Evidence of Life

Chapter 23



A dark blue sedan was parked behind the house in Abby’s spot when she came home from visiting her mother’s, as if it belonged there. Abby braked for a moment, considering, and then pulled in behind it. Nadine wasn’t leaving until they had it out. If Abby had to call the police on the reporter, she thought, she would do it. She pulled her keys from the ignition, got out of the BMW, and walked around the blue sedan. It was an Impala, not a Taurus, and it was empty. Abby started for the house and then looked back, suddenly remembering her wild drive the other night. She’d seen the blue car then, too, parked behind her on the feeder. It was ridiculous. The woman was following her, obviously. But why?

“Nadine?” she called, rounding the front of the house. There was no answer, no sign of the reporter.

Abby took her cell phone from her purse as she retraced her steps, but then she was unsure whether to dial Charlie’s number or 911. She’d never changed the locks as he’d advised. And she should have, she thought, when the backdoor opened without the assistance of her key. Somehow she wasn’t surprised, although she distinctly remembered locking it when she’d left. She pushed the door a bit wider even as she told herself it might not be the smartest thing to go inside on her own. But she was on her own now, right? She had to learn to take care of things by herself, and certainly she could handle Nadine Betts. Abby gripped her phone tightly in one hand and her keys in the other.

“Nadine?” she called and she didn’t bother keeping the annoyance from her voice.

“No,” a woman answered.

Two steps took Abby into the arched doorway that divided the den from the kitchen, and she knew that instant whom she would find instead of the reporter. Abby knew just as surely as if Sondra had announced herself.

“You.” The word out of Abby’s mouth was an accusation, an indictment.

“Yes,” Sondra answered. She was sitting on one end of the sofa, all blond elegance in her oversize white linen shirt and slender jeans. A smooth turquoise medallion framed in ornate silver hung from a chain around her neck, a vivid splash of color against the warm honey shade of her skin. There were bracelets on her wrists, rings on her fingers. Her feet were as narrow and slim as the rest of her and cased in pale blue flats that tapered into points at her toes. She looked relaxed, sitting there with her legs crossed at the knee, one flat dangling. She looked as if she belonged on Abby’s sofa. She had even pushed the bed linen Abby slept under to the opposite end.

“How did you get in?” Abby demanded.

Sondra held up a key.

“Where did you get that?”

“Nick gave it to me.”

“I doubt it,” Abby said, because she didn’t want to imagine that he would do something so unconscionable, so heartless. “You need to leave. Now.”

“I will when you give me Nick’s jacket.”

Abby stared, nonplussed.

“You took it,” Sondra sat forward. “Out of my cabin the day you came there with Hank. I want it back.”

“I saw you!” In her mind’s eye, Abby recalled the view from the cabin’s back window, the fringe of woods, the figure she’d seen slipping among the trees.

“I nearly froze my ass off waiting for you to leave.”

“Well, that’s not my problem. Please, go.”

“Nick gave the jacket to me,” Sondra said matter-of-factly. “It’s mine now.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

Sondra grinned smugly and reached for her purse, a huge soft-sided tote, the same shade of blue leather as her flats, and pulled it onto her lap.

Watching her fish through the contents, Abby wondered in a distracted corner of her mind what she was hunting for.

“You met Kim, right?” Sondra glanced up at Abby. “Hank’s idiot of a sister? She’d love to see me committed, or better yet, dead. But never mind that. I’ve been in here before, did you know?”

There was a spark of glee in Sondra’s voice now, as if she were pleased to announce this, to share the good news. But something else was swimming in her expression, too. Something darker and frayed.

Unbalanced. The word appeared in Abby’s mind. Her heart paused. She held up her cell phone. “Leave. Now. Or I’m calling the police.”

“Oh, I know how angry you must be.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

“Really. Well, I know what happened to Nick and your daughter. I was there.”

