Evidence of Life

Chapter 21



Kate ran down the front porch steps as Hank pulled to a stop in the driveway.

Abby got out of the car. “Tell me everything Dennis said.”

Kate pulled her into a tight embrace. “It’s not much.”

“Other than the car is light in color.” George came up behind Kate.

“The same as my Jeep,” Abby said, stepping back. She nearly collided with Hank, whom she’d forgotten. He caught her elbow with his good hand, mumbling something that sounded to Abby like, “Take it easy.” There was a silence while Kate and George looked him over, while they registered the hand wrapped in its kitchen towel, then looked questioningly at Abby. The moment was awkward, but she managed the introductions.

“Mama called you,” Abby said to Kate.

Hank shifted his weight. George cleared his throat.

Kate said, “You should have told me. I would have gone with you.”

“He’s not Charles Manson,” Abby said. Kate eyed Hank’s wrapped hand before ushering them inside, into the kitchen, where she had coffee and brandy waiting.

Abby sat at the table, not trusting her legs.

Hank held up his cell phone. “I should call Kim,” he said and stepped outside, pulling the door closed.

Abby wondered how much he would tell his sister, if he would say they’d found Nick’s jacket, if he would tell Kim he’d put his fist through the window. She found her own cell phone. “I should call Louise,” she said.

Kate offered the brandy. “You should probably have a shot of this first.”

Abby shook her head. She couldn’t swallow.

Consuelo answered and explained that Louise was ill, that she had the flu. Abby could hear Louise in the background, asking who it was, then insisting Consuelo give her the phone. Louise did sound terrible, and Abby explained the situation as briefly as possible.

“I’m coming there,” Louise said, and Abby could hear the struggle it was for her to find enough breath to make the words.

“No, you shouldn’t be out of bed,” she said. “Just rest, do what your doctor says. I’ll call as soon as I know anything.”

For once Louise didn’t argue.

“She must be really sick,” Abby told Kate, stowing her phone.

Hank came through the backdoor, rubbing his ear as if it ached.

“Is everything all right?” Abby asked.

“Caitlin’s upset that I won’t be home tonight.”

“Who’s Caitlin?” Kate asked.

“My daughter,” Hank said. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

“What’s going on here, guys?” Kate put a mug in front of Hank.

He stopped her when she’d only half filled it with coffee and reached for the brandy decanter. “Could be one of two things,” he said topping up his cup. “Assuming that car is Abby’s, they’ll either find nobody in it or they’ll find her husband and my wife.”

“What?” Kate’s head jerked comically.

“Her husband and my wife were f*cking each other, that’s what.”

Abby set her jaws together and stared into her lap.

“Abby?” Kate sat down by George.

“We found Nick’s jacket, the leather one I gave him last Christmas, at the cabin.”

“How did it get there?” Kate was incredulous. She exchanged a quick glance with George, a glance that struck Abby as furtive and full of alarm.

Her stomach lurched. She said, “I don’t know.”

“Bullshit.” Hank drank noisily from his mug, then refilled it with brandy. “Don’t mind her. She’s just having a little trouble facing reality.”

Kate found Abby’s gaze. “Is he trying to say Nick is alive?”

“I’m not trying to say anything. The fact is unless they find the bastard in the car, I’d bet every last nickel I have that he and my wife, and quite possibly that bastard Adam Sandoval, used the flood to fake their own deaths.”

“Are you kidding?” Kate was in disbelief. “What about Lindsey? Did she fake her death, too?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” George sounded as if he’d had enough. He went to the counter, retrieved a mug and poured himself a shot of brandy that he drank in one swallow.

He looked upset, Abby thought. He looked rattled, and George almost never showed emotion. Fear swelled against Abby’s ribs. It rang in her ears. She had the sensation that she was going to find out now, the terrible truth that everyone else had known all these months.

George was lecturing Hank about talking out of his head and giving Abby false hope. He was saying what utter crap Hank’s theory was. George leaned against the counter and said, “I’m not even going to address the ridiculous business about folks faking their own deaths. The bottom line is a man doesn’t take his daughter along when he’s involved in some escapade with another woman. Nick wouldn’t be that stupid.”

Abby was comforted by George’s defense and she might have pursued it, but just then she heard a car door slam.

“That’s Jake.” She shot up from her chair so fast it teetered. “Don’t say another word about this in front of him, not until we have the truth. I mean it.”

Footsteps came across the porch. Kate opened the door. Jake appeared, followed by Dennis, and Abby’s heart loosened; she hadn’t expected him, hadn’t expected the sight of him to bring her such relief.

Jake hugged Kate, then George. Then he walked into Abby’s embrace. “There’s nothing we can do until morning,” he told her.

