Evidence of Life

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “Do you know the make and model?”

  “Ford Taurus, maybe? I don’t know cars very well.” Abby thought it was the same car Nadine Betts drove, though she couldn’t be sure. She hadn’t really paid attention, but now she was spooked. There was something about seeing that car, then finding the door unlocked...and those times when Nadine had followed her around, followed Jake around, when she’d called Louise, pestering them with her endless questions. And there had been the night, at the Riverbend Lodge, Abby had seen a dark blue sedan then, too, leaving the parking lot. She supposed it could all be a coincidence, but somehow she didn’t think so.

  Charlie said he didn’t know of anyone local who drove a Taurus. “You have someone in mind? Who’s giving you trouble, I mean?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” Abby made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Never mind. I’m sure it’s nothing.” She wondered what she was thinking, to bring up the reporter as if Nadine was—what? Stalking her? So desperate for a story she would break into Abby’s house to hunt for clues? Abby met Charlie’s gaze. “I’ll get locks when I go to the hardware store, if you’re sure you don’t mind installing them.”

  He nodded. “Just call me. Anytime.”

  She thanked him and squeezed his forearm and said she didn’t know what she’d do without him. Her gratitude was so deep she felt the pull of tears.

  “It’s what neighbors are for,” he said.

  “You need to let me pay you.”

  He grinned. “All right. I’d love a slice of your coconut cream pie then.”

  That made her laugh, made her happy. “It’s a deal,” she said and watched him go before turning back to the house. She stood outside the backdoor a moment, studying it. It worried her, finding the door open, the idea that some stranger had a key and had been inside the house. It wouldn’t hurt anything to change the locks, as Charlie suggested, but she couldn’t see calling the police. What would she tell them? That she couldn’t remember whether she’d shut the door tightly and locked it in the first place? That someone broke in for no apparent reason? They’d think she was a fool.

  Inside the house she swept the grit from the floor into the dustpan and flung it out the door. She went to the refrigerator and briskly gathered the old, desiccated class schedules and other scraps of her family’s life off the front of the refrigerator and put them in a desk drawer, then she pulled the fax from her pocket and, smoothing it, pinned it in their place.

  The handwriting was neat for a man, a precise series of even loops and firm strokes. My wife Sondra has been missing for nearly a year…. What did missing mean in this case? Kidnapped? Had someone abducted Hank Kilmer’s wife? Abby judged the script too neat to belong to a doctor or a lawyer. It might be the handwriting of a CPA or an architect. Someone who admired order, someone for whom control and precision were characteristic. A man with glasses and grooves of worry carved into his face. He would be thin, she thought, with hair as white as chalk.

  It would be pointless for her to call him, she thought. He would be looking for a new shoulder to cry on. They would meet for coffee or a glass of wine and speculate about why Nick would have written Sondra’s fax number inside a book of matches, and when that exercise ended in futility, they would go on to exchange stories about their missing mates. They would tell each other things they would never say to anyone else because they shared an understanding no one else could. Hank Kilmer would come to rely on Abby to help him keep useless hope alive.

  In hindsight, her actions would strike her as ridiculous, even appalling, that she could have thought so little of her own intuition. That she would simply accept the advice of her family and her friends and Dennis over the agitated voice of her own heart. But that was her problem; she was emotionally overwrought. Paranoid. She thought her closest friends, even her own son, were lying to her and that a reporter had broken into her house. Clearly she was certifiable and couldn’t separate reality from delusion. She was letting her feelings, her suspicion, override her good judgment, and if she ended up in a straitjacket, it would be her own fault.

  She filled the CD player with music: Pavarotti, Bocelli, the Righteous Brothers, Roy Orbison, turning it up so it would fill the house. She opened windows, heedless of the chill. Gathering cleaning supplies and rags in a bucket, Abby headed swiftly upstairs. She scoured the bathrooms, changed the sheets and dusted the children’s rooms. The thought that at some point something would have to be done with Lindsey and Nick’s belongings poked at her brain, but she finished in each room and left it without looking back.