Abby’s breath left her; she felt as if she’d been blindsided. “Tell me,” she said, and her need to know, that had haunted her for months, was as searingly hot as it had been when it had been fresh. Nothing else mattered; nothing else was in her mind. Shaking, she dropped her cell phone onto a side table and gripped her arms above her elbows.

“It wasn’t my fault.” Sondra was maddeningly cool.

“What wasn’t? Screwing my husband? Involving my daughter in your dirty affair? Driving her off a cliff? Which?”

“I don’t particularly care for your—”

“Oh, my God! It was you, wasn’t it?” Abby was struck by a fresh realization. “Those times on the phone, when I thought it was Lindsey, it was you pretending to be her.” Abby didn’t know how she knew; she just did, that the phone calls she had believed in and treasured for the hope they brought her had been a prank just as Jake had suggested. There had never been a chance of finding Lindsey alive, never a moment when Abby might have saved her. “How could you be so cruel?”

If Sondra heard Abby or cared, she didn’t respond. She was intent on her search through the contents of her purse, muttering to herself. Then, suddenly, her hands stilled, and she looked up and smiled unnervingly.

Abby’s heart stalled; a tendril of fear hooked her spine. “You should go now,” she said.

But Sondra remained where she was, blandly smiling, as if the upturned corners of her mouth were secured by a series of tiny hidden stitches. “I wanted Nick to tell you about us,” she said. “I hated always having to sneak around. That’s partly why I came today. I want Nick’s jacket, but I also thought you, of all people, deserved to know the truth. I mean, we both loved him, right?—and he’s dead now.”

She lifted one hand in a vague gesture, kept the other hidden inside the purse. Abby looked there as if she might see through its leather walls. Something was going on, something worse than seemed apparent.

“Of course, you had him longer than me. I didn’t even know who he was until the Helix Belle case came to trial.”

Abby remembered Hank telling her how obsessed Sondra had been with the case.

“When I saw him the first time in action in the courtroom, I was amazed. Mesmerized. He had such a—a—” She looked away, and, bringing her fingertips to her mouth, she apologized. She said she could scarcely speak of him without losing her composure.

A fresh wave of panic broke in Abby’s mind. Her ears were ringing and she wondered if she was in some kind of shock. Otherwise, wouldn’t she do something? Pick up her phone and call 911? But she had a sense that Sondra could go off at the slightest provocation. She looked relaxed enough, sitting there on the sofa. She might have been a neighbor who had dropped in for a short visit, but there was a kind of tension in her posture, a certain hyper alert quality about her that struck Abby as unnatural. And there was her hand tucked into her purse.

Abby was awfully afraid of what might be hidden there; she didn’t want to think about it, the possibility that Sondra had brought a gun into the house. It couldn’t be. People—ordinary people—didn’t do that.

Sondra said, “I was there for him every day of that trial, every day court was in session, but you—you,” she repeated with sharp disgust, “only managed to come for the closing arguments. Nick said you had no interest in his career, that you mainly saw him as a paycheck.”

“He wouldn’t have said that.” Abby defended herself without thinking.

“Did you even know the man?” Sondra set her purse aside, and Abby’s worry over it eased a bit. She eyed her cell phone.

“I tried to save him when those bastards accused him of stealing the settlement money. I did everything I could. I went to everyone I knew—the mayor, the district attorney. I called the governor. Nick didn’t want me intervening on his behalf, but somebody had to.” She scooted to the edge of the sofa, bracing her elbows on her knees. “Judge Payne fired me over it.”

Hank had said Sondra quit her job. Had he lied or was Sondra lying now? Abby looked at her. She fiddled with her bracelets.

“People never want to face the truth,” she said. “Have you noticed? Even the judge said he was letting me go because I was unreliable. The a*shole suggested I get help, but the truth is that he disapproved of my relationship with Nick, our—” Sondra touched her upper lip delicately with the tip of her tongue as if, unlike Abby, she couldn’t bring herself to say it, the word “affair.”

