Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,19
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.