  She was in the laundry room, considering whether she could salvage the moldy contents of the laundry basket, when the phone rang in the kitchen. It was her mother, sounding anxious.

  Abby felt awful. “Oh, Mama, I’m sorry. I keep doing this to you.”

  “Are you all right? What are you doing?”

  “I’m fine. I’m cleaning. I just finished upstairs.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “No, it’s dark.”

  “Abby, I’m not feeble. I still know how to drive in the dark.”

  “It’s just—” Abby stopped. She would not mention finding the back door open. It would only scare her mother, and the more Abby thought about it, the more she felt there was some logical explanation. “You don’t need to come,” she said. “I’m fine, really.”

  “You left Kate’s in a terrible hurry.”

  “She told you about the fax.” Abby closed her eyes. Maybe next Kate would take out an ad.

  “How important can it be when someone jots down a phone number inside a book of matches?”

  “You don’t think it means anything.”

  “Honey, I think if it were something important, a number Nick intended to use, he’d have written it someplace less casual.”

  Casual. Abby held the word in her mind. As in casual acquaintance? Casual affair? “Mama, did Kate tell you she saw Nick in Bandera last Christmas?”

  “Honey, I’m inclined to believe her when she says she didn’t remember.”

  Abby didn’t say anything.

  “He’d asked her to keep it secret, you know? And then it was the holidays. In all the rush, you can imagine, can’t you, that she might forget? It really wasn’t important until April.”

  “I guess.” Abby thought how she was always complaining she had too much to keep up with: Nick’s schedule, Jake’s schedule, Lindsey’s schedule. There were days when her brain felt like a basket stuffed full of everyone else’s business. There had been days when she’d forgotten things, important things. But that was BTF, before the flood. It would be different now. She would have more room, a bigger mental space to put everything in. Something else she’d wished for that she didn’t want.

  Her mother said, “Abby, sweet, I think a person can take any combination of circumstances and make them into something.”

  “I’m letting my imagination run away with me.” Here it was again, Abby thought, more proof she was losing it.

  “Your mind wants to fill in the blanks. It wants a logical explanation for this terrible accident that has happened, and there isn’t one.”

  Abby didn’t answer.

  “Kate thinks you’re angry at her.”

  “I’m not angry.” It was only partly a lie. “I just realized I needed to be here.”

  “Are you thinking of contacting that man?”

  “No. Even if there was a connection, what difference does it make now? If they’re dead, I mean, if Nick and Lindsey are dead?” Abby made herself say it. “I’m thinking it’s time I faced the fact that they’re gone, lost in one of those canyons or in the river or who knows?”

  “But you don’t have to face it alone and not all at once.”

  Abby sat at the table. She drew doodles in the dust. “I’ve been thinking, Mama, about teachin
g again.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea, honey.”

  “I’m going to call Hap Albright.” Hap was the principal and Abby’s former boss. She’d read that he was assistant superintendent of the district now.

  “He’s the one who thought so much of you, right?

  “Nick always thought it was too much. But he’s harmless.”

  “Well, it can’t hurt if someone in administration favors you a little.”

  “I just hope there’s an opening, that he’ll consider me, but if nothing else, maybe I can substitute somewhere.”

  “Working will help you, Abby.”

  “Distract me, you mean.”

  “A little distraction can be a good thing sometimes. It can get you through the worst of the ordeal. Then one day, you’ll wake up and the pain won’t be quite as sharp. You’ll find you’re breathing a little easier.”

  Abby glanced at the fax from Hank Kilmer pinned to the refrigerator. He had four months on her, but she didn’t think it had gotten any easier for him.

