattered seemed to go on forever. As if in slow motion, Abby saw Hank pull his hand to his chest; she saw herself rise and cross the room to him. And then he was going down, folding, buckling, an injured animal run to ground, driven to its knees. She tried, but she couldn’t help him. She staggered in her attempt to brace him with her body. But she was too light. He collapsed to his side, drawing himself into a knot, good hand cradling the injured hand. She knelt and spoke his name. His gaze locked with hers, and she saw the anguish in his eyes and something else. Something manic and furious, a rage so profound that it shook her worse than the sight of his blood.

“Hold on,” she told him. She straightened, and using what mental strength she could muster, she went into the kitchen and found dish towels folded in a drawer. As she dampened the top one, she saw that it was hand-appliquéd with the patchwork figure of an old-fashioned girl in a bonnet hanging out the wash. Under her tiny feet, a lilting row of embroidery spelled: Laundry on Monday. It had probably belonged to Sondra’s grandmother, Abby thought. And then she thought: what a shame it will be ruined now, as if the loss of a vintage dish towel could matter.

She found tweezers in the bathroom, and back in the dining alcove, she knelt beside Hank again and grasped his elbow. “Can you sit up?”

He obeyed docilely, like a child. She set the damp towel to one side and draped a dry towel, Visit on Friday, over her forearm, waiter-style. He balanced his palm on it. Delicately, she picked out the slivers of glass she could see. Then, with the damp towel, she began dabbing at the wounds, applying gentle pressure. A jagged gash running roughly perpendicular to his knuckles was especially deep and continued to bleed each time she drew the cloth away. “I think you need stitches.”

He didn’t answer.

She began wrapping his hand in a fresh towel, leaving his fingers free, tucking the loose end near his wrist. Then, keeping his hand in both of hers, she squatted in front of him. His eyes were unfocused. His face was gray and beaded with sweat. What if he was going into shock? She felt pulled toward that edge herself, and she fought it. “Hank?” she said.

No response.

“We have to get you to a doctor. Can you stand up?” She slid her hand under his forearm.

He jerked his elbow as if her touch offended him. “I’m all right,” he said, and rising unsteadily to his feet, he went into the kitchen, leaving her to watch in disbelief as he unwrapped the bandage she’d made, turned on the tap, thrust his injured hand under the water and groaned.

* * *

Hank wouldn’t let Abby drive. He’d rewrapped his injured hand himself in a clean towel, Mending on Wednesday, and he used his left hand to steer. They were headed down the winding road. Toward Bandera, Abby guessed, although they hadn’t discussed where they were going. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse.

“I doubt you can get a signal this far out,” Hank said.

Abby punched in the Bandera County sheriff’s office number and hit send, but as Hank predicted, there was no reception.

“The local cops won’t find them anyway, if that’s who you’re calling, not if they’ve left the country.”

Abby looked at Hank. He was pale and haggard, but he seemed calmer now; he seemed all right or as all right as he could ever be. She thought she could talk to him; she had to talk to him. “I want to let Sheriff Henderson know we found the jacket. I want him to know what you suspect. It could mean Lindsey’s alive, Hank.” She repeated what she had tried to tell him earlier, before he put his fist through the window.

He thought about it. “I guess, yeah. She’d have to be.”

“It would mean they’re fugitives, is that what you’re saying?” It sounded preposterous—it was preposterous. Still, Abby’s mind skipped past reason, seizing on the possibility. Thoughts crowded her brain: that she would immediately begin her search for Lindsey and never give up. If it took the rest of her life, she would find her daughter. But even as hope shimmered, a cooler sensibility prevailed, that she had no real idea what finding the jacket meant. Abby stowed her phone.

She had tossed the jacket into the backseat, and she felt its presence there, world-shattering, incendiary. Evidence at the very least of Nick’s infidelity and betrayal. But was it also evidence of embezzlement and abduction? Could he and Sondra have helped Adam steal the missing settlement money? Could Nick have taken their daughter, basically kidnapped her, and involved her in some horrible scheme? The questions careened around the walls of Abby’s brain. All of it and none of it seemed plausible.

Suppose Nick had taken Lindsey, where were they? Living it up with Sondra and Adam on some tropical island? Lindsey would never go along with that. Was Nick holding her prisoner?

Could he have involved himself in such a bizarre scheme, one that was so heartless and cruel? If something had happened to her daughter because of Nick, Abby thought, she would—

What? Kill him?

She stared out the window at a narrow ribbon of silver light on the southern horizon that was all that remained of the day. Her stomach growled, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten anything substantial since last night, other than the cheese and crackers she’d shared with Hank. But it was peculiar, wasn’t it? Vaguely sickening, how the body could go on no matter what, demanding food, sleep, a hot bath. Comfort. It was like a machine—

“Abby? Abby!”

She turned blankly toward Hank, who regarded her with some impatience “That’s your cell phone, isn’t it?”

The tinny chords of Ode to Joy came from her purse on the floorboard. Abby could see the Caller ID. Jake. Her heart fell, and she shrank against the car door, not wanting to answer, to have to confess where she was and the terrible possibility that had surfaced as a result. Why hadn’t she walked out on Hank while they were still in Houston, when she’d had the chance? Why had she started this to begin with?

Hank repeated her name. Abby retrieved her phone.

“Jake?” she said, “I’m in the Hill Country, but I’m on my way home now. Can you meet me there? We need to talk.”

“No, Mom! You aren’t going to believe this!”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Abby darted a glance at Hank and found him staring at her.

“They think they found the car, Mom! Some old man found your Cherokee.”

For one dizzying moment, the world stopped. Abby felt it recede. Even the air was gone. Her hand rose to her chest. “Where?” she managed to ask. “What old man?”

“A creek somewhere south of the Guadalupe. The guy was fishing.”

“Lindsey?” Abby pressed the back of her hand over her mouth, afraid of herself, that she would lose it.

“No one’s gotten close enough yet to see inside. The car’s jammed up in some rocks. The old guy wouldn’t have noticed except—”

“How did you find out?”

“Sheriff Henderson called me. He said you weren’t answering your phone.”

“I was—”

“I know. Gramma told me.”

Hank pulled over onto the highway shoulder.

“They found my car,” she told him.

His eyes widened; he said something Abby didn’t catch. Jake talked in her other ear. She couldn’t pay attention. Even sitting still was an effort. She wanted to open the car door and run. Anywhere. Just go. And the sense of her urgency mystified her. For seven months she had wanted nothing more than the truth; she had asked for it, begged to know it, but now, rather than confront it, she wanted nothing more than to run away from it. She thought of Nick’s jacket. If she threw it away, she would still have to tell Jake about finding it. If she lit it on fire, reduced it to cinders, he would have to know it had been located and where and what it might mean. How could she tell that to Jake? How would she frame in words what seemed unspeakable?

“Mom, listen, I’ll be at Aunt Kate’s in about an hour. Go there, okay? I talked to her. She knows what’s going on.”

“But I want to go where the Jeep is.”

“It’s dark. You’d never find it. Just go to Aunt Kate’s and wait for me.”

Abby agreed reluctantly and Jake started to break their connection, but she stopped him. “We’ll be all right, honey. Okay? No matter what happens, what we find out, we’ll be fine, do you understand?”

“Sure, Mom. You have to believe it, too.” He sounded bright and calm, and Abby knew he wanted to reassure her, to help her hold herself together, hold them together.

He wanted to preserve the very world she would have to dismantle, or so it seemed to her then, and dread coiled like a wire around her heart.