She nodded. Was he telling her or asking her? She didn’t know that either.
He left her then, and she watched him thread his way into the woods until he was lost to her view, and then, only a moment later, she flinched when a single shot rang out.
* * *
For dinner that evening, George grilled salmon; Kate made scalloped potatoes, and she and Abby steamed fresh asparagus and tossed a salad. While they ate, Abby chattered about her day, ignoring the voice in her head that said she wasn’t entitled to have a good day, a relatively happy and peaceful day. She told the story about the doe and her fawn, becoming caught up in it. She assumed Kate and George would have some response when she finished, but neither of them said a word. They didn’t even look at her.
Kate stacked the dirty plates and took them to the sink.
Abby looked from her to George, uncertain, a bit on edge. “Dennis brought the fawn home.” She carried the bowl of leftover scalloped potatoes to the counter. “He’s going to hand feed it until it’s old enough to care for itself.”
Now George smiled. “He’s always rescuing something, isn’t he, Kate?”
But she didn’t answer, and the look she shot George would have frozen hell.
Abby ducked her head. Clearly they’d been arguing, and she wondered about the cause, hoping it wasn’t her.
George found a container for Abby to stow the leftover potatoes in and said he was going to light a fire in the outdoor fireplace.
“What is up with you two?” Abby asked as soon as he was gone. “I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but I’m worried it’s me, that I’m in the way here.”
Kate rinsed the plates, started in on the silverware. Her back was to Abby, and she kept it that way.
Abby felt a frisson of unease loosen along her spine. “Kate? Tell me.”
She shut off the water, picked up a kitchen towel and turned to Abby, looking anxious, winding the towel around her hands. “You’re going to be so furious with me. George is already pissed. No way I go with this is right, but you have to know.”
“Know what?” Abby’s unease flared now into full-blown panic.
“I should have told you when I first remembered, but George said it didn’t mean anything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw Nick last December in town, the week before Christmas.”
“You saw—what are you saying, Kate?”
“I’m sorry, I should have told you before now, but I honestly didn’t remember until we—until George and I started talking about the property taxes for this year. That’s what I was doing when I saw Nick last year. I was paying our taxes, and I came out of the courthouse and he was just there, walking up the sidewalk. I did a double take. He said he was in town to do a title search on some land. I think he mentioned a client, but I’m not sure.” Kate’s gaze was distraught, pleading. “I was so surprised, I didn’t pay close attention. I’m sorry.”
“He mentioned a client? Was he with someone?”
“I didn’t see anyone else. I asked about you, why you didn’t come, and he said it was sort of a secret his being there. He said the land he’d looked at was going for a song, and he was thinking of buying it as a surprise for you. He asked me not to tell you. I think that’s part of why I lost track of it, because I had it in my head I shouldn’t say anything. I sort of made myself forget, you know, because it would fall out of my mouth before I could stop it, and I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”
“But when the flood came, when he disappeared—it’s hard to believe you didn’t remember then.”
“Well, I didn’t, and I am telling you now, even though George is dead set against it. He thinks telling you is only pouring gasoline on the fire.”
“What fire?”
Kate turned away. She wiped the countertop.
“Come on, Kate. This is you and me here.”
“It’s just, you’re having such a hard time getting past it, Abby. I mean, you have all these—I don’t know—suspicions or something as if you can’t— You don’t want to accept the obvious, and my telling you about seeing Nick, well, George says it’ll just keep your mind racing.”
“My mind is not racing, Katie.” Abby regretted ever sharing her doubts with Kate. She ought to have known better.
A difficult silence grew.
Abby broke it. “Did Nick stay here with you and George?”
“Oh, God, no!”
Abby’s eyes widened. “Well, I know he isn’t your favorite person, but I always thought he was as welcome here as I am.”
“Of course he is. That’s not what I meant.” Kate took a moment.
And Abby thought she could deny it all she liked, but the truth was Kate had never cared for Nick. “He’s not your type,” she’d said soon after they met.
Kate found Abby’s gaze. “I’d surely have remembered it if he’d come out here, if he’d actually stayed with us. That’s what I meant. And I did say something to him about it, but he said he wasn’t spending the night. I thought it was odd that he would make such a long drive in one day, but I assumed he was going home, that you were expecting him.”
Abby looked at her shoes. Had she been? Had she even known where he was?
Kate pulled a tray and a big thermos out of a cabinet. She poured coffee into the thermos, set it on the tray, added a pitcher filled with cream, a sugar bowl, spoons and three mugs. She disappeared in the direction of the great room and returned bearing a decanter filled with amber liquid. “Grand Marnier,” she said. “It’s cold outside. We can use a shot.”
Abby held her gaze. “Looking at land can’t be the reason Nick was here.”
Kate picked up the tray. “Can we finish this conversation later? As you said, it doesn’t involve George, and I don’t want him overhearing. He’s mad enough at me as it is.”
“No! Kate! For God’s sake, my family is missing. No one knows where they are, and now you’re telling me you saw Nick in Bandera last December? Why would he be there? He wasn’t buying land. Even at the price of a song, we couldn’t afford it.”