  * * *

  When she finished mopping the kitchen floor, her back ached and her sorrow seemed wedged permanently at the base of her throat again. But it was late, and she didn’t have the energy to cry. Standing at the kitchen sink, she made herself eat, tiny new peas from the can, applesauce from a batch she’d made last fall. She washed her few dishes and climbed the stairs. She changed the sheets on the bed she’d shared with Nick and hung fresh towels in their bathroom, but then she couldn’t stay there. She thought the sofa downstairs might become her permanent bed. Maybe she’d buy a pullout.

  She showered in Lindsey’s bathroom, and it was there, with the warm steam rising around her, that she cried.

  * * *

  It was near midnight when she wakened. She gathered the quilt around her and padded barefoot into the kitchen. In the dark, she went to the refrigerator, took down Hank Kilmer’s fax and wadding it into a ball, she tossed it into the kitchen wastebasket.

  There is a time when you have to be through with grieving, when you have to accept your fate. Pick up the threads of existence. Go on. There is a time when you have to let go of faith. When it’s just flat-out insane to keep on believing.

  Chapter 17

  The old man led his mule through the cedar brake toward the bank of the creek where he’d make camp for the night. The sound of the water laced with the breeze was welcome and familiar. If he was lucky, he’d have a fat catfish on the hook before dinner, and if he wasn’t, he’d eat the apples he’d filched off those trees a while back. They were his trees anyway, he reckoned. His own granddaddy had planted them. Didn’t mean squat to him if the land had new owners.

  Blue shambled behind him, head bobbing low, ready to be somewhere settled in for the night.

  When they reached the water’s edge, the man stood looking its length up and down, and he sighed. The cobble-filled channel was spring-fed and running at a good pace. Sometimes she flooded bad, like last spring. That flood had put water over damn near four counties, the worst in Hill Country history. Lives had been lost; some folks had never been found.

  “An’ we think we got problems, huh, Blue?” The old man dropped the mule’s reins and patted his neck absently.

  He lifted his battered ball cap and resettled it, walked a little way beside the water thinking how she’d never had a name that he ever heard of. Somehow that seemed a shame now. His granddaddy’d just called it “the crick”. He’d come haul him out of bed of a mornin’ and say, “Let’s go fishin’ down to the crick, kid.”

  Man, those had been the days. He’d learnt to swim here, too, and spent many a night camping on this very bank. This was his place, his water. He knew every inch of this land and this stream as if it was his own skin.

  He bent and picked up a flat pebble, examined the layers of reddish brown and soft yellow, and then side-armed it, watching it skip the water’s surface before it sank in a nest of ripples. The bank on the other side was a wall of limestone cut into cliffs that rose sharply from a litter of rock. Seemed to him as if the face was always shedding its skin, shooting off flakes, creating tables or bridges at its feet, the darker mystery of caves.

  Somehow the look of the rock face, the way it cracked and buckled, put the old man in mind of himself, how age was breaking him. Rock or flesh or dirt, in the end, time would have its way. In the end everything breaks. Everything dies.

  He squinted up at the sun perched in the high reach of the trees that capped the ridge to his left. Wouldn’t be long, time would have its way with the last of the daylight, too. He turned to Blue standing behind him and slid his bedroll and a leather satchel that held his gear off the mule’s back. Blue flicked his tail and gave a snort of pleasure, then ambled upstream a little way and a few yards inland to a small, protected cove where the grass grew thick and green.

  “That’s right, old Blue,” the man said. And he knew they were both happy.

  He gathered driftwood for a fire later, and pretty quick after that had his hook in the water and his back settled against a good-sized log. He dozed some, and when he came to, it was dark. He checked his line. The empty hook dangled. Some varmint had likely got his dinner, the old man thought. He rose stiffly and lit the fire, ate the apples and some of the cornbread he’d used for bait, and when Blue came begging, he fed him some of his meal, too.

  “Worse’n a old bitch dog,” he said, petting the long mottled gray nose.

  Before he turned in, he gathered a few more good-size pieces of driftwood. He’d be up again in the night. Couldn’t go ’til morning no more without needing to take a piss.