How did I not know, Abby wondered. How could I have been so blind? She remembered her impatience with Nick and his mood swings, and her decision to leave it alone. This, too, shall pass. But maybe on a deeper level she had known there was something more beyond the trouble with Helix Belle. Now that she thought about it, Nick had been cleared of suspicion within a matter of days. Less than two weeks had passed when Helix withdrew its allegations, yet his moodiness had dragged on through the holidays, into spring. He’d not been himself on the day he left for the Hill Country.

Sondra said getting fired was probably the best thing that could have happened to her. It had forced her to leave Hank, she said, to open her design business. It sickened Abby to listen to her go on about her intention to divorce Hank and marry Nick. Sondra mentioned the sale of the cabin, that Nick had promised to help her arrange it. “There would have been enough money then that we could have gone anywhere and started over. I wanted that desperately,” Sondra said. “I tried to explain it to Nick, that he couldn’t—” She broke off.

“Couldn’t what?”

Sondra twisted her bracelets. “The thing is, he kept stalling and I ran out of cash. What else could I do but go back to dancing at the club? Nick was furious; he stopped taking my calls, but what did he expect?” She looked up at Abby and her eyes swam with tears, heartbroken shadows and a softer light of blank confusion, bemusement...some horribly wrong, discordant note that seemed out of place. She sat back and drew her purse onto her lap again.

Abby’s pulse tapped in her ears, light and paper-thin.

“If only he had listened to me last December, he would be alive now. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I gave him every chance then, just the same as I’m giving you every chance now.”

“What do you mean?” Abby asked carefully.

“The last time we met, before the flood, was in Bandera. It was near Christmas. Nick didn’t want to come, but I said if he didn’t, I would call you and tell you everything about us.”

“You were there, with him, at the courthouse in Bandera?” Abby was thinking of Kate’s December sighting of Nick.

“There was a problem with the title on my property. I needed Nick’s help to fix it, but then he ran into some friend of yours, or so he said, and it freaked him out. I don’t know because I was in the restroom, so he could have been lying.”

No, Abby thought. He hadn’t been lying, but neither had Kate, and Abby felt a tiny ripple of relief.

“He just wanted to get out of town after that,” Sondra said. “He swore he would take care of everything from home, that he’d be in touch after Christmas, but he wasn’t. It pissed me off. I went to his office one day and waited by his car. He had to talk to me then, but he was so cold. He said we were a mistake.”

Had Nick broken it off? Abby wondered. Had there even been a relationship between him and Sondra, or was she making it up? But she had Nick’s door key, his jacket had been at her cabin. She was here now as if she had some kind of claim on Nick, however bizarre that seemed. What did it add up to, if not infidelity?

“I didn’t speak to him again until the gas station in Boerne. Oh, you should have seen the look on his face.” Sondra clapped her hands together the way a child might if she were thrilled with herself.

“I thought you were in the car with him,” Abby said, but Sondra seemed not to hear her.

“F*cking weather screwed up everything—” She stopped, and her gaze drifted as if she were studying something in her mind.

Glancing at her cell phone, Abby considered whether she could grab it and run out of the house. She didn’t know, couldn’t decide. What did Sondra intend? Suppose she did have a gun?

“I only wanted to tell him he was going the wrong way, but he wouldn’t listen.” Sondra’s voice rose. “He kept shouting, ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone,’ over and over. He made Lindsey cry. He scared her.”

At the gas station, Abby thought, the Shell station Lindsey had called from, when Abby heard her daughter crying. She bit the inside of her cheek.

Sondra said she had taken Nick’s cell phone from the Jeep. “He left it in plain sight, left the car unlocked. The phone would have been stolen. I took the map, too, and some other stuff, change from the cup holder, a ribbon, I think it was Lindsey’s. I don’t—I’m not sure why I took the other things—” Sondra frowned.

Abby’s mind gave her pictures, unwanted pictures, of Sondra handling Lindsey’s hair ribbon, something Abby herself had cherished, of Sondra inside Nick’s jacket, where Abby had sought refuge. A sound broke from her chest, and she put her hand there. Her eyes clashed with Sondra’s.