“All right. All right.” Kate turned sharply.
Abby steadied the thermos, the cream pitcher.
They were both startled when George came through the back door. “Can you bring another cup? Dennis is here.”
Abby stepped back, putting her fingertips to her temples, running them up to her chignon, pushing at the pins there. She followed Kate and George outside; she couldn’t think of a plausible reason not to, and had it not been for Dennis’s presence, there would have been hard words said. Abby could feel them heating her teeth. She thought even Dennis was aware of the friction because he immediately launched into a funny story about a cat rescue call he’d had in the neighborhood earlier in the week.
“He’s talking about May Dean Hennesey. She lives down the way. She’s always calling 911.” Kate was explaining for Abby’s benefit, to distract her. Abby could feel Kate’s glance, the weight of her distress. But Abby would not relent, not this time.
George said, “May Dean’s got the hot pants for Dennis. She runs the cat up the tree so she can get him over to her house.”
“She’s eighty-one.” Dennis’s half-sheepish protest made Abby smile in spite of herself. He said, “The worst thing was that after I got the cat down, I had to go inside and eat her tuna casserole for lunch.”
Kate laughed. “May Dean’s tuna casserole is the biggest joke in this county.”
Abby didn’t laugh; she sipped her coffee. She wanted so badly to turn to Kate and say she didn’t give a damn about May Dean whoever and her pathetic tuna casserole. She wanted to say: How dare you keep such a secret? Abby didn’t believe that Nick had come to Bandera to buy land. In December, Kate had said, the week before Christmas. What was going on then?
Abby tried to think. Jake would have been coming home from college. She remembered telling Lindsey they’d wait for him to get their tree.
Their last tree. Their last Christmas as a family. She remembered decorating that tree, she and the kids had done it together on the Friday evening after Jake arrived.
And Nick hadn’t been there. Abby remembered now he’d gone to Dallas that weekend to take care of some legal business for Louise, something to do with her estate. At least that’s what he’d told Abby he was doing. He and Louise had an appointment to see their family attorney and when they finished, Nick brought Louise home for the holiday. She’d spent the week of Christmas with them and nearly driven all four of them insane. How could he have been in Bandera unless he’d driven there first and then gone up to Dallas? And even so, Nick would never have made such a huge decision without consulting her. He would have insisted they do research. They would have looked at dozens of properties, talked to any number of Realtors.
But there was an even more compelling reason why the whole thing was impossible: Helix Belle. Those ridiculous allegations against Nick had been made only weeks before the holidays. He’d been in such a terrible mood, Abby had been afraid Christmas would be ruined. Certainly he’d been in no frame of mind to look at land, much less plan a surprise around buying it.
Abby let her gaze drift. Everything led back to that time, the trouble with Helix Belle. She remembered after he was cleared, Nick said it didn’t matter, that there were always going to be people who didn’t get the message, who would feel hostile and angry at him, who would hate him. What people? Why would they feel that way? She didn’t know because she hadn’t asked. Instead, after repeated attempts to buoy his mood, she’d left him alone. She had assumed he’d come out of it, whatever it was—a funk, a bad patch. Everyone had them. Every marriage had them. Now she wondered what she’d been thinking.
“I hate these stupid, jackass, gun-toting yahoos. Most of ’em are from the city and don’t know shit about hunting. Pardon my French, Abby.”
She blinked in George’s direction, momentarily blank. “Oh, the doe. You’re talking about the doe we found this afternoon.”
“I’m really sorry you got dragged into it,” Dennis said.
“I’m sorry you had to put her down,” Abby told him.
Kate went inside and returned with more coffee. George put another log on the fire. Conversation lagged, and in the lull, other noises became audible, small scurrying sounds, the night-doings of animals. Far below, at the foot of the slope, Abby could hear the lake water sliding against the shore. The sense of peace was pervasive, and she wanted it, wanted so badly to yield to it, but what right did she have? Everyone wanted her to resume her life. To make plans for Thanksgiving dinner, next summer’s garden. But it was wrong. Disloyal. As if she were giving up on her family, willing to walk on and forget them. Willing not to know the truth.
Abby turned to Dennis. “Kate ran into Nick in Bandera outside the courthouse last December when I had no idea he was there.”
“You told her? I thought we agreed you wouldn’t.” George sounded every bit as pissed at Kate as she had told Abby he was.
“I had a right to know, George,” Abby said.
“I told you she did,” Kate insisted to her husband.
No one spoke, and when George got up and said he was turning in, Kate stood up, too.
“I don’t know what good it does you,” George said, not unkindly, when he paused beside Abby’s chair.
“I’m just confused about why he was there, what he was doing,” Abby said.
“That’s what I mean.” George squeezed her shoulder. “It only puts fuel on the fire, causes you to ask more questions when what you need to do is to let go, Abby. You need closure. You need to be able to get on with your life.”
“Well, maybe she can’t, George,” Kate said following him into the house. “I mean, can you imagine how hard it is to live with—”
The door closed behind them severing the rest of Kate’s argument.
“They almost never fight,” Abby said.
