Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,42

tea glass. What would she do if Peg asked more questions? Would she pull out the matchbook, rattle on about the surveillance tape, say she’d caught her son in a web of lies about a cheating scheme and felt sicker than ever with the suspicion that he was keeping something worse from her? Would she tell Peg about the flood’s survivors? The ones like Patsy Doggett? Her husband Lloyd had given her up for dead. But Patsy wasn’t dead. She had somehow managed to get out of her truck and swim or somehow make her way to her sister’s. Patsy Doggett was alive today, against all the odds. A woman in her eighties...

Abby looked up as Peg emerged from the kitchen and headed toward her, grim-faced and intent, and she wished she’d dropped a twenty dollar bill on the table and left when she’d had the chance.

“Listen here,” Peg began. “I’m not one to get involved in other folks’ business, but I got one of my feelin’s about you and I’m kinda worried.”

“Oh, no, please don’t—”

“You’re thinking of hunting for your family yourself, aren’t you? But hon, what if you was to find ’em—dead and all?” She added this last baldly, even defiantly, as if to awaken Abby to the cold reality of the possibility—the probability—that faced her. “What then?” Peg demanded.

Abby pulled her wallet from her purse. “I should get going.”

Peg touched her hand. “I’ll be praying for you.”

“Thank you,” Abby said.

“Don’t you worry none about the bill.” She wadded Abby’s check in her hand. “Dinner’s on the house.”

“Oh, no,” Abby said. “I couldn’t.”

“Sure you can.” Peg turned away, then turned back. “You know, I can call my aunt, tell ’em to keep an eye out. What kind of car was it?”

“Jeep. Jeep Cherokee.” Abby shouldered her purse.

“I’m gonna write that down. You know the license? You have a cell number?” Peg set her tray on the table, and Abby followed her to the cash register. It felt wrong giving her phone number to a woman she’d only just met, but what if Peg’s aunt did know something? Or what if Peg mentioned Abby’s family to someone—other diners, travelers—who knew something? There were stranger coincidences.

When Abby thanked Peg for her kindness, she came around the counter and hugged Abby as if she couldn’t help it. Then Abby went outside and sat behind the wheel of Nick’s BMW, blowing into the cold cup of her hands, thinking Peg could have just let her go with her prayer. But she hadn’t. She had taken Abby’s information as if she felt finding Abby’s family was possible.

It was a sign.

It had to be.

* * *

Somewhere west of San Antonio, Abby’s cell phone rang. It was her mother.

“Where are you?” she said as Abby pulled over. “You said you were going home.”

“Oh, Mama, I’m sorry.” Abby sensed her mother poised to drive to the rescue again. “I just went through San Antonio.”

“San Antonio? Abby, what are you doing?”

“Going to Bandera, then I—” She paused. “People are going to forget, Mama, and I can’t let that happen. One way or another, I have to bring Nick and Lindsey home.”

“I understand, honey, I do, but I worry about you out there alone, driving around in the dark.”

Abby didn’t say anything.

“I’m not sure what you can do by yourself.”

Abby wasn’t sure either. She could have said she would be closer to them there, that somehow it felt imperative to go there.

“Abby?”

“Mama, the law firm wants to buy out Nick’s partnership. They’re going to ask the court to appoint an administrator.”

“What?”

“Joe called me and said they have to move on, that he’s sorry.” Abby pushed strands of hair behind her ear. “He said he’d see to it that Jake’s college fund was secure.”

“When did he call? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“First, they had that awful memorial; now they want to just let Nick go. They want me to say he’s dead, Mama. He gave them over twenty years, and they can’t give him seven months?” Abby rolled down the window. The sudden inrush of chilly air took away her breath, the threat of tears.

“It’s business, honey,” her mother said. “The firm has to deal with practicalities.”

“I’m not being practical, am I?”

“I suppose my concern is that you’re delaying—never mind.” She interrupted herself. “You have to find your own way through this, I know.”

“I don’t know how you’ve done it, living all these years alone. You’re so much stronger than me, Mama.”

“Don’t forget you’re my daughter,” Abby’s mother said.