“Oh, don’t say it!” Kate reached her hands toward Abby. “Don’t say I’m to blame. Nick was alone when I saw him. I swear it!”
A stunned silence grew cold and stiff, as if all that had ever connected them had died.
Abby turned to Jake. “Who else knows?
He shook his head. “No one.”
George said, “Abby, none of us is guilty of anything except trying to protect you. Maybe Jake wasn’t right. Maybe telling the truth would have been better, but we acted out of love for you and genuine concern.”
“But what is the truth, George? What do you know? Because I would be willing to bet that you still are not telling me everything.”
He sighed.
Kate went to the sink. She filled a glass with water, sipped it and set it down, and without looking at Abby, she said, “This is what I know, all I know: Nick was alone when I ran into him last winter. He told me he was there about property. If he had a woman with him, I didn’t see her. The only other thing I know is that when Dennis went to interview the gas station attendant, the kid thought he remembered Nick from a picture Dennis showed him. He remembered Lindsey getting the restroom key, and he also said Nick was with a woman and they seemed close. The kid thought the woman was—he thought she was the man’s wife or girlfriend.”
“So Hank was right.” Abby felt exultant.
George said, “The kid was seventeen. He was stressed. There were tons of people there that day all milling around because of the weather. I mean, it was all so iffy. It just didn’t seem right to talk about a bunch of maybes. Maybe it was Nick, maybe it was Sondra, maybe they were together.”
“Well, there’s no maybe about what Jake saw, or what Nick told him, is there? There’s no maybe about Lindsey’s phone call to me from the gas station or that she was deeply upset about something that was happening. Something to do with her daddy.”
A pause hung like old dust.
“None of us had all the pieces until today,” Kate said. “Even now, how can we be sure?”
“I’m so sorry, Mom.” Jake raked his hands over his head.
“This is why you’ve been avoiding me like the plague. How long were you going to keep it up, Jake?”
“I wanted to tell you. I just couldn’t figure out how. Then when Dennis called about finding the car, I asked him if there was, you know, a woman inside.”
It took a moment, but once Abby realized that Dennis had known the truth, too, the sense of her humiliation mushroomed. She felt light-headed. Dennis knew things about her. About Nick and her marriage. She’d spoken of her family as if it were sacred. She’d let Dennis see inside her. See her love for Nick, see into her most vulnerable, soft, tender places. And the whole time he must have been stacking up her words, her pretty fairy-tale speeches, her tears and her grief, against his knowledge of her husband’s betrayal. Dennis had assumed her frailty along with the rest of them, and he didn’t even know her.
Abby’s mouth felt full of chalk. She could use a glass of water herself, but she wasn’t asking these people for anything. “I look like an ass,” she said. “It’s a mystery how you’ve kept from laughing.”
“Nick’s the fool,” Kate said. “But honestly, Abby, would you have believed me or Dennis if we’d told you what the boy at the gas station said?”
“Whether I would believe you or not, whether I could handle it, that wasn’t for you to decide.”
“You’ve been through so much,” Kate said. “I couldn’t see adding to it. Even if Nick was up to something, he’s still gone along with whatever his reasons were for his behavior.”
“She’s right, Mom.”
Abby switched her glance to Jake. She was angry enough to kill. But whom? “I want to go home,” she said.
“Now?” Jake said.
“Yes,” she said. “Now.”
* * *
On the way home from the ranch Abby told Jake to stop at the sheriff’s office in Bandera.
“Dennis won’t be there,” Jake said. “It’s too late. He’s gone home by now.”
“I’ll take a chance,” she said. “You can wait in the car.”
“I won’t ask what you’re planning.”
“No,” Abby said. “Don’t.”
Dennis was on his way out of the building, and when he saw her, his face opened with such pleasure that Abby felt herself nearly come unhinged from her purpose.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” she asked.
He motioned her into a nearby office and closed the door. A desk and three filing cabinets nearly filled the tiny space. The only decoration was a row of black-framed certificates that hung in a crooked line on one wall.
Dennis offered Abby a seat.
“I’ll stand, Sheriff, thank you,” she said, and his eyes widened as if her formality surprised him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why didn’t you tell me what you learned from the attendant at the gas station?”
Dennis frowned.
“My husband was traveling with a woman last April. The gas station attendant told you that, but you didn’t tell me. Why?”
“You were under a lot of strain. Kate was worried about how much more you could stand, and, in any case, it was hearsay.”
“I’ve heard all that, but you’re the police. You’re supposed to report the facts, and you didn’t. You asked me a lot of questions, you came into my home, you got plenty of information out of me. You knew where I stood, how I felt about everything, and you let me go on thinking—believing—” That my life was real, that my marriage was solid. She wanted to say it, but if she did, she would lose her composure. She walked toward him, intending to move around him. He caught her arm. “Don’t,” she said, and he let her go, stepping aside.
“You didn’t deserve this,” he said.
“Which part?” she asked. “Being lied to or being kept in ignorance?”
Dennis didn’t answer.
She had nearly reached the exit when he said her name, and she stopped.