“I took the map because I wanted to show him the right way to go, but he pushed me. He called me a crazy bitch. There was no need for that.” Sondra’s voice caught. She pressed her lips together.

“What did you do?” Abby spoke over the heavy frightened thudding of her pulse, even as her sense that Sondra had done something to hurt her family grew in her mind.

“When he left the gas station, I followed him. I only wanted to talk, you know? I drove beside his car and motioned for him to let down the window, but he sped up, so I had to speed up, too. I only wanted to talk.” Sondra rubbed her upper arms briskly. She repeated it, “I only wanted to talk,” once, twice, three more times, a slurry of words. “I tried to keep up, but he kept going faster. It was raining so hard, and I was screaming at him to slow down, but he didn’t and the curve came and he started to slide and then he—the car just—went through the guardrail down into all that water—”

“You ran them off the road!?”

“No, it was him, all him. He wouldn’t stop.”

“Get out!” Abby seized her cell phone and tried to tap out 911, but she couldn’t see the numbers, her fury was so all-consuming, so blinding. She thought if Sondra did not go, she would kill her; she would choke Sondra by the neck until she was dead.

“Stop!”

Sondra’s shout pierced the hide of Abby’s rage. She looked up. The gun Sondra pointed at Abby was small, snub-nosed, ugly. Abby felt her breath go. She felt her knees weaken.

“Put down the phone.”

Abby dropped it.

“Mom?”

“Jake? Get out of the house!” Abby heard his laundry basket hit the mudroom floor and then his car keys hit the kitchen counter. She bit back a cry. She had forgotten he was coming home this weekend.

He appeared in the doorway. Abby looked at him over her shoulder, watched as his eyes widened, taking in the scene. But otherwise he gave no sign of alarm, and Abby marveled at that. He was wearing Nick’s jacket, and she thought that was good. Maybe if he gave it to Sondra, she’d go.

“What is she doing here?” he asked.

Sondra gestured with the gun. “Get over there next to your mother.”

Jake said, “Okay, but why don’t you put the gun down?” He came slowly to Abby’s side, and his presence steadied her even as she felt terrified for what might happen to him.

“No,” Sondra said. “I came here today because I thought your mom—you and your mom deserved to know the truth about what happened to your dad and your sister, and it was hard for me having to relive it. But I thought, it’s not about me, you know? Now your mom is blaming me. She was trying to call the police like I’m some kind of murderer—”

“She ran them off the road,” Abby said.

“Shut up!” Sondra said.

Abby clenched her jaw.

“You weren’t in the car with them?” Jake asked Sondra, as if their conversation were normal.

“I followed them from here.” She reflected Jake’s ease, and Abby realized it was a ploy, that Jake’s calm demeanor was deliberate. She wondered at his presence of mind, his courage.

Sondra went on. “I had called Nina, you see. That’s how I knew Nick was going camping that weekend. I planned to surprise him at the campsite, but then he got off the interstate in San Antonio and checked into a motel.”

“Because of the rain,” Jake said.

“It was terrible,” Sondra said. “Coming down in sheets; it was like driving blind. The next morning, when it was still raining, I thought he would turn around and come home, but he went the wrong way—”

“He must have missed a turn somehow and he ended up in Boerne at the Shell station,” Abby said, putting it together. “She must have followed them from the motel.”

“I didn’t—” Sondra’s voice stumbled. “He wouldn’t stop, if he’d only stopped.” The words came hard. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She pressed the back of her free hand to her mouth. She looked lost, frightened, as frightened as Abby felt.

“I only wanted him to love me again,” Sondra whispered.

Jake said, “Why don’t you give me that gun?”

She gestured wildly with it. “I didn’t have to come here. I didn’t have to put myself through this.”

“No,” Jake said.

“She wants the jacket,” Abby said, hoping to distract her.

“You want this?” Jake opened out the jacket’s front edges.