“The car’s wedged up in some boulders next to a stream on the old Anderson place,” Dennis said. “The water from the Guadalupe must have carried it up there. The river runs pretty close to the highway along that stretch, and that area did see some of the worst flooding.” He took off his hat and rested his eyes on Abby. He was still in uniform, still on duty.

“That’s in Kerr County, right?” George said. “I heard Lon Anderson sold out not long ago.”

“His daughter made him,” Dennis said. “I guess he set the place on fire, nothing too serious, but she told him that was it. He had to sell and move in with her family or go into a retirement home. He chose his daughter’s place.”

Abby was swept with impatience at the folksy details. “What does any of this have to do with my car?”

“Lon’s old place is close enough to his daughter Marcy’s place that he and that old mule of his have been sneaking back there to fish. All this time Marcy thought he was camping on the Guadalupe.”

Kate said, “Last I talked to her, she was telling me he’s a worse trial to her than her kids.”

Jake straddled a chair. “You said he saw lights. That’s how he knew.”

“Yeah, but his daughter thinks he imagined it.” Dennis shifted his hat brim in an uneasy circle.

“What do you mean he saw lights? Like car headlights?” George asked before Abby could, and she thought she heard Dennis sigh. She thought when he answered he seemed reluctant, even chagrined. He wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“That’s what he said when I interviewed him, that he wouldn’t have seen the car at all if the headlights hadn’t been blinking. He said it went on all night and spooked him so bad, he left the next day.”

“How would it have kept battery power all this time?” Jake asked.

George said, “Were they on when you got there?”

“No, but I talked to the old man myself, and he seems convinced. It was real to him. But like I said, Marcy’s just as sure it was a figment of his imagination.”

No, Abby thought. It was no figment. Lon Anderson’s vision of blinking lights was an answer to her prayer.

“So what’s the plan?” Hank slurred, drawing everyone’s attention. He poured another shot of brandy.

Abby thought someone ought to move the bottle away from him. She gestured in his direction. “This is Hank Kilmer.”

“He brought Abby here,” George added.

Dennis set his hat on the counter.

Jake asked Kate if he could make a sandwich.

Kate said, “Where is my brain? Of course you’re hungry. Is ham okay? Anybody else?” She looked at Dennis.

“Thanks, but I should get going. I’m meeting the Kerr County guys in the morning at first light.” He found Abby’s gaze. “You’ll be all right here?”

“Yes.” Abby smiled as if she understood his meaning, but she was completely at sea. Why wasn’t he doing his job? Asking about Hank, his injured hand, what she was doing with him, why he’d been the one to bring her here?

But Dennis only nodded once and retrieved his hat, and as gentle as the gestures were, they seemed ominous to her. He went to the door, then paused and turned back to her. He gave her his promise that he would call. “The moment we find anything,” he said.

“My wife is what you’ll find. Or nothing...”

Hank was belligerent in the way drunks can be, and Abby realized he’d had enough to drink that he might say anything. She looked at Jake, completely engrossed in eating his sandwich, chewing methodically, as if he were alone. He didn’t want to know what Hank was talking about any more than Abby wanted to explain it.

George walked Dennis outside. Kate closed the backdoor after them and hesitated there, brows raised, expectant. Of what, Abby couldn’t have said.

Jake scooped up his dishes and brought them to the sink.

“We need to talk,” Abby said to him.

“I’m tired, Mom. Can it wait until tomorrow?”

Kate checked her watch. “It is tomorrow. After one already. We should all try and get some sleep.”

Abby rubbed her arms.

Kate told Hank he was welcome to sleep on the sofa in the den, but he said he was fine where he was.

Jake disappeared, and Abby heard the door to the hall bathroom close.

He was gone a while, and when she went to see if he was all right, she found him stretched out on the sofa in the study, elbow over his eyes. She paused a few feet inside the room. Light from the hallway marked the sweep of his brow, limned the curve of his cheek. She controlled an urge to go and sit beside him, smooth her hand over his hair. If he were younger, she would hold him. “I could get you a pillow,” she offered.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You should take off your shoes.”

“They’re not touching anything.”

Abby didn’t pursue it; she didn’t want to argue. She had thought she and Jake would talk. But about what? Hadn’t she warned the others against exposing him to all the speculation, the outlandish theories? What else was there? She looked over at George’s desk, the papers scattered across it, the fax machine. She’d sent the message that had brought Hank Kilmer into Kate’s kitchen, into their lives, from there. But it was ridiculous to blame him. The car was found, and tomorrow Dennis would discover what was inside it. The truth, the answer to the mystery. Or not. Abby didn’t know and until she did, she wasn’t going to worry Jake with her questions and her fears.

