Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,53
that had taken form in her mind, one that she ought to have acted on long ago. She would have shared it with Kate, if she thought Kate would have been open-minded, but she wouldn’t be, not after yesterday. “I think I’ll have a nap outside on the deck while you’re gone,” Abby said.
“You’ll sit out there and brood. I know you.”
“No. I promise I won’t.”
Kate pulled on her jacket. “Okay. But you can sit by yourself too much. You can think yourself blind.”
They shared a stubborn silence.
Kate broke it. “You can read meaning into circumstance that isn’t there. That could have been any guy that woman saw, Abby. Just think how many dark-haired men there are in the world.”
Abby dried her hands. “I know, but it just seems as if Nick was doing a lot of stuff I didn’t know about.”
“Like what else?”
Abby shrugged, turned her back and looked out the window at the saddle horses grazing in the pasture. She let her gaze travel from the corral along the drive to the barn that housed the livestock, and the hot bite of resentment she felt against Kate was as burning and unexpected as a sharp stick in the eye. Abruptly, Abby jerked her glance inside to her hands. She was gripping the counter’s edge so hard her knuckles were white.
“Abby?” Kate prodded. “What else have you found out?”
But Abby only shook her head, anxious now for Kate to leave. “It’s nothing.” She made herself smile. “Go on. I’m fine. I’m not brooding. I swear.”
“Cross your soul and never cry?” Kate lifted her foot and traced an X on the bottom of her shoe.
Abby did the same. “Never cry,” she repeated. It was the oath and sign they’d made up in their school days.
They walked out together, and Abby waited until Kate’s taillights had disappeared completely before retracing her steps, going straight through the house, first into the bedroom to get her purse, then down the hall to the study. Sitting behind the desk, she pulled a sheet of white business paper from the stack on the table beside the fax machine. She uncapped a pen and wrote FAX at the top edge. Beneath that she copied the number from the inside cover of the matchbook.
She started to write To: and the name Sondra, and then didn’t. She pressed the capped end of the pen to her mouth, and after a moment’s thought, she bent over the desk and wrote: My name is Abby Bennett. My husband is missing. He had this number. But something didn’t feel right. She crumpled the sheet, tossed it into the wastebasket, drew out a fresh sheet. My name is Abby Bennett, she wrote, and after that: I’m sorry to trouble you. But some instinct again said no, and she crumpled that sheet, too.
She headed another sheet, again introducing herself. Then: I hope you can help me. I’m trying to locate a man named Nick Bennett. He’s missing. A record of this fax number was among his possessions. If you have any information about him, will you please call….
She lifted the pen before she could jot down her cell phone number. Instinct warned she shouldn’t give that out. It was somehow too personal, and she copied down the fax machine’s phone number as the method of contact instead. Of course, now she ran the risk of George and Kate finding out what she’d done, and if they did, which was likely, she would have to explain that she’d sent off a fax to a total stranger asking the whereabouts of a man they believed to their cores was dead. But at least they would agree that she’d been prudent about it. A person could be harassed on their cell phone, but who, other than advertisers, harassed anyone by a fax machine?
Abby loaded the page and sent it before she could reconsider. Even so, the urge to wrest it from the machine was immediate and overwhelming. She had no clue what kind of trouble might be on the receiving end. Borrow sugar, not trouble. Her daddy’s advice played through her mind. She picked up the message she’d faxed and tore it in half, then into quarters, letting them drop into the wastebasket.
Chapter 14
During their sophomore year of college when Kate insisted on setting up Abby’s blind date with Baylor Gates, Abby resisted. She said she had to study.
“Bullshit,” Kate said.
Abby made another excuse. “I don’t have anything to wear.”