Evidence of Life

Chapter 5



Ordinarily Abby loved coming home, especially in the spring. Every curve of asphalt that led to the house was lavishly dressed in frilled masses of azaleas and camellias under a higher canopy of dogwood and redbud trees. There were drifts of daffodils, too, mixed with oxalis and wild sweet violets. She and Nick had planned the approach to the house deliberately in a way that would cause a driver to slow and take time to admire the view, but turning onto her street now, her stomach was in knots even as her head filled with ruthless, foolish hope.

But the moment she caught sight of the driveway, her heart collapsed into despair. It was a mess, buried under layers of debris, the obvious effects of a storm. She went slowly toward the house, wincing at the sound as the tires crunched over downed thickets of leaf-clotted limbs. Who was going to clean it up? Who was here but her? And what about the rest of it? There were three acres to mind, plus the house, plus the horses and the barn.

Abby set her foot on the brake. She studied the house, noting the pale square of light that glowed from the dining room, and above that, on the second floor, the window that looked into her and Nick’s bedroom was cracked open. She didn’t recall leaving a light on or a window open when she’d left for the Hill Country, but she must have. No one else had been here since the flood. Not even Jake. When she parked around back and got out, a horse nickered softly. Miss Havisham? Abby’s throat closed. She wanted to leave but pushed herself across the driveway toward the back porch, noting the loosened handrail lying where she’d left it on the steps and her Wellies, caked with manure, sitting in the corner where she’d discarded them. She opened the door, and the acrid stench of mildew hit her—from the load of jeans she’d tossed into the washer on Saturday in the half hour before she’d sat down to look at the seed catalogue. In the waning moments of her ordinary life.

The phone rang, breaking the silence, startling her, and she ran to answer it, grabbing it up as if it were her lifeline. “Hello!?”

“Abby?”

“Katie!” Of course it wasn’t Lindsey or Nick.

“Are you okay? Is it okay, being there?”

“It’s weird.”

“Weird, how?”

Abby looked around, unsure how to answer. She passed her glance over the familiar surroundings that no longer felt familiar, that somehow seemed to accuse her: Lindsey’s basketball game schedule and Jake’s class schedule pinned to the refrigerator, the dish towel hanging askew on the oven door handle. Her dishes in the sink, the seed catalogue open on the table. She looked at the Texas Highways calendar over her desk. The picture was of bluebonnets, the month showing was April.

Last month. BTF, she thought.

“Abby?” Kate prompted.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” She hugged herself, suppressing a shiver.

“Louise called here looking for you. She said you aren’t answering your cell.”

“She keeps pressing me about having a memorial service.” Abby let her fingertips fall onto the pages of her notebook open on the desktop, where she sometimes wrote her to-do list, or her thoughts, or perhaps a bit of silly poetry. There was a line written there from last month: The first bluebonnets have opened, she had jotted. The ground under the oak trees in back is saturated in blue. A pool of blue.

“Abby?”

“She thinks I’m not handling the situation properly, that I’m not facing facts.” Abby closed the notebook.

“You need time, that’s all. Listen, I had to tell her you were on your way home.”

“Well, she was bound to know sooner or later.”

“Just so you know, she told me if you don’t answer her calls pretty soon, she’s coming there.”

Abby closed her eyes and thought how calamity changed everything, how it shifted an entire landscape, a whole solar system that had once been orderly and well-loved, into something that was dark and cold and even sinister. And she realized she was angry about this, and the anger was foreign to her and it filled her with foreboding.

“Abby? I’m here if you need me. You call me day or night. I don’t care what time it is.”

“Okay,” Abby said. “Thank you,” she added and clenched her jaw to stop the wretched tears.

“Remember to eat.”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“I don’t want to let you go, chickie.” Kate sounded forlorn.

“Well, you have to. I have mildewy jeans in the washer and I’m going to pass out from the smell.”

“Vinegar,” Kate said. “Wash them in vinegar and then hang them in the sun to dry.”

The sun, Abby thought. She hated the sun almost as much as she hated the rain.

But she washed the jeans using vinegar as Kate instructed and hung them outside to dry. She called Charlie next door and thanked him for tending the horses and mowing the grass. She checked on her mother. There was more of everything she could have done, but she couldn’t focus, couldn’t organize herself, couldn’t think of anything other than Nick and Lindsey. That they weren’t home, with her. How could it be? Her bones, her teeth, the sockets of her eyes ached with her need for them, her need to know they were safe.

