He thought about it. “I guess, yeah. She’d have to be.”
“It would mean they’re fugitives, is that what you’re saying?” It sounded preposterous—it was preposterous. Still, Abby’s mind skipped past reason, seizing on the possibility. Thoughts crowded her brain: that she would immediately begin her search for Lindsey and never give up. If it took the rest of her life, she would find her daughter. But even as hope shimmered, a cooler sensibility prevailed, that she had no real idea what finding the jacket meant. Abby stowed her phone.
She had tossed the jacket into the backseat, and she felt its presence there, world-shattering, incendiary. Evidence at the very least of Nick’s infidelity and betrayal. But was it also evidence of embezzlement and abduction? Could he and Sondra have helped Adam steal the missing settlement money? Could Nick have taken their daughter, basically kidnapped her, and involved her in some horrible scheme? The questions careened around the walls of Abby’s brain. All of it and none of it seemed plausible.
Suppose Nick had taken Lindsey, where were they? Living it up with Sondra and Adam on some tropical island? Lindsey would never go along with that. Was Nick holding her prisoner?
Could he have involved himself in such a bizarre scheme, one that was so heartless and cruel? If something had happened to her daughter because of Nick, Abby thought, she would—
What? Kill him?
She stared out the window at a narrow ribbon of silver light on the southern horizon that was all that remained of the day. Her stomach growled, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten anything substantial since last night, other than the cheese and crackers she’d shared with Hank. But it was peculiar, wasn’t it? Vaguely sickening, how the body could go on no matter what, demanding food, sleep, a hot bath. Comfort. It was like a machine—
“Abby? Abby!”
She turned blankly toward Hank, who regarded her with some impatience “That’s your cell phone, isn’t it?”
The tinny chords of Ode to Joy came from her purse on the floorboard. Abby could see the Caller ID. Jake. Her heart fell, and she shrank against the car door, not wanting to answer, to have to confess where she was and the terrible possibility that had surfaced as a result. Why hadn’t she walked out on Hank while they were still in Houston, when she’d had the chance? Why had she started this to begin with?
Hank repeated her name. Abby retrieved her phone.
“Jake?” she said, “I’m in the Hill Country, but I’m on my way home now. Can you meet me there? We need to talk.”
“No, Mom! You aren’t going to believe this!”
“What? What’s wrong?”
Abby darted a glance at Hank and found him staring at her.
“They think they found the car, Mom! Some old man found your Cherokee.”
For one dizzying moment, the world stopped. Abby felt it recede. Even the air was gone. Her hand rose to her chest. “Where?” she managed to ask. “What old man?”
“A creek somewhere south of the Guadalupe. The guy was fishing.”
“Lindsey?” Abby pressed the back of her hand over her mouth, afraid of herself, that she would lose it.
“No one’s gotten close enough yet to see inside. The car’s jammed up in some rocks. The old guy wouldn’t have noticed except—”
“How did you find out?”
“Sheriff Henderson called me. He said you weren’t answering your phone.”
“I was—”
“I know. Gramma told me.”
Hank pulled over onto the highway shoulder.
“They found my car,” she told him.
His eyes widened; he said something Abby didn’t catch. Jake talked in her other ear. She couldn’t pay attention. Even sitting still was an effort. She wanted to open the car door and run. Anywhere. Just go. And the sense of her urgency mystified her. For seven months she had wanted nothing more than the truth; she had asked for it, begged to know it, but now, rather than confront it, she wanted nothing more than to run away from it. She thought of Nick’s jacket. If she threw it away, she would still have to tell Jake about finding it. If she lit it on fire, reduced it to cinders, he would have to know it had been located and where and what it might mean. How could she tell that to Jake? How would she frame in words what seemed unspeakable?
“Mom, listen, I’ll be at Aunt Kate’s in about an hour. Go there, okay? I talked to her. She knows what’s going on.”
“But I want to go where the Jeep is.”
“It’s dark. You’d never find it. Just go to Aunt Kate’s and wait for me.”
Abby agreed reluctantly and Jake started to break their connection, but she stopped him. “We’ll be all right, honey. Okay? No matter what happens, what we find out, we’ll be fine, do you understand?”
“Sure, Mom. You have to believe it, too.” He sounded bright and calm, and Abby knew he wanted to reassure her, to help her hold herself together, hold them together.
He wanted to preserve the very world she would have to dismantle, or so it seemed to her then, and dread coiled like a wire around her heart.
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 fucking 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, t
he 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.
Evidence of Life Page 22