Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,50

I got the cat down, I had to go inside and eat her tuna casserole for lunch.”

Kate laughed. “May Dean’s tuna casserole is the biggest joke in this county.”

Abby didn’t laugh; she sipped her coffee. She wanted so badly to turn to Kate and say she didn’t give a damn about May Dean whoever and her pathetic tuna casserole. She wanted to say: How dare you keep such a secret? Abby didn’t believe that Nick had come to Bandera to buy land. In December, Kate had said, the week before Christmas. What was going on then? Abby tried to think. Jake would have been coming home from college. She remembered telling Lindsey they’d wait for him to get their tree.

Their last tree. Their last Christmas as a family. She remembered decorating that tree, she and the kids had done it together on the Friday evening after Jake arrived.

And Nick hadn’t been there. Abby remembered now he’d gone to Dallas that weekend to take care of some legal business for Louise, something to do with her estate. At least that’s what he’d told Abby he was doing. He and Louise had an appointment to see their family attorney and when they finished, Nick brought Louise home for the holiday. She’d spent the week of Christmas with them and nearly driven all four of them insane. How could he have been in Bandera unless he’d driven there first and then gone up to Dallas? And even so, Nick would never have made such a huge decision without consulting her. He would have insisted they do research. They would have looked at dozens of properties, talked to any number of Realtors.

But there was an even more compelling reason why the whole thing was impossible: Helix Belle. Those ridiculous allegations against Nick had been made only weeks before the holidays. He’d been in such a terrible mood, Abby had been afraid Christmas would be ruined. Certainly he’d been in no frame of mind to look at land, much less plan a surprise around buying it.

Abby let her gaze drift. Everything led back to that time, the trouble with Helix Belle. She remembered after he was cleared, Nick said it didn’t matter, that there were always going to be people who didn’t get the message, who would feel hostile and angry at him, who would hate him. What people? Why would they feel that way? She didn’t know because she hadn’t asked. Instead, after repeated attempts to buoy his mood, she’d left him alone. She had assumed he’d come out of it, whatever it was—a funk, a bad patch. Everyone had them. Every marriage had them. Now she wondered what she’d been thinking.

“I hate these stupid, jackass, gun-toting yahoos. Most of ’em are from the city and don’t know shit about hunting. Pardon my French, Abby.”

She blinked in George’s direction, momentarily blank. “Oh, the doe. You’re talking about the doe we found this afternoon.”

“I’m really sorry you got dragged into it,” Dennis said.

“I’m sorry you had to put her down,” Abby told him.

Kate went inside and returned with more coffee. George put another log on the fire. Conversation lagged, and in the lull, other noises became audible, small scurrying sounds, the night-doings of animals. Far below, at the foot of the slope, Abby could hear the lake water sliding against the shore. The sense of peace was pervasive, and she wanted it, wanted so badly to yield to it, but what right did she have? Everyone wanted her to resume her life. To make plans for Thanksgiving dinner, next summer’s garden. But it was wrong. Disloyal. As if she were giving up on her family, willing to walk on and forget them. Willing not to know the truth.

Abby turned to Dennis. “Kate ran into Nick in Bandera outside the courthouse last December when I had no idea he was there.”

“You told her? I thought we agreed you wouldn’t.” George sounded every bit as pissed at Kate as she had told Abby he was.

“I had a right to know, George,” Abby said.

“I told you she did,” Kate insisted to her husband.

No one spoke, and when George got up and said he was turning in, Kate stood up, too.

“I don’t know what good it does you,” George said, not unkindly, when he paused beside Abby’s chair.

“I’m just confused about why he was there, what he was doing,” Abby said.

“That’s what I mean.” George squeezed her shoulder. “It only puts fuel on the fire, causes you to ask