Sondra nodded. “I thought it would be nice of your mom to let me have it. I loved your dad, too, you know? He hurt me. Very badly. But I still love him.”

Jake eased his arms from the jacket’s sleeves.

“When he left me, I wanted to die. I wish I had been in the car with him. I wish I had gone over the cliff, too. I don’t know why I didn’t.” She looked at Abby. “Don’t you wish you were dead? How can you stand it? Living without him?”

Abby didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

“That’s why I bought this gun, because I can’t stand it. You must feel the same, right? I can help you, help us both. I can help him, too.” She pointed the gun at Jake, and what sounded like a squeal rose in Abby’s throat.

“There are six bullets in here,” Sondra said. “Enough for all of us.”

Jake held out the jacket as if he meant to hand it over, but at the last second, when Sondra stepped toward him to take it, he swung it at her, making her stagger.

The gunshot that followed exploded into the room, deafening Abby, even as it seemed to suck the very air from her lungs.

Jake rushed past her, and in a blur Abby saw him hurl himself at Sondra. She lost her grip on the gun; Abby saw it fly; she heard it skitter across the floor.

Jake dove for it a split second ahead of Sondra.

Abby grabbed her cell phone and managed to pick out 911 and give their location.

Jake and Sondra rolled over the back of the sofa in a tangle of limbs.

When the gun went off a second time, Abby couldn’t hear her own scream, but she felt the force of it burn her throat. Flinging her phone aside, she went to Jake, dropping to her knees where he lay underneath Sondra, unmoving, pale. Abby shoved her. “Get away!”

Sondra scrambled to her feet.

“Jake?” Abby put her hands on his face; she touched his shoulders looking for blood, an injury. His eyelids fluttered. He took in a huge shuddering breath.

“Are you hurt?” Abby asked when his eyes opened fully.

He looked dazed, but shook his head. “Got the wind knocked out of me is all.”

Abby saw the gun then. It lay partially concealed under Jake’s leg, and she grabbed it, turning on her knees, leveling it at Sondra. It was heavier than she had imagined, and it felt cold in her hand, like something foreign, evil. Abby felt distanced from it and from herself. She felt as if she inhabited a different world now than the one she had wakened to this morning, but she would not allow this woman to take any more from her than she had already taken. Abby stood up. “The police are on their way,” she said.

“I don’t care what happens to me.” She ordered her hair, straightened her shirt. She didn’t look threatening or off balance now. She didn’t look anything more than exhausted and unhappy. But somehow that felt even more disconcerting to Abby, like the hush after one storm has passed, but you know there is another one coming. The air felt electric.

“My life was over when Nick died.” Sondra went to the sofa and retrieved her purse.

“Sit down,” Abby said.

But Sondra didn’t. She got out her car keys and looked hard at Abby. “You didn’t love him. I see that now and I hate you for it. Why couldn’t you let him go? Why should you have all this?” She jerked her arm in an arc, indicating the house. “You have his son, too. And what do I have?” Bending abruptly, she scooped Nick’s jacket off the floor and brandished it at Abby. “This! This is what I’m left with.”

“You have a daughter,” Abby said.

Sondra looked blank as if she didn’t comprehend Abby’s meaning, and then she turned and swiftly left the room.

“I’ll stop her.” Jake took the gun from Abby and went after Sondra. Abby followed him.

“Let her go, Jake,” she called. “The police will get her. Let them handle it.”

But Jake didn’t respond; he didn’t do as Abby said, and when she heard the back door slam behind him, her heart dropped. Where were the police?

Sondra was backing down the driveway when Abby got outside, and Jake was watching her go. Abby joined him. “She won’t get far.”

“What is wrong with her?” Jake ran a shaky hand over his head. “I thought for a second we were goners.”

“Why don’t you put that thing down?” Abby indicated the gun.

He said, “The safety’s on. It can’t hurt anybody now.”

“I think the reason we’re standing here is because of your cool head.” Abby’s voice slipped.

