Evidence of Life

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Her mind was still on Nick, her sense of his unhappiness. She was thinking how he used to help care for the horses. He used to ride nearly every day after work, too. Often he and Lindsey had ridden together. Now Abby couldn’t remember the last time he’d done anything with the horses other than complain about the feed and vet bills—which were enormous, Abby had to admit. He was always ranting about expenses, though. The way they lived wasn’t extravagant, but it wasn’t cheap either, what with taxes and upkeep on the house and property, never mind the kids and cars and college. Abby leaned on her rake. It had been her idea to move out here, to the Land of Nod, as her mother called it, and she’d never regretted it. But maybe Nick had. More than she realized. The commute alone was a nightmare, and traffic got heavier every year. On the occasions when she made the drive herself, she always wondered how he stood it.

  Abby led Miss Havisham and their other mare Delilah back into their stalls, filled their feed and water troughs and walked back to the house. At the foot of the porch stairs, she slipped out of her wellies, grabbing the porch rail to balance herself. She’d forgotten it was loose and sat down hard when it gave underneath her. Sat looking at nothing, thinking how Nick had once tended to every little chore on the place, but now his mind was elsewhere. She pushed herself up off the ground. Where was elsewhere?

  Later on, she switched on the television to the Weather Channel, but there was only a string of commercials and she cut the set off. She wouldn’t go near the TV again until Saturday when the flooding in the Hill Country would be approaching near-epic proportions. It would seem unbelievable to her that she hadn’t paid the slightest attention. She would wonder what she’d been thinking, doing...with her delightful alone time. She was sitting at the kitchen table poring over a seed catalogue when Lindsey called Saturday evening on her cell phone to say they were in Boerne.

  “Boerne?” Abby repeated. She went out the front door onto the wide porch and sat on the swing, nudging it into motion with her toe. Boerne was northwest of San Antonio. The campground, on the Guadalupe River, where they ordinarily went when they didn’t stay with Kate and George, was farther west.

  “What are you doing in Boerne?” Abby asked. “Is the weather bad?”

  “We spent last night in San Antonio. Dad says we’re taking the scenic route.”

  “The scenic route? What does that mean?” There was a pause, one so long that Abby had time to think: How weird. To think: Nick never takes the scenic route.

  “Mommy? I have to tell you—” Now Lindsey’s voice broke with tears or static. In all the awful months that followed, Abby would never be able to decide.

  “It’s about Daddy—” something-something— “I’m in the restroom—” something— “Shell station and—”

  “Lindsey, honey, you’re breaking up. Can you go outside? Is Daddy with you?”

  Her voice came again, but now it was as if she were talking through soap bubbles or sobbing.

  Abby’s heart stalled. “Lindsey! What’s wrong?” But there was no answer. Only static. Abby redialed Lindsey’s cell number and got her voice mail. She punched in the number again with the same result. She tried Nick’s cell phone and listened to his recorded voice suggest she leave her name and number and he’d get back to her. When? Where was he? Where was Lindsey?

  A Shell gas station. Was that what Lindsey had said? I have something to tell you...it’s about Daddy. Abby frowned at the cordless receiver, unsure now of what she’d heard. She put her hand to her stomach. It was too early to panic. Lindsey would call back or Nick would. As soon as they could get a signal.

  But the phone didn’t ring, not that whole long evening. She finally sat down at her computer and typed out an email in the hope that Nick would switch on his laptop. She kept the television tuned to the Weather Channel. At first tornadoes in Iowa took precedence, but once those played out, the rain in the Texas Hill Country rose to center stage. Warnings were issued for the increasingly hazardous driving conditions and the growing threat of a major flood in the area. The waters in the Guadalupe River and in countless other smaller but no less vulnerable rivers were reported to be flowing over their banks.

