Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,6

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The BMW had barely come to a stop before Kate had the door open. “What are you doing here?” She hauled Abby from the driver’s seat and searched her face, both of them heedless of the falling rain.

Abby shook her head, starting to cry from fear and exhaustion. She stammered that her family was missing. “You haven’t seen them?”

“No. Oh, Abby.” Getting the sense of it, Kate folded Abby into her arms, held her tightly and released her. “Come on,” she said. “We’re getting soaked.”

They went up the front walkway and onto the porch. Kate made introductions as they worked their way through the throng. Abby met neighbors, a lot of them in uniforms, and quickly learned that because the ranch was high and dry, and maintained near-full electrical power from a built-in generator system, it made an ideal base for rescue operations. She was reassured that evacuations and search efforts were ongoing, but then someone mentioned the dozens of people who were missing.

Abby turned to the porch rail and braced herself.

“But not Nick,” Kate said. “I’m sure he’s found shelter somewhere.” Kate brought Abby around, walked with her toward the kitchen door, keeping up a reassuring stream of chatter, and then George spotted them.

It was almost comical the way his astonished glance bounced from Abby to Kate, and once she explained what Abby was doing there, he said, “She needs to talk to Dennis.”

“Dennis Henderson is the Bandera County sheriff and a good friend of ours,” Kate told Abby.

And then Dennis was there, and once Kate introduced them, he took charge, putting his hand under Abby’s elbow, guiding her into Kate’s kitchen where it was warm and quiet. He sat Abby down and assured her he would do all he could to help her locate her family. By then, she was shivering, and he brought her a towel and a cup of hot coffee that Kate had generously laced with brandy.

Kate brought Abby a pair of dry tennis shoes and socks, and while she changed into them, the sheriff sat across from her and began asking a series of questions: Why did she think Nick and Lindsey had come this way? Did she know what route they’d taken? What was the reason for their trip? Could Abby describe what they were wearing when they left home?

She managed to give him the physical descriptions, but when it came to the rest, her eyes teared. She didn’t know the answers. “I thought they were going to camp out, but they didn’t. They spent Friday night in San Antonio. I don’t know why.” She clamped her lips together, chin trembling. She was horrified. How could she not know?

“Do you know what campground they were headed to?”

Abby shook her head, miserably. “There are several that we’ve gone to before, but I don’t know where Nick made reservations. I didn’t ask. How could I not ask?”

“It’s all right,” the sheriff said. He found a tissue and handed it to her.

She blew her nose and described Lindsey’s phone call, saying she was almost positive Lindsey had said they were at a gas station. “A Shell gas station,” Abby said, “in Boerne.”

Sheriff Henderson seemed pleased with that; he said it gave him a place to start, and he did go there a few days later, once the water receded, and he spoke to the gas station attendant, a high school kid who remembered Lindsey. She was really cute, the kid said. She asked for the restroom key, but he’d gotten busy and couldn’t recall whether she’d been the one to bring it back. But it was there, on its hook behind the cash register, so he guessed someone must have returned it. He told the sheriff he thought he saw the Jeep leave the station and head east on Highway 46. And like everyone else, he spoke of the rain. But then no one who was in the Hill Country would ever talk about that April weekend again and not mention the rain.

In the end twenty-six people would lose their lives, many of them drowned, but many others were rescued. There was one story about a woman, a tourist, who folks heard had been taken out of the water near Bandera alive. Rescuers who treated her said it was a miracle she survived, that her injuries weren’t more severe, then somehow, they lost track of her. No one seemed to know what became of her. Some began to wonder if she was real or the stuff