Jake put his arm around her shoulders.

They heard the approach of sirens.

“Thank God.” Abby felt limp with relief.

Sondra was halfway down the driveway when the first patrol car pulled in behind her, blocking her exit. The two officers were outside the vehicle in moments. One had his hand on the butt of his holstered gun and was cautiously approaching the driver’s side of Sondra’s car.

The other was just as cautiously coming up the drive toward Jake and Abby as if he questioned which of the three of them was the danger. Abby would never know why, but some intuition made her turn to Jake and say, “Let’s go in the house,” and she had started that way when, all at once, she registered the hard rhythmic revving of a car engine and the sudden squeal of tires on the asphalt. She heard the police officers’ warning shouts, and now Jake was shouting.

“Holy Jesus Christ, Mom! Run!” He pushed her, herding her in front of him across the drive.

Abby wasted a precious moment looking in the direction of Sondra’s car as it hurtled toward them, but Jake’s fist against her back was insistent. They had nearly reached the porch when the car rounded the corner of the house, coming straight for them. Abby, with Jake on her heels, flung herself toward the porch; they half fell up the back stairs.

She waited for the collision and instead felt the wind when Sondra’s car veered at the last second and tore past them; she smelled the exhaust, the burning rubber. Lying on the porch, breath gusting from her chest, Abby imagined she could smell Sondra’s lunacy, her maddened rage. Or maybe it was the stench of her own fury, her own hysteria that burned down through her core. She couldn’t have said. She was clinging to Jake.

One cop car flew past, siren screaming, and then the second. Abby heard the screech of metal when they broke through the fence.

“Holy shit!” Jake lifted his head off the porch floor. “Are they in the pasture? Where does she think she’s going? She can’t outrun them.”

Abby didn’t answer. She didn’t think outrunning the police was Sondra’s intention.

Moments later, the sound of the crash was horrific, otherworldly. Neither Abby nor Jake saw it happen. They were getting to their feet, dazed, half in shock, but one of the officers told them when he returned from the scene that Sondra had hit the utility pole at the north end of the pasture and was ejected from the vehicle.

“She was going straight at it like a bat out of hell,” he said, “and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. Not much way she was going to survive driving like that.”

Hours passed while the police and other rescue workers did their jobs. The coroner came, and a tow truck was brought in for Sondra’s car. Looking on from the back porch at the emergency traffic strung out over her property, Abby was reminded of Kate’s ranch after the flood. The sight was as surreal now as it was then. It made her feel light-headed.

Charlie came, and Abby was glad for his company, his support. It was some time after he heard what had happened, when he had digested the enormity of the danger she and Jake had been in, that he said, “It’s like that movie. What was it?”

“Fatal Attraction?” Jake said.

“That’s the one,” Charlie said.

Standing next to them on the porch, Abby said, “A movie isn’t real.”

The officer who took her and Jake’s statements said that he’d contacted Hank, and that Hank had said Sondra had shown up one day out of the blue around a month ago. According to what Hank told the police, he had no idea his wife had fixated on Nick and then on Abby. He hadn’t known she’d bought a gun. He’d said there were psychiatric issues.

It took the police little more than a week to conclude their investigation. Someone from the department called and explained to Abby that, from the information they were able to gather, it appeared Sondra had for many years struggled with being bipolar. She had a history of going off her medication, and when she came to Abby’s house, she was in all likelihood suffering the effects of some kind of psychotic break.

Abby wasn’t comforted. She felt raw inside and panicky. She kept thinking of Sondra’s last phone call, the one where she’d asked: Are you happy now? Abby hadn’t understood then why Sondra had asked that question, but she did now. She thought if Sondra were here she would ask her the same thing: Are you happy now?

* * *

Jake went back to school on the Tuesday after the incident. Abby helped him pack his car, and she couldn’t stop fussing over him. It worried her that he wasn’t taking enough time to process the trauma they’d both endured.