  Abby thought of calling Jake, but there was no point in worrying him needlessly, and surely it would be needless. She would hear something any minute. But she didn’t, and by ten-thirty, when she tried first Lindsey’s phone and then Nick’s, a canned voice informed her that the mailboxes were full. Of her messages, she thought, each one increasingly distraught. Who knew how many she’d left?

  She sent several more emails for all the good it did.

  Then at midnight when she called, she got nothing. Not even the recordings. She pressed the receiver hard to her ear and heard no sound. Dead air. It was as if she had dialed into a black hole. She would never be able to describe the sense of desolation that swept through her then. Even the canned voices had kept alive some sense of a connection, but that was gone now, and without it, Abby had no antidote for the panic that came, fiendishly, merrily, as if it had only been waiting its chance. It was a struggle to breathe. She couldn’t think.

  From rote, she dialed Kate’s number, her landline, got a busy signal. Not the usual, steady rhythm of sound, but the rapid-fire drill that meant the phone lines were down. Abby dropped the cordless onto the sofa, dropped her head into her hands.

  God...what should I do?

  She desperately wanted to call her mother in Houston, but Julia went to bed with the chickens and Abby couldn’t bear to waken her. Or Jake. For nothing. It had to be nothing. She was letting her imagination run away with her. Why do you always think something’s wrong, Abby? Nick’s admonition crept through her mind. She felt his palms on her cheeks, the trueness of his kiss when he’d pulled her close. I don’t want you to worry, he had said, and his tone had been so heartfelt and tender. He’d wanted to make up for before, when he’d been short with her. He hadn’t wanted to leave her mad. They’d promised early in their marriage they wouldn’t, and they’d tried to stick by it. Sometimes it had been hard, but every marriage, even one as good as hers and Nick’s, had hard times.

  Abby left the great room and went into the kitchen; she made toast and poured a glass of milk, but then both ended up in the sink. At some point she dozed on the sofa in the den and woke at dawn to the sound of rain pattering lightly on the windows. She sat up, licking her dry lips. For one blessed moment, as she loosened the pins from her chignon and ran her fingers through her hair, she didn’t remember, and then she did and the panic returned. It rushed out of her stomach and rose, burning, into her throat. She jerked up the cordless, dialed Lindsey’s and then Nick’s number. There wasn’t even a ring now. She listened, but there was only the rain scratching at the window as if it meant to come in. How she would come to hate it, the sound of rain.

  * * *

  Her mother answered on the second ring. “Abby? Honey, is everything all right?”

  “No, Mama.” Abby sucked in her breath, almost undone by her mother’s loving concern, and when she explained the situation her voice shook. “I’m going out there,” she said.

  “Abby, no!” Her mother’s protest was sharp to the point of vehemence, but then she paused, gathered herself—Abby could see her making the effort—and went on in her more customary moderate fashion. “I don’t imagine they’re letting people through. It might be best to wait until the weather clears, hmm?”

  “I can’t just sit here, Mama.”

  “You’ll have your cell phone?”

  “Yes. I’ll take the interstate to San Antonio where Lindsey said they spent Friday night, and if they aren’t there, I’ll drive to Boerne.”

  “And if they aren’t in Boerne?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll go on to Kate’s, I guess.”

  Her mother didn’t comment on her plan, that they both knew was pure folly. “Have you spoken to Jake?”
she asked.

  Abby said she hadn’t, that she didn’t want to worry him “I’ll call you, Mama, and Jake, too, if—when I find them.”

  * * *

  It was pouring by the time Abby left the house, but she didn’t encounter torrential rain until she was fifty miles east of San Antonio. That’s when she began to see more cars and trucks and even semis take the exit ramps or pull onto the interstate’s shoulders. But Abby did not pull over. She continued driving west on the main highway, the same way she was certain Nick would have gone. He would never take the scenic route; he was too impatient, and he certainly wouldn’t fool around in weather like this. Lindsey had to have said something else.

  Safer route? Easier route?

  Why had they spent Friday night in San Antonio? Why would Nick pack the camping gear if he had no intention of camping? The questions shot like bullets through Abby’s brain.