The following afternoon she went upstairs intending to tidy up, gather the rest of the laundry, but then she didn’t get any farther than the doorway of Lindsey’s bedroom. Her pink-and-white eyelet bedroom. Too pink, Lindsey had said not long ago. She had wanted to paint it. Yellow? Abby seemed to recall something about yellow. And sunflowers; Lindsey had mentioned sunflowers, but when she’d asked her dad, he had said they didn’t have money to redecorate a room she’d be leaving in just a couple of years when she went off to college. Abby had been surprised. Nick almost never said no to Lindsey. He was easier on her than on Jake. Abby had worried about it. It had been a sore subject between her and Nick, one they had argued about on a regular basis.

It seemed to Abby now, in retrospect, that they had argued more frequently in the weeks leading up to the flood. There had been that night in March or maybe early April...he’d had a dinner meeting in Houston with a client and he’d come home late, been wound up and irritable. She’d been in the laundry room folding a load of clothes from the dryer, and he’d come to the doorway to greet her. She saw him there in her mind’s eye, staring in at her, gripping his briefcase, looking rumpled and worn out in his suit, tie hanging askew.

“What’s wrong?” It had been the first thing out of her mouth. But what other question do you ask when your husband comes home from work looking wrecked?

“Nothing,” he’d said. Abby remembered his kiss, dry as an afterthought.

She should have let it go; instead she’d made the mistake of saying it was the third night in a week he’d missed dinner. She hadn’t meant anything other than she missed him, missed sitting down to dinner together, but he’d treated it like an attack.

“Do you think I like working my ass off?” he’d demanded. “How else do you think we’re going to pay for all of this?” He’d gone on, enumerating their expenses, lumping in the prospect of Lindsey’s college tuition.

“She could get a scholarship to play basketball somewhere. Everyone seems to think she’ll only get better,” Abby had said, following him into their bathroom.

He had yanked off his tie.

Abby leaned against the door frame of Lindsey’s bedroom now, seeing it, the way Nick had yanked his tie as if it were a noose around his neck. She remembered the sinking feeling it had given her. He’d looked so tired that night. So—defeated. The word rose in her mind. The way he’d looked had made her want to go to him and say, Please, can we drop this? Can we just go to bed? Just lie down and hold each other? But she hadn’t said anything. She didn’t know why. She remembered that she’d finished cleaning her face, gone to the wastebasket, dropped in the used cotton pad and paused there, hardly listening to the rest of Nick’s rant, somehow losing herself in a dream of smoothing the soft skin beneath his eyes, trailing her fingertips over his lips, watching his mouth curl in that slow, sweet smile.

She’d been thinking of the dimple in his left cheek when he’d said her name—

“Abby!”

She’d turned to meet his gaze in the mirror.

“Did you hear me?” He’d sounded so annoyed.

No, she’d wanted to say.

“I said you can’t count on Lindsey getting a scholarship. They’re not even out of preseason this year and she’s already sprained her ankle.”

“Slightly. It’s not a bad injury.”

“This time. But the rest of those girls are gorillas compared to her. Look at Samantha.” Nick had brought up Lindsey’s best friend. “Twenty pounds overweight, at least. She’s a hog.”

“Nicholas! That’s a terrible thing to say.”

He’d brushed his teeth, wiped his face with a towel.

“What is it with you?” she’d asked, and when he’d answered, “Nothing,” when he’d said, “Work,” or whatever excuse he’d offered, Abby had accepted it and his apology. Because he had apologized, she remembered that now, too. He’d embraced her and balanced his chin on the crown of her head. She was just the right height for it. She used to tease him that she wasn’t a chin rest. But not that night. That night he’d been in a mood.

“It’s my job to take care of this family,” he had said and stopped. Even his heart beneath Abby’s ear had seemed to stop, and when she’d looked up at him, when she’d asked, “What is it?” he’d said he didn’t know how to explain it. He’d said, “I’ve made mistakes.”

“Everyone has,” she’d said.

“Yeah, but— Look, there’s this woman, a sort of client, former client, I should say. She thinks I mishandled her interests in some real-estate dealings. She’s made some threats.”

“Threats?”

He’d shaken his head, looking chagrined. “Never mind. I don’t know why I brought it up. She’s just some nutcase. It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure? You sound worried.”