“I don’t think they’re fighting so much as trying to decide the best way they can help you.” Dennis settled an ankle atop his opposite knee.
“Kate said Nick was here to buy land. I don’t believe it, but I don’t know what else would have brought him here.”
“You don’t believe that’s what he told her or—”
“Could we find out? Would there be a record of what he did at the courthouse?”
“Are you sure he went inside? You said Kate saw him outside.”
“But we could still ask, couldn’t we? You, your deputies, they could—”
“Abby,” Dennis said her name gently, so gently she winced. She knew what was coming. “I know it must be hell having so many unanswered questions about what happened to your family and why, but please trust me when I say we have looked very carefully into your husband’s and daughter’s disappearance, we have gone over every detail with a fine-tooth comb, and there’s nothing to indicate anything mysterious or criminal happened other than what is evident on the surface.”
Abby felt Dennis’s concern. She waited a bit, and when she thought she could speak without breaking into tears, she said, “I wish it were ten years from now.” And then she wondered, why ten years? Did she think she would recover by then? She said, “Kate knows more than she’s telling.”
“Okay.” Dennis went along. “What makes you say that?”
Abby shook her head. She didn’t want to tell Dennis about Baylor Gates, the man who had broken her friendship with Kate years ago. But that didn’t stop the memory from rattling around in her brain, from warning her that friends could be faithless. Friends could betray you. “She thinks she’s protecting me,” Abby answered. “But I wish she wouldn’t. I wish everyone would stop doing that and tell me the truth.”
But maybe that was the problem, Abby thought later as she was falling asleep. She was too caught up in waiting for someone to come to her with the answers. Maybe her plan should be to find them out herself. She could talk to the gas station attendant in Boerne, for instance. She could try and find Adam Sandoval’s wife. Abby knew Sherry Sandoval, not well. They’d met through their husbands; the four of them had had dinner once or twice years ago.
Abby was up early the next morning. She helped Kate make breakfast, and she was loading the dishwasher when Kate said she needed to go to the grocery store.
“Come with me. Leave the dishes. You’ve done enough slaving.”
Abby straightened.
“You’re still mad.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused between you and George.”
“You haven’t caused any trouble, Abby. George’ll get over it.”
Abby didn’t answer.
Kate sighed. “Look, I really did forget about seeing Nick last winter. Honestly. You know how terrible my memory is.”
Abby met Kate’s glance. It sounded like an excuse, but Abby conceded, saying, “Right, whatever. It’s fine,” because she didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to blow up their friendship. The time for that was past. She couldn’t handle another loss anyway. She said, “I want to drive into Boerne.”
“What for?”
“I want to talk to the kid at the gas station myself.”
Kate groaned.
“I know. It’s probably dumb, but maybe seeing me, he’ll remember something.”
Kate didn’t agree. Abby could see it in her eyes. “You go on to the store. I’ll go to Boerne. I might pop on down to San Antonio, too. It’s not far. I can be back by dinnertime.”
“San Antonio?”
“Adam Sandoval lives there, or he did until he jumped bail. I want to talk to his wife.”
“Abby, this is crazy! Do yo
u even know where she lives? Weren’t they divorced?”
“That’s what Nick said, but—” Abby shrugged. She had no idea what to believe or whom, not anymore.
Kate sighed. “Well, if I can’t talk you out of it, then I’m going with you. At least we can shop for groceries at Whole Foods in San Antonio.”
* * *
It was easy enough to locate the Sandoval residence. Abby drove, and Kate read off the directions she’d pulled from Google. Abby hoped they wouldn’t be wasting their time here the way they had at the Shell station in Boerne. The boy Dennis had interviewed no longer worked there; he had moved to Georgia a few months after the flood with his family. Abby had been disappointed, but when she’d looked at Kate, she could have sworn Kate had looked relieved.
“Slow down,” Kate said. “It’s got to be on this block somewhere. There!” She gestured at a ranch-style home, dark brown brick with cream-colored trim on an oversized lot. The house was low-slung, rambling, yet somehow sharply urban in its design.
Abby pulled into the driveway. “It looks deserted,” she said, and she wasn’t sure why she had that impression. The grass was cut, the shrubbery was trimmed. There was no clutter of newspapers crowding the front door.
“What’s the plan?” Kate asked. “Do we just go up and knock and then what? I left my religious literature at home.”
Abby made a face. “Ha-ha,” she said.
They rang the front door bell and listened to it echo through the empty rooms. Abby walked back down the porch steps. “I’m going to look in the backyard.”
“Abby,” Kate protested, “I don’t think—”
“Yoo-hoo!” a woman called, crossing the street toward Abby and Kate. “Are you reporters or police?” she asked as she got closer.
“Friends,” Abby said.
“Avon calling,” Kate said at the same time, and Abby gave her a look.
“Well,” the woman said, touching her tightly permed gray hair, “if you’re looking for the Sandovals, they’re gone.”
“I’m an old friend of Sherry’s,” Abby said quickly. “We were in school together, but we’ve lost touch. I’ve just heard of all her difficulties. The divorce must have been so hard for her. I wanted to stop by, see if there was anything I could do to help.”
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