  * * *

  He woke with a start and for a moment had no idea what had wakened him or where he was. Then he heard the sound of the water running in the creek nearby and remembered. He turned his head until he caught sight of his campfire burned down to embers now, and there was Blue’s slumbering hulk asleep on the other side. Danged mule was twitching and snuffling as if he was having some kind of dream. Was it the mule’s racket that had wakened him?

  He turned his face up, staring into the black bowl of the sky, and caught a flicker of light from the corner of his eye.

  Flashlight?

  He levered up on one elbow and peered out over the water, unmoving, unsure whether to be afraid. But his heart wasn’t waiting around for orders. He could feel it thumping in his chest like the hind leg of a jackrabbit. There it was again, coming from up in one of them caves on the other side of the stream. Two bright beams, bigger than from a flashlight. More like car headlights. Seemed as if they were pushed back pretty far, wedged at a slant in the rocks. They kept blinking at regular intervals—on, then off—on, then off.

  Nearby, Blue stirred again, and the man glanced at him quick-like. He didn’t appear more addled or disturbed than before. But what the hell did a mule know?

  The man sat up cautiously and cocked his knees, staring intently across the narrow expanse of swiftly moving water. He scoured his eyes, pinched himself. The lights continued to blink. For real, not a dream—he was pinching himself, wasn’t he?

  But he couldn’t make out what they were attached to. Had to be a car. What else?

  Spaceship?

  He glanced at the sky. No sign of anything, not even the moon. It would be daylight soon. He looked back across the water. His mind said it had to be a car stuck up in that cliff face somehow. But how could that be? Wasn’t no way for a car to get over there. Not even a four-wheel drive could ride over them rocks. Wasn’t a road around even on this side of the crick, and besides, the cedar trees grew thicker than old Blue’s winter coat, never mind the boulders.

  The man studied the flickering lights. Was somebody signaling trouble? He’d been a radioman in the Navy, stationed at Pearl in WWII. What the hell was the sequence for SOS—three dashes, three dots? Or t
he other way? Shitfire if he could remember. He huddled in his bedroll. Wasn’t no way he could get over there to investigate anyway.

  * * *

  It was full light, and he was stretched out flat on his back inside his bedroll when he opened his eyes again. First thing in his mind was that he’d never got up to take a piss, then the next thing he remembered was the mystery lights. He sat up, rubbing his face, feeling the growth of stubble on his thin cheeks. He squinted across the water. Dream, he thought. Wasn’t nothing more than—

  The old man bent sharply forward. When Blue nudged him, asking for breakfast, he said, “Looky there, Blue. Somethin’s catching the sun. See it?”

  He scooped up his cap, shed his blankets and walked to the water’s edge. He studied the cliff face until his eyes teared. But he couldn’t make out anything but the pale yellow stone. It was his imagination, he told himself, turning away, rapidly blinking. His eyesight wasn’t too good anyway. He hooked his fingers into Blue’s scruffy mane and thought about his daughter, how mad she’d be if she found out he was here. Marcy’d say this wasn’t his place no more, that his home was with her. He was trespassing, and besides, hadn’t he told her he was camping up on the Guadalupe?

  The old man rubbed Blue’s neck. “Can you imagine what Marcy’d say if we was to tell her what we seen?”

  Blue brayed and showed his big yellow teeth.

  “Yeah, that’s right, you old shit bird. She’d laugh her ass off sure as anything.”

  * * *

  He fished till after lunch when the sun dropped behind the cliffs, then packed his gear. He hadn’t intended to leave, not for a couple more days anyway. He’d meant to stay as long as the weather was fine, as long as he wasn’t discovered and dragged off the place. But somehow that business last night had left him feeling spooked. There was no peace in the breeze, no music in the sound of the water, and he hadn’t caught a damned thing. He loaded his bedroll and satchel onto Blue’s back and headed into the trees.