He insisted he was fine. “Really, Mom. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“No,” she protested, and she was annoyed. She was sick of being worried over.

“I’m just glad you didn’t pull the trigger on that gun.”

“I would have, if Sondra had made one move toward you.” Even as she spoke, Abby realized it was true, that she would have done whatever it took to save Jake or herself.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “You’re tough, Mom, you know it? You’ll make it. We both will.” He sounded so confident. Abby hoped he was right.

* * *

She wanted to talk to Hank, and in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, she picked up the phone a half dozen times to call him. She wasn’t sure of her motive, whether she meant to question him or to berate him, and in any case, something stopped her. Some higher part of herself, and in one corner of her brain, one sane, lovely corner, she was grateful for that. Finally, she purchased a card and wrote a brief note expressing her sympathy for him and for Caitlin. Abby’s mother said that was sufficient, that Abby didn’t owe Hank one thing.

“Not even forgiveness, Mama?” Abby asked, smiling.

“Oh, Abigail.” Her mother sighed. “Only saints can walk on water, you know.”

* * *

It was after dinner on the Saturday following Thanksgiving; Jake had gone down the street to play basketball with friends, and Abby was headed into the den to read when the phone rang, and for a moment, she froze. Her stomach churned, but then she shook herself, half in irritation. Her mother had told her she needed time to mend, but Abby wondered how much.

Glancing at the Caller ID, her breath caught. “Katie....” she said when she answered, and the name was carried on a sigh that was partly sad, but mostly love and gratitude and relief.

“Oh, Abby, your mama said I should give you a bit longer, but I just couldn’t wait another second. I’ve been worried sick about you. Are you and Jake all right? Truly, I mean—” Kate’s voice hitched.

Abby carried the cordless receiver to the table in the breakfast nook and sat down. She said they were fine and asked how Kate knew.

“Dennis heard what happened and called me. He was going to come there, he was so concerned.”

Abby’s heart paused. “Really?” she said and slid her finger along the table’s edge. Whatever anger she had felt against him, or embarrassment or whatever it had been, those feelings had evaporated now. She wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to tell him; she wondered if it mattered to him at all.

“I can’t believe Sondra was stalking you, too.”

“I thought it was Nadine. They drive the same color car.”

Kate said, “It’s terrible, but I’m glad Sondra’s dead.”

“You’re in good company,” Abby said. “Even Mama is having a hard time.”

“I’m just so sorry about everything. I should have told you about seeing Nick. If I had—”

“No, let’s not go there.”

“But how can we not? You think I saw them together and I didn’t.”

“I know. Sondra told me she was in the courthouse, in the restroom, when you ran into Nick. She said it shook him up.”

“It should have.”

A pause perched as light and anxious as a tiny hunted bird.

Abby broke it. “Not all of it was a fantasy. He was with her, Kate, I mean, as in—”

“I know what you mean, chickie.” Kate’s voice was full; she felt Abby’s pain. She would hold Abby’s heart while it broke or until it mended or both, if she could.

“I finally talked to Hank the other day.”

“Did he know where Sondra had been since the flood?”

“Not really. He said she had friends in San Antonio and she had the cabin. Apparently, she didn’t say much about anything when she first came home, but she did see a psychiatrist, and he prescribed medication. Hank said she took it for a while, and it seemed to make her better. Clearer, at least, until she went off it. He said they talked in a way, were honest with each other, in a way they hadn’t been in years.”

“How nice for them.” Kate was darkly sarcastic.

“I know, but that’s when Sondra told Hank it was only twice that she and Nick were together. She said he wanted out after the second time. She told me the same thing, that Nick said it was a mistake.”

“You didn’t deserve any of this, Abby,” Kate said, “any more than I did.”

“Everyone says that, but I think maybe when a bad thing happens, it isn’t a matter of what we deserve.”

“What is it then?”

Abby thought for a moment.

“You aren’t ready for that discussion.”

Abby said she wasn’t.

