Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,18

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,