Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,5
it meant to come in. How she would come to hate it, the sound of rain.
* * *
Her mother answered on the second ring. “Abby? Honey, is everything all right?”
“No, Mama.” Abby sucked in her breath, almost undone by her mother’s loving concern, and when she explained the situation her voice shook. “I’m going out there,” she said.
“Abby, no!” Her mother’s protest was sharp to the point of vehemence, but then she paused, gathered herself—Abby could see her making the effort—and went on in her more customary moderate fashion. “I don’t imagine they’re letting people through. It might be best to wait until the weather clears, hmm?”
“I can’t just sit here, Mama.”
“You’ll have your cell phone?”
“Yes. I’ll take the interstate to San Antonio where Lindsey said they spent Friday night, and if they aren’t there, I’ll drive to Boerne.”
“And if they aren’t in Boerne?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go on to Kate’s, I guess.”
Her mother didn’t comment on her plan, that they both knew was pure folly. “Have you spoken to Jake?” she asked.
Abby said she hadn’t, that she didn’t want to worry him “I’ll call you, Mama, and Jake, too, if—when I find them.”
* * *
It was pouring by the time Abby left the house, but she didn’t encounter torrential rain until she was fifty miles east of San Antonio. That’s when she began to see more cars and trucks and even semis take the exit ramps or pull onto the interstate’s shoulders. But Abby did not pull over. She continued driving west on the main highway, the same way she was certain Nick would have gone. He would never take the scenic route; he was too impatient, and he certainly wouldn’t fool around in weather like this. Lindsey had to have said something else.
Safer route? Easier route?
Why had they spent Friday night in San Antonio? Why would Nick pack the camping gear if he had no intention of camping? The questions shot like bullets through Abby’s brain.
It’s about Daddy....
Had Nick gotten sick? Abby’s breath caught. Why hadn’t she thought to call the hospitals? But she was fairly certain she’d heard properly when Lindsey said they were at a gas station. A Shell gas station. They could have had a flat tire or engine trouble. An accident? They could be marooned somewhere and unable to call. They could be almost anywhere. Abby searched the roadsides praying to be led to them, to see them, until her eyes burned with the effort. Until the rain grew so heavy the edges of the pavement were lost in road fog.
The lane markings disappeared. Her world was foreshortened to the few feet that were visible beyond the BMW’s hood. How foolish she was to be out here. She thought of her mother, left behind to worry. Of Jake and his utter disbelief if he could see her. She thought how the joke would be on her if Nick and Lindsey were home now and she was the one lost.
By the time she reached Boerne, she was bent over the steering wheel, holding it in her white-knuckled grip. There were no other cars. She wanted to stop but couldn’t think how. How would she navigate off a highway she wasn’t sure existed? Every frame of reference was lost to the fog, the endless sheets of rain. Nothing stood out, not a building or a tree or the road’s weed-choked verge. She might have been airborne for all she knew. She had to go on, to reach Kate, the ranch, higher ground. Abby thought maybe Nick had done that. In fact she began to believe it, that when she arrived there, she would find him and Lindsey safe, but when Kate’s house finally came into view, her heart-soaring wave of anticipation fell almost immediately into confusion.
There were so many vehicles parked along the roadsides and in Kate’s driveway, mostly pickup trucks with boats attached and SUVs. There were a few sheriffs’ patrol cars, too, and a couple of ambulances. And incongruously, a helicopter sitting in the north pasture. Abby couldn’t take her eyes off it or the dozens of people who were crowded onto Kate’s porch. Exhausted-looking official types dressed in all kinds of rain gear with their hoods pushed off their heads, drinking coffee, talking into cell phones. The sense of urgency was palpable even at a distance. The scene was surreal, like something from a disaster movie. Abby felt heavy now with dread. She slowed, hunting for her Cherokee, praying to catch sight of