“Nah.” He’d bent to kiss her, then pulling her close, he’d rested his chin atop her head again. “I mean, yeah, I do worry sometimes. What if I’m not around when you or Lindsey or Jake needs something?”

Abby had been unnerved by that. There’d been an underscore of disquiet in his tone. Or was she remembering it that way because she was desperate for an explanation? Her mind seemed full of tricks. What had she said in response? Something like, “Of course you’ll be around,” or, “You’re just exhausted.” Or maybe she’d said, “You’ll work it out.” It would have been something stupid like that. What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she pushed him, demanded he give her the details, the woman’s name at least? But worse: Why hadn’t Nick confided in her? Why had he put her off?

Abby pressed her fingertips to her eyes, swept with the hard longing to have that time back. It seemed somehow vital that she understand it. She had the sense that Nick had been trying to tell her something. Warn her? Was she making too much of it now? Should she mention the incident to Sheriff Henderson after all? But suppose she was the nutcase?

There were so many questions, too many questions.

Wheeling abruptly, she went downstairs to the kitchen, found Samantha’s telephone number, and before she could think better of it, she dialed. It was something she could do, a concrete step she could take, but when Samantha answered and fell into an immediate silence, Abby realized Sam was steeling herself to hear something awful, and she rushed to reassure her.

“You didn’t find them?” Sam asked, and the bump of tears in her voice wrenched Abby’s heart.

“No, honey. No. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Sam sighed. “I wish I could go there, look for them, do something.”

“It’s all right, Sam. Maybe you can help me another way.”

“Sure,” Sam said, but she was wary.

And Abby was sorrier still that she’d called, but she pressed on explaining her quandary about painting Lindsey’s bedroom. “You two looked at colors, didn’t you? I was hoping you knew the shade of yellow she settled on.”

“Oh, gosh. We looked at a bunch.” Sam thought about it.

“It’s all right, honey,” Abby said.

“I just can’t remember exactly, but my mom was there. I bet she knows. I’ll get her.”

“No, don’t disturb her,” Abby said quickly, but Sam was already shouting for her mother.

Abby waited, feeling awkward and horrible. No one knew how to talk to her anymore. She’d somehow managed to lose touch with everyone who mattered to her. Except for her mother and Kate. And Jake, who blamed her. He hadn’t said as much, but still it was there. She was the mother, the adult, after all. She should have prevented what happened to their family. It was what everyone probably thought, that she should have kept them home, kept them safe.

“Abby? How are you?” Samantha’s mother Paula’s voice came on the line, holding measured notes of sympathy and caution.

“Paula, hi, I’m all right. I’m sorry, I think I scared Sam. There isn’t any news. I’m just back from—from my friend Kate’s and I’m thinking of painting Lindsey’s room.” Abby stumbled through the rest of her speech, then, realizing she was babbling, she pressed her lips together.

There was a considering silence. Paula was obviously taking a moment to pick the sense from the rush of Abby’s words or more likely wondering how to tactfully suggest Abby obtain psychiatric help.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember anything useful,” Paula said. “Do you know when this was?”

Abby could hear in Paula’s voice that, like Sam, she did truly want to be helpful. Abby could also hear the oh-you-poor-dear-sad-thing lamentation and beneath that were notes of glee, notes that echoed exultation. Not me, the notes sang. Thank God Almighty, it didn’t happen to me! Abby couldn’t blame her; it was only human and she did the only thing that made sense; she let Paula go.

* * *

Something woke her deep in the night. She didn’t know what time it was. The only clock in the den, where she was camped out because she couldn’t face the bed she’d shared with Nick, was on the mantel, and she couldn’t see it in the dark. She pulled the thin coverlet to her chin rigid with fear. When the sound came again, she realized the telephone was ringing, and she came instantly to her feet, heart pounding. Bad news, bad news. The words hammered through her brain, keeping time with her bare feet hammering the floor. In the kitchen, Abby yanked up the receiver, not checking the ID. “What? Yes? Hello!”

Nothing. Breath. A bit of static, then there was the smallest sigh, soft, liquid sounding. Female. Abby was certain of it.

She went still. “Lindsey? Honey, is it you?” The receiver trembled. “Where are you? Just tell me where you are and Mommy will come. Lindsey? Please, honey. Say something....”