“Is he asleep?” Kate came to stand beside Abby, arms filled with bedding.

“He was up all last night cramming for a test.”

“I brought him a pillow and a blanket.” Kate carried them past Abby, and she heard sounds of their whispering; she heard Jake’s shoes hit the floor one at a time, the creak of the sofa as he settled the pillow under his head. Kate shook out the blanket and dropped it over him, and Abby was envious, a little hurt, that Jake would allow Kate to tend to him. She said good-night, then drew Abby into the hall, walking her toward the kitchen. “We need a hot toddy.”

“Where’s Hank?”

“On the sofa in the great room. I’m pretty sure he’s passed out. He had a lot to drink. Abby, what happened? How did he hurt his hand?”

Abby sat down at the kitchen table. Kate eyed her intently. “He’s kind of a weird guy.”

“Did George go to bed?” Abby asked.

“Yes.” Kate wheeled, impatient. “Is hot cocoa with Kahlua okay? I’ll heat some milk.”

There was the sound of the refrigerator door opening, the wink of its light, snuffed when the door snapped shut. Kate found a saucepan; she ignited the burner, and Abby studied the ring of flame, somehow soothed by the sight of it and by the pervasive quiet and semidarkness, everything in shadows, soft-edged, dreamy.

“He freaked out,” she said in a low voice.

“Freaked out? What do you mean?”

Abby described going into the cabin, finding Nick’s jacket. She said, “If you could have seen Hank, the look on his face...it was as if he wasn’t there, wasn’t present, and then the next thing I knew, he’d punched his fist through the window.”

There was a pause between them, and then Abby continued.

“I don’t understand any of this, how the jacket got to the cabin, the odd things that have happened at the house, the phone calls—” she looked up sharply “—and please don’t tell me again that I’m imagining things because I know what I know, what I heard. Those calls happened.”

“Maybe tomorrow you’ll get some answers.” Kate stirred the milk.

“Nothing I want.” Abby realized now that her hope that Lindsey was alive had begun to loosen. Something warned her. Her instinct knew it wasn’t possible.

“No,” Kate agreed. “Probably not.”

A long note of silence between them filled with the brush of the spoon circling the pan.

Abby hugged herself. “One thing I know for sure, my marriage was in a lot more trouble than I thought.”

“Based on what?” Kate turned from the stove. “What that weirdo Hank says? He’s crazy, Abby. He’s got issues. I mean, really—people faking their deaths? Do you really think Nick would do something like that? When he had Lindsey with him? There’s no way. She’d never go along with it in any case.”

Abby was surprised. “You’re defending him?”

“I might not be Nick’s biggest fan, but I know he loved his children. He wouldn’t hurt them. You don’t think he would, do you?”

“I wouldn’t have. Maybe I wouldn’t now if it weren’t for Lindsey’s call. I’m talking about the one she made from the gas station in Boerne. She sounded scared, even hysterical.”

“I thought you weren’t sure.”

Abby rubbed her eyes. “I’m not. I go back and forth. I drive myself nuts. It’s like this special corner of hell I live in.”

Kate attended to the milk.

“She memorized Nick’s closing argument.”

Kate switched off the burner and looked askance at Abby.

“The one he made at the end of the Helix Belle trial. Hank told me Sondra knew it by heart. Jake and I were in court that day; Nick was fantastic. His argument might well have won the whole thing, but I couldn’t quote a word of it to you now.”

“Abby, honestly, so what? You were there for him. You supported him. You were a good wife.”

She didn’t answer. It wore on her to remember how little she had made of Nick’s performance, his victory. Looking back, all she could see was his vulnerability in the wake of the accusations that had been made against him, and how much he had needed her, and she had turned her back. She’d left him alone. Left him for someone else to find and comfort.

“Come on, Abby. Sondra sounds like she’s as big a lunatic as Hank. She was a stripper, for God’s sake. Would Nick go for someone like that? Besides, he adored you.”

Abby thought of the photographs of Sondra, beautiful and elegant. “Well, she looks a whole lot better than me in a bikini.”

“Oh, Abby.” Kate’s whisper was full of regret.

The scope of the mystery, and her own failure to question any of the troubling signs that had led up to it, was too much to bear. Abby lowered her forehead to her crossed arms. She would never forgive herself if she learned Nick had involved their daughter, if he had taken Lindsey into this mess. But what was the mess? What would Dennis find in that car tomorrow?

Abby felt Kate drop into the chair beside her and scoot close. She felt Kate’s arm come around her and Kate’s cheek against her hair, and they sat together for a while, hip to hip in the dim silence. Because there weren’t words but only presence, only Abby’s fear and her grief and Kate’s love to receive them.