  It’s about Daddy....

  Had Nick gotten sick? Abby’s breath caught. Why hadn’t she thought to call the hospitals? But she was fairly certain she’d heard properly when Lindsey said they were at a gas station. A Shell gas station. They could have had a flat tire or engine trouble. An accident? They could be marooned somewhere and unable to call. They could be almost anywhere. Abby searched the roadsides praying to be led to them, to see them, until her eyes burned with the effort. Until the rain grew so heavy the edges of the pavement were lost in road fog.

  The lane markings disappeared. Her world was foreshortened to the few feet that were visible beyond the BMW’s hood. How foolish she was to be out here. She thought of her mother, left behind to worry. Of Jake and his utter disbelief if he could see her. She thought how the joke would be on her if Nick and Lindsey were home now and she was the one lost.

  By the time she reached Boerne, she was bent over the steering wheel, holding it in her white-knuckled grip. There were no other cars. She wanted to stop but couldn’t think how. How would she navigate off a highway she wasn’t sure existed? Every frame of reference was lost to the fog, the endless sheets of rain. Nothing stood out, not a building or a tree or the road’s weed-choked verge. She might have been airborne for all she knew. She had to go on, to reach Kate, the ranch, higher ground. Abby thought maybe Nick had done that. In fact she began to believe it, that when she arrived there, she would find him and Lindsey safe, but when Kate’s house finally came into view, her heart-soaring wave of anticipation fell almost immediately into confusion.

  There were so many vehicles parked along the roadsides and in Kate’s driveway, mostly pickup trucks with boats attached and SUVs. There were a few sheriffs’ patrol cars, too, and a couple of ambulances. And incongruously, a helicopter sitting in the north pasture. Abby couldn’t take her eyes off it or the dozens of people who were crowded onto Kate’s porch. Exhausted-looking official types dressed in all kinds of rain gear with their hoods pushed off their heads, drinking coffee, talking into cell phones. The sense of urgency was palpable even at a distance. The scene was surreal, like something from a disaster movie. Abby felt heavy now with dread. She slowed, hunting for her Cherokee, praying to catch sight of it.

  The BMW had barely come to a stop before Kate had the door open. “What are you doing here?” She hauled Abby from the driver’s seat and searched her face, both of them heedless of the falling rain.

  Abby shook her head, starting to cry from fear and exhaustion. She stammered that her family was missing. “You haven’t seen them?”

  “No. Oh, Abby.” Getting the sense of it, Kate folded Abby into her arms, held her tightly and released her. “Come on,” she said. “We’re getting soaked.”

  They went up the front walkway and onto the porch. Kate made introductions as they worked their way through the throng. Abby met neighbors, a lot of them in uniforms, and quickly learned that because the ranch was high and dry, and maintained near-full electrical power from a built-in generator system, it made an ideal base for rescue operations. She was reassured that evacuations and search efforts were ongoing, but then someone mentioned the dozens of people who were missing.

  Abby turned to the porch rail and braced herself.

  “But not Nick,” Kate said. “I’m sure he’s found shelter somewhere.” Kate brought Abby around, walked with her toward the kitchen door, keeping up a reassuring stream of chatter, and then George spotted them.

  It was almost comical the way his astonished glance bounced from Abby to Kate, and once she explained what Abby was doing there, he said, “She needs to talk to Dennis.”

  “Dennis Henderson is the Bandera County sheriff and a good friend of ours,” Kate told Abby.

  And then Dennis was there, and once Kate introduced them, he took charge, putting his hand under Abby’s elbow, guiding her into Kate’s kitchen where it was warm and quiet. He sat Abby down and assured her he would do all he could to help her locate her family. By then, she was shivering, and he brought her a towel and a cup of hot coffee that Kate had generously laced with brandy.

