up. Can you go outside? Is Daddy with you?”
Her voice came again, but now it was as if she were talking through soap bubbles or sobbing.
Abby’s heart stalled. “Lindsey! What’s wrong?” But there was no answer. Only static. Abby redialed Lindsey’s cell number and got her voice mail. She punched in the number again with the same result. She tried Nick’s cell phone and listened to his recorded voice suggest she leave her name and number and he’d get back to her. When? Where was he? Where was Lindsey?
A Shell gas station. Was that what Lindsey had said? I have something to tell you...it’s about Daddy. Abby frowned at the cordless receiver, unsure now of what she’d heard. She put her hand to her stomach. It was too early to panic. Lindsey would call back or Nick would. As soon as they could get a signal.
But the phone didn’t ring, not that whole long evening. She finally sat down at her computer and typed out an email in the hope that Nick would switch on his laptop. She kept the television tuned to the Weather Channel. At first tornadoes in Iowa took precedence, but once those played out, the rain in the Texas Hill Country rose to center stage. Warnings were issued for the increasingly hazardous driving conditions and the growing threat of a major flood in the area. The waters in the Guadalupe River and in countless other smaller but no less vulnerable rivers were reported to be flowing over their banks.
Abby thought of calling Jake, but there was no point in worrying him needlessly, and surely it would be needless. She would hear something any minute. But she didn’t, and by ten-thirty, when she tried first Lindsey’s phone and then Nick’s, a canned voice informed her that the mailboxes were full. Of her messages, she thought, each one increasingly distraught. Who knew how many she’d left?
She sent several more emails for all the good it did.
Then at midnight when she called, she got nothing. Not even the recordings. She pressed the receiver hard to her ear and heard no sound. Dead air. It was as if she had dialed into a black hole. She would never be able to describe the sense of desolation that swept through her then. Even the canned voices had kept alive some sense of a connection, but that was gone now, and without it, Abby had no antidote for the panic that came, fiendishly, merrily, as if it had only been waiting its chance. It was a struggle to breathe. She couldn’t think.
From rote, she dialed Kate’s number, her landline, got a busy signal. Not the usual, steady rhythm of sound, but the rapid-fire drill that meant the phone lines were down. Abby dropped the cordless onto the sofa, dropped her head into her hands.
God...what should I do?
She desperately wanted to call her mother in Houston, but Julia went to bed with the chickens and Abby couldn’t bear to waken her. Or Jake. For nothing. It had to be nothing. She was letting her imagination run away with her. Why do you always think something’s wrong, Abby? Nick’s admonition crept through her mind. She felt his palms on her cheeks, the trueness of his kiss when he’d pulled her close. I don’t want you to worry, he had said, and his tone had been so heartfelt and tender. He’d wanted to make up for before, when he’d been short with her. He hadn’t wanted to leave her mad. They’d promised early in their marriage they wouldn’t, and they’d tried to stick by it. Sometimes it had been hard, but every marriage, even one as good as hers and Nick’s, had hard times.
Abby left the great room and went into the kitchen; she made toast and poured a glass of milk, but then both ended up in the sink. At some point she dozed on the sofa in the den and woke at dawn to the sound of rain pattering lightly on the windows. She sat up, licking her dry lips. For one blessed moment, as she loosened the pins from her chignon and ran her fingers through her hair, she didn’t remember, and then she did and the panic returned. It rushed out of her stomach and rose, burning, into her throat. She jerked up the cordless, dialed Lindsey’s and then Nick’s number. There wasn’t even a ring now. She listened, but there was only the rain scratching at the window as if