* * *

It was late in the afternoon, and Abby was alone in the great room staring from the window when the phone rang. She heard George pick up in the kitchen. Jake and Hank were in there, too, Abby thought, having a sandwich. Kate was unloading the dishwasher, but that clatter stopped abruptly. Abby rested her forehead against the window. She felt empty of everything, even the sense of waiting. But as moments passed, she became impatient. What were they doing? Abby straightened. Whispering. She could hear them, and she started across the room.

George appeared in the doorway. “It’s Dennis,” he said and held the cordless phone out to Abby, his big, work-roughened hand shaking, his face crumpled with sadness and concern.

She wanted to say something to reassure him, but the most she could manage was to take the phone. “Dennis?” she said.

“Abby, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s my car, you’re sure?”

“It’s a Cherokee, same make and model. The license plates are a match.” He paused, then continued. “Abby, from the clothing and so forth, it appears there was one adult male and one young female inside.”

A sound came, a low moan. Abby flattened her hand over her mouth. Her eyes found Jake’s, who along with Hank and Kate had joined George. Kate brought her arm around Jake’s waist. Abby saw his shoulders heave and closed her eyes. Dennis was talking about the remains.

She interrupted him. “I want to see them.”

“You really don’t,” he said gently. “You shouldn’t.”

“There’s nothing to see, is there?”

“No. I’m sorry. It’s a long time now since the flood.”

She returned to the window, bending her head to it. As recently as last week, yesterday, in the minutes before Dennis’s call, she’d had hope, slim as it was. Now she had nothing. Just the endless agony of questions and the more agonizing reality that she would never see Lindsey again. Her beloved daughter, her darling girl, was gone. Abby’s heart shuddered. She clenched her teeth fighting the cry that rose. If she gave in to it now, if she allowed the enormity of her loss to overtake her, it would break her in half.

“The adult in the car is definitely male,” Dennis said, “and there is definitely only the one.”

Abby heard Dennis repeat himself; she registered the note of disbelief in his voice, but she didn’t hold on to it.

“If you need anything,” he went on when Abby didn’t respond, “you or Jake....”

“Thank you,” she managed to say. “We’ll be fine. At least it’s over. At least now we know where they are and we can bring them home.” Abby glanced at Hank.

Dennis explained what the procedure would be from here, and Abby picked out certain words like coroner and morgue. She got the impression there were legal obligations to be fulfilled. He made certain Abby had both his cell phone and office numbers in case she had questions and elicited a promise from her that she would keep in touch. He said, “I’ll let you know when the lab results are ready.”

She thanked him and ended the call quickly, set down the phone and cleared her throat. Composing herself, steeling herself. But Jake looked so beaten, so defeated and sad, it almost undid her. She went to him and held him, murmured things she would never remember, and then Kate came, and George, and the four of them huddled together, but Hank stood apart. Abby felt badly for him. “They didn’t find Sondra,” she told him. “She and Nick weren’t together, after all. We were mistaken.”

Hank didn’t say anything; no one did.

A frisson of unease snaked up her spine. “Oh, my God! Jake, I’m so sorry.” She took his hand. “I should have told you. I was going to, but you were so tired last night and I...When I was at the cabin yesterday, I found your dad’s jacket and I thought maybe he was—”

“I know.”

“What? How?” Abby looked at Kate. “You told him? That’s what all the whispering was in the kitchen, wasn’t it?”

Kate started to answer, but Jake talked over her. “I already knew, Mom. I heard you and Aunt Kate talking last night.”

Abby said she was sorry again, that she hadn’t meant for him to find out that way. “I thought your dad and Sondra were—I was wrong, though.” She laughed and put her fingertips to her mouth. Her relief didn’t feel right. She didn’t feel right. Her knees were weak. She wanted to sit down, but Jake was watching her with such—was it pity? Fear? Remorse? Something felt so off, so peculiar.

He said, “But if it’s Dad’s jacket—”

“It is.”

“Then how did it get there?”

“He knew Sondra,” Abby said. “She was working for Judge Payne when your dad filed the suit against Helix Belle, so I imagine they knew each other pretty well. He must have loaned it to her. It’s possible, isn’t it? Then I was thinking about when he came out here to Bandera last winter. Sondra might have come with him or met him there. I know Kate says she didn’t see her, but suppose when he mentioned the bit about property, he was referring to Sondra’s cabin? She told Hank she wanted to sell it, and maybe she hired your dad to look into doing that. She thought so much of him.” Abby stopped. She gave her head a slight shake. She wanted this to make sense, to come together, and it wouldn’t.