Abby waited. Nothing. Dead air. “Nick?” She slid down the wall beside the desk onto the floor. “Please…?” The connection was held open a fraction longer, and then it broke with a soft click. Abby went up on her knees and switched on the desk lamp. The ID told her nothing. Out of area, it read. She dialed the operator who couldn’t help her either. She lowered herself back to the floor, keeping her grip on the phone, willing it to ring again. Finally it was morning, a decent hour, and she called Kate and told her what she’d heard.

She said, “I know it was Lindsey.”

“But how, Abby? If she didn’t say anything?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I just can’t stand for you to hurt anymore.”

“Is there a way not to? Is there a cure for this other than finding them? One of them called me, Katie. They’re alive. Can’t you even say it’s possible?”

Kate didn’t answer.

“I think someone was here.”

“In the night?” Now Kate sounded even more alarmed, and Abby filled with even more regret.

But she went on. “I mean while I was gone. Things aren’t—”

“Aren’t what?”

Abby said she didn’t know. She said, “You think I’m insane.”

“Honey, I think you’re exhausted. I think I should come.”

“No.” Abby didn’t want her. She didn’t need traitors, naysayers. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m sure you’re right,” she added for effect. “Jake’s coming home this weekend. I’m making him a meatloaf.”

* * *

Abby grocery shopped and managed to make a meatloaf—Jake’s favorite—before his arrival. To go with it, she made mashed potatoes and carrots she’d harvested from last fall’s vegetable garden. She did not plan to tell him about her middle-of-the night mystery caller. But he already knew. He said Kate had called him because she was concerned.

“She shouldn’t have bothered you,” Abby said. They were repairing the back porch rail. Abby was holding it while Jake filled the sockets with glue.

“She’s afraid you aren’t telling her the truth about how you are,” he said.

“So, what do you think?”

“About how you are?”

“No, the call. Do you think it’s possible?”

“I think stuff like that, thinking Lindsey and Dad are calling, thinking someone’s in the house—it’ll make you crazy.”

“According to Kate, it already has.”

“Come on, Mom. Let’s say it’s true, that it was Lindsey or Dad on the phone. Where does that leave us? I mean, do you think they’re out there somewhere? Like what? Kidnapped or something?”

“No,” she said, but her brain wanted to argue. Sheriff Henderson had questioned her in this regard. He had asked her if there might be someone who was a threat to Nick. Nadine Betts and the San Antonio D.A. had both insinuated they thought it was Nick with Adam Sandoval on the surveillance tape. Suppose it was? Suppose Adam was holding a gun on Nick, forcing Nick to help him? But no one could see that because the quality of the film was too poor. Stranger things had happened. Abby could have said all of this, but she didn’t. Jake was right; she would drive herself crazy. Worse, she would drive him crazy. “I’m sure it was nothing,” she said, handing him the railing. “A wrong number is all.”

He gave her a look.

“What?” she said. “I’m fine. Fine,” she reiterated.

* * *

The next day, working like demons, they got the yard work caught up and thoroughly mucked out the horse stalls. They labored mostly in silence as if they had no idea what to say or how to be around each other anymore.

At dinner, they sat at the kitchen table in a well of light, silverware clanking monotonously against china. Abby couldn’t stand it. “When are finals?” she asked, although she knew, but she couldn’t think of anything else, and anyway, it was a normal, motherly-type question.

“Next week,” Jake answered.

“I guess you’re studying like mad then.”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re okay, grade-wise?”

“Yeah.” He forked bites of meatloaf into his mouth, keeping his gaze from hers.

Deliberately, Abby thought, the same as answering her in monosyllables was deliberate. This was not normal. “Jake, is anything wrong?”

His head came up. “Wrong? Gosh, Mom, what could be wrong? Here we are at the dinner table, the two of us, one big happy family with a mountain of food.”

She frowned at him. “I knew you’d be starved. You always are when you come home.”

“I can’t take their place. I can’t eat for them. I can’t be here all the time like they were.”

“I don’t expect that.”

Jake thrust aside his napkin and stood up; he took his dishes to the sink and rinsed them. He came for Abby’s.

She grasped his wrist. “I should have stopped them; that’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“How? It isn’t like Dad was going to listen to you.”

She loosened her hold, and he took her plate away.

He turned from the sink, towel in hand. “You aren’t going all paranoid on me now, are you?”

Her laugh was uneasy. “Maybe I am.”

His smile seemed forced; it seemed pitying. He said, “I’ll try and come home more, okay?”

He left for school the next day, and without him the house was dead still again.