  Kate brought Abby a pair of dry tennis shoes and socks, and while she changed into them, the sheriff sat across from her and began asking a series of questions: Why did she think Nick and Lindsey had come this way? Did she know what route they’d taken? What was the reason for their trip? Could Abby describe what they were wearing when they left home?

  She managed to give him the physical descriptions, but when it came to the rest, her eyes teared. She didn’t know the answers. “I thought they were going to camp out, but they didn’t. They spent Friday night in San Antonio. I don’t know why.” She clamped her lips together, chin trembling. She was horrified. How could she not know?

  “Do you know what campground they were headed to?”

  Abby shook her head, miserably. “There are several that we’ve gone to before, but I don’t know where Nick made reservations. I didn’t ask. How could I not ask?”

  “It’s all right,” the sheriff said. He found a tissue and handed it to her.

  She blew her nose and described Lindsey’s phone call, saying she was almost positive Lindsey had said they were at a gas station. “A Shell gas station,” Abby said, “in Boerne.”

  Sheriff Henderson seemed pleased with that; he said it gave him a place to start, and he did go there a few days later, once the water receded, and he spoke to the gas station attendant, a high school kid who remembered Lindsey. She was really cute, the kid said. She asked for the restroom key, but he’d gotten busy and couldn’t recall whether she’d been the one to bring it back. But it was there, on its hook behind the cash register, so he guessed someone must have returned it. He told the sheriff he thought he saw the Jeep leave the station and head east on Highway 46. And like everyone else, he spoke of the rain. But then no one who was in the Hill Country would ever talk about that April weekend again and not mention the rain.

  In the end twenty-six people would lose their lives, many of them drowned, but many others were rescued. There was one story about a woman, a tourist, who folks heard had been taken out of the water near Bandera alive. Rescuers who treated her said it was a miracle she survived, that her injuries weren’t more severe, then somehow, they lost track of her. No one seemed to know what became of her. Some began to wonder if she was real or the stuff of legend, one of those urban myths, but many continued to tell the story and to believe in it for the hope it brought them.

  * * *

  When Abby finally reached Jake, she had to grope for the words to explain, and once she found them, his reaction struck her as odd. Something in the way he said, “Oh, God,” made her think for just a moment that he would say he’d known something awful was going to happen. But he didn’t. “When did you last hear from them?” he asked.

  Abby told him about Lindsey’s call and what she thought Lindsey had said and her doubts about it, and her voice cracked.

  “It’s okay, Mom, I’m on my way. We’ll find
them.”

  Abby said, “No, Jake,” and paused. Her eyes welled with tears at how calm he was, how he took such care to reassure her—as if he were the parent. “You can’t get through,” she said when she recovered her voice. “All the roads are washed out. Anyway, you have finals.”

  “I’m coming, Mom.”

  The line went dead in her hand. Phone service was still unreliable. She looked at Kate.

  “What?”

  “He says he’s coming. What if he gets lost, too?” The tears Abby had so far contained spilled over now. “Oh, God, Katie. Where are they?”

  * * *

  It was after nine o’clock on the night of Abby’s arrival at the ranch, and she was on the porch alone when a woman wearing a yellow rain slicker approached her. The woman’s blond hair was wet and plastered to her forehead and cheeks; she looked exhausted. She looked to Abby like one of the rescue workers, and when she asked if Abby was Mrs. Bennett, the wife of Nicholas Bennett, the attorney from Houston who was missing, Abby nodded and braced herself to hear the worst.

  The woman gave her name, Nadine Betts, and said she was a reporter. She gave the call letters of a local television station, too, but Abby didn’t catch them. She was terrified of what the reporter would say next.

  “Your husband and daughter weren’t out here camping, were they?”

  Abby could only stare.

  The woman inclined her head in a conspiratorial manner. “Look, it’s just you and me here, okay? You can talk to me. You’re meeting them later, right? Then at some point, your son will join you.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Come on. You must realize how it looks, Mrs. Bennett,” the reporter insisted. “Your husband goes missing within days of Adam Sandoval jumping bail?”