She glanced at Hank. He looked sick. Beyond hangover sick, she thought. He had wanted closure and didn’t find it. His sister Kim wanted Sondra’s dead body, and she hadn’t gotten what she wanted either. Abby was sorry for them. But they had nothing to do with her. Sondra had nothing to do with her.

“Mom? I think we probably have to face the facts.” Jake said this tentatively, but then he stepped toward her as if he meant to force the issue.

She twisted away. “I’ll call Nina. She’ll know about Sondra. Nina can look in Nick’s files, find his notes. Under the circumstances, I don’t think confidentiality will apply, but if it does, Dennis can get a court order, don’t you think? Isn’t that how it’s done?” She waved her hand. Abracadabra...

No one answered; no one looked at her. Abby’s stomach knotted.

Hank said he should leave.

Kate offered an invitation to dinner; he turned it down. Abby followed him out of the house, matching his quick, impatient stride. She wanted to let him go, to leave it alone, but she couldn’t. Not until he spoke to her, not until he looked her in her face and admitted he had been wrong about Nick and Sondra. Shouldn’t he do that much after all his accusations and drama? He’d put his hand through a window, for God’s sake, over nothing.

“Hank?” she called after him. “I’m very sorry you don’t know where your wife is, but I can’t help but be relieved that she wasn’t with my husband and daughter.”

He stopped and looked at her, and she saw his pity for her and his contempt. “Sondra was f*cking your husband, Abby. I know it in my gut, just like I know they were together when the car crashed. I don’t know why her body wasn’t found with his today. Maybe she was thrown out; maybe some animal got her, but she was damn sure there when they wrecked, I know she was. I know she’s as dead as he is.”

“But why do you want to believe that? You should be thrilled. You could still find her.”

“Not alive. Ask them.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the house. “Ask your son. He knows the truth. They all know. The sheriff, too. The only reason they won’t tell you is because they don’t think you can take it.” Hank went around to the driver’s side of his car and started to get in, then he squinted at her through the metallic glare off the car’s roof. “Take your little theory about the jacket, that crap about how your husband loaned it to Sondra. Sometime last winter, you said, a jacket he didn’t have until Christmas Day, I might add, and then what? You’re the one who swears you saw it in a closet at home in May. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“No,” Abby said, but she did see, and she clenched her teeth against it. “Nick would not have involved Lindsey—”

Hank stabbed his skull with his index finger. “Think about it. If Sondra wore the jacket to the cabin last winter, how did it get back into your closet where you saw it last summer?”

He waited, but Abby didn’t answer; she wouldn’t. She hated him, the disgust so evident in his eyes, the curl of his lip.

“That coat didn’t get into the cabin on Sondra’s back, Abby. It went in on your husband’s back. He didn’t come out here in April to go camping with your daughter. He came out here to meet my wife and maybe even Sandoval. Hell, they could have all been in that car together. We’ll probably never know.”

Abby shook her head vehemently.

“Fine, don’t believe me. But you might want to go back inside and ask your son about the woman he saw with his dad in February.”

“What woman?”

“The same one your husband was seen with again last April at the gas station in Boerne.”

“There was no woman. Someone—the sheriff would have told me,” Abby said. “You’re crazy.”

“Oh, yes, there was. And just like every other f*cking guy in the world, the kid behind the counter couldn’t keep his eyes off her. It was Sondra. He described her to a f*cking T. He got a good long look. He told the sheriff he saw her get into your Jeep, Abby, and he never saw her get out.”

“You’re a liar, Hank! I feel sorry for you.” But doubt riddled her words; the bitter taste of it coated the margins of her throat.

He started to get into his car now, and Abby felt a rush of relief. Then he paused as if there was more he wanted to say, but she shook her head, warding him off. Ducking into his car, he drove away.

Dust from his tires drifted in his wake as lightly as feathers. Abby took several steps toward the house, walking blind. It would come together if she looked at it; if she paused for one moment to consider. If she were to turn around now, she would see the facts, the cruel reality lingering in that drift of dust. And now, abruptly, as if it were there, a physical entity that clubbed her from behind, she bent at the waist, braced her hands on her knees. Her breath came in shallow spurts; her heart swelled painfully against her ribs. She thought it might burst. She prayed that it would and kill her. She was a fool, that was the “something more” Hank had wanted to say to her.

She thought of the looks she’d been getting from Jake and from Kate and George; she thought of their odd silences and the ways she had been manipulated, even patronized. They had treated her as if she were incompetent and weak. She straightened, eyeing the house. Her brain felt on fire. She was hardly aware of climbing the stairs, flinging open the kitchen door hard enough that it bounced off the wall. The three of them, Kate, George and Jake, broke apart from where they’d been gathered at the window as if they could somehow make it appear they hadn’t been watching her every move. “You knew,” she said.