Kate said she thought Abby knew anyway, and Abby smiled because sometimes the way they could read each other was as if they were two halves of the same battered heart.

Kate said, “I think what’s important to remember is that Nick was coming home. I think you should trust that. He made a terrible mistake, but he was getting his act together; he was coming home to you.”

As if Kate could see her, Abby shook her head. It was another place she couldn’t go yet, and maybe she never would be able to look at it, the wonder of what might have been. She said, “I’m so glad you called.”

“Me, too,” Kate answered, and the skip in her voice matched Abby’s.

“I never can stay mad at you.”

“You’re a better person than me, Abby. You’ve always been.”

“No,” Abby said. “Don’t burden me with that.”

“But you’re my idol,” Kate said, and the smile in her voice made Abby smile, too.

* * *

In the den later, Abby spread a bottom sheet over the sofa cushions, dropped her pillow into place and then, holding the coverlet to her chest, she stood looking down at the bed she was making for herself. Sleeping here was ridiculous. If she kept on, she would become permanently crooked. Still, even as she carried the spare bedclothes upstairs, her heart was anxious. She’d scarcely been inside the bedroom she and Nick had shared since last April, much less slept in their bed. She thought of Jake, that when he came home he would see she wasn’t on the sofa but asleep in her own room. He would be reassured, she thought. He would think things were finally getting back to normal, and imagining that kept her resolve in place.

The freshly changed sheets were cool as she slipped between them and turned on her side. Moonlit shadows fiddled over the walls. There were small noises, the familiar night noises, amplified in the silence. She heard the owl; the branch of the old bur oak scraped the bedroom window. Nick had wanted her to call someone to take down the tree, but Abby kept forgetting. She loved it, loved the sound of the branch gently tapping as if it were a dear friend seeking to come in. She tucked her hands beneath her cheek.

And felt his presence there, not inches from her. She felt Nick shift toward her, and in her memory, she was facing him. It had happened just that way the last time they had made love. It was the night he’d been so late coming home, Abby remembered, when he’d been upset about their finances and Lindsey’s sprained ankle. The same night he’d mentioned the crazy client, whom Abby now knew had been Sondra.

They had gone to bed, and once the light was out Nick had reached for her. He’d pressed his face into the hollow of her shoulder and whispered against her neck, “I’m sorry I’m such a bastard. You deserve better.”

She’d traced the line of his brow when he’d lifted his head. “You know you can talk to me?”

“Yes, but not now,” he’d said, and he’d lowered his mouth to hers, and his kiss had been long and slow and full of need. He’d teased a trail of kisses from her lips up to the corners of her eyes, down to her chin, from there to her collarbone. Levering up on one elbow, his gaze never moving from her face, he’d unbuttoned her oxford shirt, an old one of his that she wore. He’d slid her panties from her and Abby had opened herself to him, moaning softly from sheer relief and desire.

He’d been fully present with her then, the earlier tension between them forgotten, and they’d been together in that hot, sweet way they had always shared. We should talk about this. She remembered thinking that in a corner of her mind. She remembered thinking they couldn’t let the stuff of life, their work, finances, the children, get in the way of their commitment to each other.

We are the heart of the family, she had thought that night. Our love for each other is the heart.

Abby remembered wanting to say this to him, but she hadn’t. Instead, when he’d released her, when their breath had slowed, she had been so drowsy and content that she’d turned her back and curled into his embrace, settling herself into the cup of his lap.

After a long moment, he had said her name: “Abby?” and he had inflected it with such wistfulness and doubt, and when she’d answered, “Hmm?” he’d said, “Nothing,” and “I love you,” and she had thought it was enough.

She would have to live with that now. The memory of his wistfulness, his seeming regret, and her failure to pursue it, to find out the source of what was troubling him. She would have to learn to live with all of this. Live the mystery, the questions, and somehow it would have to be okay. But not all at once, that’s what her mother said.

And it was true, Abby thought, because tonight it was enough that she could lie here in her own bed and remember, and the pain wasn’t quite so awful.