“You’re right,” he said. “You were entitled to the facts. I just couldn’t find a way to say them. I don’t think Jake could either,” he added.
She waited a moment and then walked on. She didn’t look back.
* * *
Jake and Abby didn’t speak until they reached the Houston city limits and then she gave Jake directions to Hank’s house where she’d left Nick’s car. Nick’s car that was hers now. She was his widow. Everything was hers. If he’d lived, she would be his ex-wife instead of his widow. To think that less than a year ago, she had thought their troubles centered on their finances, the length of Nick’s commute, all the upkeep on their property. She’d thought a move into town would fix their lives right up. It was laughable, heart-wrenching. He’d made such a fool of her. But if only she’d known, if she’d been told the truth about Nick and what he was doing, she would have kept Lindsey home with her that weekend. She would still have her daughter. Abby bit her teeth together to keep from crying out.
Jake pulled into Hank’s driveway behind the BMW, and Abby got out. “Hold on a second, Mom.” He fished around in the backseat and handed her Nick’s jacket through the open window. “Hank gave it to me this morning.”
Abby folded it over her arm.
“Will you be all right? Can you drive?” he asked.
She nodded and glanced toward Hank’s house that was dark except for a solitary lamp burning in one window. Her heart constricted. Caitlin’s beacon. She was still waiting for her mother. Dennis had promised they would search the area where Abby’s Jeep had been found for Sondra’s remains. He would do it because Abby had told him about Caitlin, her need for her mom to come home. He hadn’t commented when she’d mentioned Hank’s theory that Adam Sandoval might have been in the car, too, th
at he might also have died in the accident. That was a police matter; let them figure it out.
Abby bent her gaze to Jake’s. “Thanks for bringing me. Maybe you’ll come home for the weekend?”
“I’ll try.” He looked away and as quickly looked back. “I kept waiting to hear from him that he’d told you. He said he was going to. He promised me he would.”
“Is that why you didn’t go with them to the Hill Country? It wasn’t because you had to study, was it? You were angry at your dad.”
“I didn’t want to be around him.”
“Was Sondra invited?”
“No! I don’t know. That’s what I can’t figure out. If that was really her at the gas station, why was she with him? Dad wouldn’t have brought her along, not with Lindsey. Uncle George is right. He wouldn’t have done that, no way. He told me it was over, Mom. He swore it was.”
Abby shook her head. She was cold and too tired to think. She wanted to lie down.
“I wonder what happened to her. Seems like if she was in the car, she couldn’t have lived, could she?”
“I doubt it.”
Jake chewed his lip and contemplated the view through the windshield. Abby got out her car keys. Down the street, someone whistled. For their dog, she guessed.
“Dad didn’t take the settlement money, Mom. He wasn’t in on that; he wasn’t Adam’s partner. You know that, right? I mean, he was a bastard, but he wouldn’t steal from those kids.”
Abby thought about it. “I don’t want to believe it, Jake.” But she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure anymore who Nick had been, who they had been as a couple. She wondered if she even knew who she was, if she would ever trust herself again, and that was possibly the worst feeling in the world.
“Was Dad acting different? Were you guys, like, fighting?” Jake asked.
How did it happen? That’s what he wanted to know. How had his world, the one he believed in, with two parents who loved each other, come apart this way, seemingly without warning? “I think he was more troubled than we realized, in ways we didn’t understand,” Abby said. “He was unhappy, maybe. He didn’t talk to me, or I didn’t listen. I don’t know.” She smoothed the folds of Nick’s coat over her arm, absently, feeling sad and awkward, feeling tiny licks of anger heat her temples. Ask your father, she wanted to say. Ask that woman. Sondra. Abby didn’t want to think about it...the possibility that she had survived, while Abby’s own daughter had not. She did not want to live in a world where such a horrible injustice could be a reality.
“After the flood,” Jake said, “when I realized you didn’t know about her, I figured, why should you have to? Dad was dead. It was over.”
Abby didn’t respond.
“It is, Mom. It is over, right?”
Abby said, “I hope so,” but she wondered, if that was true, why did everything feel so unsettled?
* * *
She was turning into her driveway when her cell phone rang, and, thinking it was Jake or her mama checking to see if she’d made it home safely, Abby stopped to answer.
“Hey, I’m here,” she said, but instead of the warm affectionate response she’d anticipated, what greeted her was silence. Her heart froze. It’s not Lindsey, warned a voice in her head. It can’t be.
“Hello? Who’s there?” she demanded.
The silence was cut through by faint static, then a drift of words, something soft and singsong that sounded like, “Are you happy now?...Are you happy now?...Are you happy now?....”
“Who is this?” Abby demanded, but she realized the connection was severed, that she was talking to empty air. She brought the phone down, checked where the call was from, but the record gave her nothing. Out of Area, it read. She peered into the path of headlights. It wasn’t Lindsey. Of course it wasn’t. Common sense told her it wasn’t. Even if it had been Lindsey, she wouldn’t have asked such a question.
Abby’s impulse was to call Jake or her mother, but she didn’t act on it. She knew what they would tell her, that it was a prank, and in the end she would be sorry she had involved them.