No one answered. Seconds passed. They might have been frozen.

Finally, Jake said in a low voice, “I didn’t want to tell you, Mom. I didn’t want you to be hurt anymore.”

“You saw them in February? Where?” Abby’s throat was so tightened by grief, by her fury and disbelief, that she scarcely knew how the words could pass.

“At his office.” The words tumbled out of Jake. “You know how much Dad liked it when I went there. It always put him in a good mood.”

“You needed money.”

“Yeah, and I figured if I asked him for it there, he wouldn’t yell at me like he did at home.”

“So?”

“So I’m in the parking garage going to the elevator and I see them in Dad’s Beamer and they’re like—” Jake reddened “—all over each other.”

“Did they see you?”

“I didn’t think so, but then Dad came after me and caught me on the road. He tried to play it off that it was all her. He said she was, like, obsessed with him. He said he was only trying to reason with her. It was shit. He was lying.” Jake’s voice broke.

“You lied to me! I asked you and you lied. How could you?”

“I knew it would kill you, Mom, but you can’t let it. Okay? You can’t let him win.”

She didn’t answer.

“I told you to go home, to leave it alone.” He was accusing her now. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I have to know the truth.” Abby looked at Kate. “You saw them together, too, and you told George, but not me.” She laughed. “It’s true what they say about wives being the last to know.”

Jake’s eyes shone with tears. “I thought you had it figured out, Mom, I really did when I heard you found his jacket.”

“Obviously, I’m an idiot. I didn’t want to believe it, to think he could do that to me, to us.” Abby bit her lips. She was sorry for Jake. Sorry for them both, but she was too angry to comfort him. “You should have told me, Jake. And you—” Abby raised her finger at Kate “—you knew last winter. How could you? But then why should I wonder? You’ve done it to me before.”

“That’s enough, Abby.” George said it gently, but clearly he meant it. He went to his wife’s side.

Jake took Abby’s arm. He wanted her to stop, but he didn’t understand. He didn’t know the history she and Kate shared. She shook free of him and confronted Kate. George put out his hand. Abby ignored it. “Has it occurred to you that if you’d had the courtesy to tell me you saw Nick with that woman last December, I could have done something about it?”

“I didn’t—”

“That was such a sweet story you told me, that he was looking at land for us. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you knew the whole time what he was up to, that he was helping Sondra sell that cabin. I’m sure it’s worth a fortune, more than enough to finance their getaway.” Abby’s laugh was harsh. “Too bad for them Mother Nature had other plans.”

“Oh, Abby, don’t you think you’re way out on a limb—”

“No! The gas station attendant saw them together. Hank said he identified her.”

“That’s an overstatement, Abby,” George said. He added something about Lindsey, the bit about how Nick wouldn’t have taken her. He said, “Don’t you remember? The kid described Lindsey to Dennis, too, but he couldn’t say that he saw her with Nick.”

Abby heard George. She registered the rationality of his argument, but she was too seized by the fruit of her bitter imaginings to grasp that he was offering her another alternative, a different outcome, worse or better, from the one she was bent on believing, which was that Kate had betrayed her, and she, Abby, had allowed it to happen—again. “You did this,” she told Kate. “If you had only picked up the phone and called me, if you had told me you saw Nick with another woman, I would never have let Lindsey go with him. My daughter would be home now and safe—”

“Oh, don’t say it!” Kate reached her hands toward Abby. “Don’t say I’m to blame. Nick was alone when I saw him. I swear it!”

A stunned silence grew cold and stiff, as if all that had ever connected them had died.

Abby turned to Jake. “Who else knows?

He shook his head. “No one.”

George said, “Abby, none of us is guilty of anything except trying to protect you. Maybe Jake wasn’t right. Maybe telling the truth would have been better, but we acted out of love for you and genuine concern.”

“But what is the truth, George? What do you know? Because I would be willing to bet that you still are not telling me everything.”

He sighed.

Kate went to the sink. She filled a glass with water, sipped it and set it down, and without looking at Abby, she said, “This is what I know, all I know: Nick was alone when I ran into him last winter. He told me he was there about property. If he had a woman with him, I didn’t see her. The only other thing I know is that when Dennis went to interview the gas station attendant, the kid thought he remembered Nick from a picture Dennis showed him. He remembered Lindsey getting the restroom key, and he also said Nick was with a woman and they seemed close. The kid thought the woman was—he thought she was the man’s wife or girlfriend.”

“So Hank was right.” Abby felt exultant.

George said, “The kid was seventeen. He was stressed. There were tons of people there that day all milling around because of the weather. I mean, it was all so iffy. It just didn’t seem right to talk about a bunch of maybes. Maybe it was Nick, maybe it was Sondra, maybe they were together.”

“Well, there’s no maybe about what Jake saw, or what Nick told him, is there? There’s no maybe about Lindsey’s phone call to me from the gas station or that she was deeply upset about something that was happening. Something to do with her daddy.”

A pause hung like old dust.

“None of us had all the pieces until today,” Kate said. “Even now, how can we be sure?”

“I’m so sorry, Mom.” Jake raked his hands over his head.

“This is why you’ve been avoiding me like the plague. How long were you going to keep it up, Jake?”

“I wanted to tell you. I just couldn’t figure out how. Then when Dennis called about finding the car, I asked him if there was, you know, a woman inside.”

It took a moment, but once Abby realized that Dennis had known the truth, too, the sense of her humiliation mushroomed. She felt light-headed. Dennis knew things about her. About Nick and her marriage. She’d spoken of her family as if it were sacred. She’d let Dennis see inside her. See her love for Nick, see into her most vulnerable, soft, tender places. And the whole time he must have been stacking up her words, her pretty fairy-tale speeches, her tears and her grief, against his knowledge of her husband’s betrayal. Dennis had assumed her frailty along with the rest of them, and he didn’t even know her.

Abby’s mouth felt full of chalk. She could use a glass of water herself, but she wasn’t asking these people for anything. “I look like an ass,” she said. “It’s a mystery how you’ve kept from laughing.”

“Nick’s the fool,” Kate said. “But honestly, Abby, would you have believed me or Dennis if we’d told you what the boy at the gas station said?”

“Whether I would believe you or not, whether I could handle it, that wasn’t for you to decide.”

“You’ve been through so much,” Kate said. “I couldn’t see adding to it. Even if Nick was up to something, he’s still gone along with whatever his reasons were for his behavior.”

“She’s right, Mom.”

Abby switched her glance to Jake. She was angry enough to kill. But whom? “I want to go home,” she said.

“Now?” Jake said.

“Yes,” she said. “Now.”

* * *

On the way home from the ranch Abby told Jake to stop at the sheriff’s office in Bandera.

“Dennis won’t be there,” Jake said. “It’s too late. He’s gone home by now.”

“I’ll take a chance,” she said. “You can wait in the car.”

“I won’t ask what you’re planning.”

“No,” Abby said. “Don’t.”

Dennis was on his way out of the building, and when he saw her, his face opened with such pleasure that Abby felt herself nearly come unhinged from her purpose.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” she asked.

He motioned her into a nearby office and closed the door. A desk and three filing cabinets nearly filled the tiny space. The only decoration was a row of black-framed certificates that hung in a crooked line on one wall.

Dennis offered Abby a seat.

“I’ll stand, Sheriff, thank you,” she said, and his eyes widened as if her formality surprised him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what you learned from the attendant at the gas station?”

Dennis frowned.

“My husband was traveling with a woman last April. The gas station attendant told you that, but you didn’t tell me. Why?”

“You were under a lot of strain. Kate was worried about how much more you could stand, and, in any case, it was hearsay.”

“I’ve heard all that, but you’re the police. You’re supposed to report the facts, and you didn’t. You asked me a lot of questions, you came into my home, you got plenty of information out of me. You knew where I stood, how I felt about everything, and you let me go on thinking—believing—” That my life was real, that my marriage was solid. She wanted to say it, but if she did, she would lose her composure. She walked toward him, intending to move around him. He caught her arm. “Don’t,” she said, and he let her go, stepping aside.

“You didn’t deserve this,” he said.

“Which part?” she asked. “Being lied to or being kept in ignorance?”

Dennis didn’t answer.

She had nearly reached the exit when he said her name, and she stopped.

“You’re right,” he said. “You were entitled to the facts. I just couldn’t find a way to say them. I don’t think Jake could either,” he added.

She waited a moment and then walked on. She didn’t look back.

* * *

Jake and Abby didn’t speak until they reached the Houston city limits and then she gave Jake directions to Hank’s house where she’d left Nick’s car. Nick’s car that was hers now. She was his widow. Everything was hers. If he’d lived, she would be his ex-wife instead of his widow. To think that less than a year ago, she had thought their troubles centered on their finances, the length of Nick’s commute, all the upkeep on their property. She’d thought a move into town would fix their lives right up. It was laughable, heart-wrenching. He’d made such a fool of her. But if only she’d known, if she’d been told the truth about Nick and what he was doing, she would have kept Lindsey home with her that weekend. She would still have her daughter. Abby bit her teeth together to keep from crying out.