The house was dark, and it filled her with foreboding to go inside, but she did. She even slept for a few hours on the sofa in the den. She didn’t bring Nick’s jacket inside until the next morning and it was when she was hanging it back up in the hall closet that she saw Lindsey’s pink-and-green striped hair ribbon, the one she’d tied at the end of her braid last April, lying on the closet floor.
Chapter 22
Abby ran the length of taffeta through her fingers. It was the same ribbon, wasn’t it? It was wrinkled as if it had been tied, then come loose and slipped off. Lindsey often lost her ribbons that way. But how had it come to be here, in the closet of all places? Abby parted the collection of jackets and sweaters; she fished through the assortment of shoes and boots on the floor. She didn’t know what she was searching for. She’d already done this once when she hunted for the checkbook that was in Nick’s jacket. If the ribbon had been here, she would have found it then, wouldn’t she?
The phone rang, the landline, and her head came up. Her heart hammered in her ears as she raced to the kitchen to answer it. But it was Joe, according to the Caller ID.
Still, she said hello, as if she had no idea who it was, and studied the ribbon in her hand.
They exchanged pleasantries, and then Joe said, “Abby, listen, there’s been a development, something I thought you should know, although I’m sure it’ll be all over the news shortly, if it isn’t already.”
Abby straightened. He was going to tell her Nick had done it; he’d stolen the money from those injured children. The sense of this snaked through her mind, vicious and cold. She closed her eyes.
“Adam Sandoval’s been found.”
“Dead?” Abby said and caught her lip because she wished it. She wanted it to be true. She couldn’t have said why.
“No, alive. He’s in jail, in Amsterdam. They didn’t like the look of his passport there when he went through customs, so they detained him. Then when they searched him, they found he was carrying nearly a quarter million in undeclared cash.”
“The money from the settlement.”
“Minus a few thousand, but, yeah, it’s mostly there. And it’s good, too, because eventually, it’ll come back into the fund to support those children. Nick’s winning that case, all his hard work, it won’t have been in vain after all, Abby.”
She pulled out the desk chair and sat, pressing her knuckles to her mouth.
“Abby? Did you hear me?”
She swallowed. “Yes, thank you, Joe. Thank you for letting me know.”
“No problem,” he said.
“Joe? Was Adam alone when he was arrested?”
“A woman was with him, his wife, I think.”
Or Sondra, Abby thought. Was it possible?
“Listen, we should get together soon. We’ll need to address the probate of Nick’s will and his equity share in the partnership. You’ll probably still want to consider working, but I think together with his life-insurance benefits, you’re going to be in a good position financially.” Joe paused.
He sounded so satisfied. Abby sensed he was waiting for her to voice her satisfaction, too, even her gratitude. It was as if what Nick had left was better than the man himself, as if he was worth more dead than alive. Abby toyed with the ribbon. Was it the one she had tied onto Lindsey’s braid? She held it up. She guessed it could as easily not be the one. She was going to have to watch herself, the tricks her mind might play.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” Joe said. “You’ll call if there’s anything I can do for you?”
Abby said she would; she thanked him again and hung up. She thought he probably knew about her trip with Hank into the Hill Country, why they’d gone, what they’d discovered, even though she hadn’t mentioned
the circumstances. Abby imagined Nina would have found out about all of it somehow. Maybe, Abby thought, she should ask Nina how Nick’s jacket had managed to make its way to Sondra’s cabin. Maybe Nina had the answer.
But what difference did it make? Whether Abby ever knew or didn’t? It wouldn’t bring Lindsey or Nick back; it wouldn’t make the house payment, either. Resolutely, Abby stowed Lindsey’s ribbon in a desk drawer. She would have to find a job, and soon, but she couldn’t call on Hap again. Chances were he’d forgive her, but only after she explained, and she was sick of that. She felt as if the entire world knew her business.
That night, lying on the sofa in the den, Abby thought of her new life, the one that she lived now without her daughter, without so much as the comfort and grace of her memories, because all of those were a total lie. Abby flipped onto her back. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe for the heat that came. She felt suffocated by it. She felt as if she had swallowed fire.
Everyone had said the worst was over, that time would soften her grief, but she didn’t feel grief. She felt hate. It pushed against the walls of her brain, huge and destructive. Flinging the cover to the floor, she got up, found the keys to Nick’s BMW and headed out to the freeway. The speedometer edged eighty, then eight-five. Now ninety. The light-haunted scenery blurred, and then all at once she let go of the steering wheel and let go of sense, too, and it was terrifying and exhilarating. She was shaking when she took control of the car again and steered it cautiously onto the road’s shoulder. She fought for breath and reason. Who was she trying to punish? Them, she thought. Nick and Sondra. But they were beyond her reach. At least Nick was. And if Sondra wasn’t?
Abby stared into the gritty path of headlights, unable to imagine what she would do if Sondra were to somehow be found alive. She wanted to go back in time. Inside her head she felt at war. She felt herself waiting for something else awful to happen.
Evidence of Life Page 24