Jake pulled into Hank’s driveway behind the BMW, and Abby got out. “Hold on a second, Mom.” He fished around in the backseat and handed her Nick’s jacket through the open window. “Hank gave it to me this morning.”

Abby folded it over her arm.

“Will you be all right? Can you drive?” he asked.

She nodded and glanced toward Hank’s house that was dark except for a solitary lamp burning in one window. Her heart constricted. Caitlin’s beacon. She was still waiting for her mother. Dennis had promised they would search the area where Abby’s Jeep had been found for Sondra’s remains. He would do it because Abby had told him about Caitlin, her need for her mom to come home. He hadn’t commented when she’d mentioned Hank’s theory that Adam Sandoval might have been in the car, too, that he might also have died in the accident. That was a police matter; let them figure it out.

Abby bent her gaze to Jake’s. “Thanks for bringing me. Maybe you’ll come home for the weekend?”

“I’ll try.” He looked away and as quickly looked back. “I kept waiting to hear from him that he’d told you. He said he was going to. He promised me he would.”

“Is that why you didn’t go with them to the Hill Country? It wasn’t because you had to study, was it? You were angry at your dad.”

“I didn’t want to be around him.”

“Was Sondra invited?”

“No! I don’t know. That’s what I can’t figure out. If that was really her at the gas station, why was she with him? Dad wouldn’t have brought her along, not with Lindsey. Uncle George is right. He wouldn’t have done that, no way. He told me it was over, Mom. He swore it was.”

Abby shook her head. She was cold and too tired to think. She wanted to lie down.

“I wonder what happened to her. Seems like if she was in the car, she couldn’t have lived, could she?”

“I doubt it.”

Jake chewed his lip and contemplated the view through the windshield. Abby got out her car keys. Down the street, someone whistled. For their dog, she guessed.

“Dad didn’t take the settlement money, Mom. He wasn’t in on that; he wasn’t Adam’s partner. You know that, right? I mean, he was a bastard, but he wouldn’t steal from those kids.”

Abby thought about it. “I don’t want to believe it, Jake.” But she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure anymore who Nick had been, who they had been as a couple. She wondered if she even knew who she was, if she would ever trust herself again, and that was possibly the worst feeling in the world.

“Was Dad acting different? Were you guys, like, fighting?” Jake asked.

How did it happen? That’s what he wanted to know. How had his world, the one he believed in, with two parents who loved each other, come apart this way, seemingly without warning? “I think he was more troubled than we realized, in ways we didn’t understand,” Abby said. “He was unhappy, maybe. He didn’t talk to me, or I didn’t listen. I don’t know.” She smoothed the folds of Nick’s coat over her arm, absently, feeling sad and awkward, feeling tiny licks of anger heat her temples. Ask your father, she wanted to say. Ask that woman. Sondra. Abby didn’t want to think about it...the possibility that she had survived, while Abby’s own daughter had not. She did not want to live in a world where such a horrible injustice could be a reality.

“After the flood,” Jake said, “when I realized you didn’t know about her, I figured, why should you have to? Dad was dead. It was over.”

Abby didn’t respond.

“It is, Mom. It is over, right?”

Abby said, “I hope so,” but she wondered, if that was true, why did everything feel so unsettled?

* * *

She was turning into her driveway when her cell phone rang, and, thinking it was Jake or her mama checking to see if she’d made it home safely, Abby stopped to answer.

“Hey, I’m here,” she said, but instead of the warm affectionate response she’d anticipated, what greeted her was silence. Her heart froze. It’s not Lindsey, warned a voice in her head. It can’t be.

“Hello? Who’s there?” she demanded.

The silence was cut through by faint static, then a drift of words, something soft and singsong that sounded like, “Are you happy now?...Are you happy now?...Are you happy now?....”

“Who is this?” Abby demanded, but she realized the connection was severed, that she was talking to empty air. She brought the phone down, checked where the call was from, but the record gave her nothing. Out of Area, it read. She peered into the path of headlights. It wasn’t Lindsey. Of course it wasn’t. Common sense told her it wasn’t. Even if it had been Lindsey, she wouldn’t have asked such a question.

Abby’s impulse was to call Jake or her mother, but she didn’t act on it. She knew what they would tell her, that it was a prank, and in the end she would be sorry she had involved them.

The house was dark, and it filled her with foreboding to go inside, but she did. She even slept for a few hours on the sofa in the den. She didn’t bring Nick’s jacket inside until the next morning and it was when she was hanging it back up in the hall closet that she saw Lindsey’s pink-and-green striped hair ribbon, the one she’d tied at the end of her braid last April, lying on the closet floor.