asked her to keep it secret, you know? And then it was the holidays. In all the rush, you can imagine, can’t you, that she might forget? It really wasn’t important until April.”
“I guess.” Abby thought how she was always complaining she had too much to keep up with: Nick’s schedule, Jake’s schedule, Lindsey’s schedule. There were days when her brain felt like a basket stuffed full of everyone else’s business. There had been days when she’d forgotten things, important things. But that was BTF, before the flood. It would be different now. She would have more room, a bigger mental space to put everything in. Something else she’d wished for that she didn’t want.
Her mother said, “Abby, sweet, I think a person can take any combination of circumstances and make them into something.”
“I’m letting my imagination run away with me.” Here it was again, Abby thought, more proof she was losing it.
“Your mind wants to fill in the blanks. It wants a logical explanation for this terrible accident that has happened, and there isn’t one.”
Abby didn’t answer.
“Kate thinks you’re angry at her.”
“I’m not angry.” It was only partly a lie. “I just realized I needed to be here.”
“Are you thinking of contacting that man?”
“No. Even if there was a connection, what difference does it make now? If they’re dead, I mean, if Nick and Lindsey are dead?” Abby made herself say it. “I’m thinking it’s time I faced the fact that they’re gone, lost in one of those canyons or in the river or who knows?”
“But you don’t have to face it alone and not all at once.”
Abby sat at the table. She drew doodles in the dust. “I’ve been thinking, Mama, about teaching again.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, honey.”
“I’m going to call Hap Albright.” Hap was the principal and Abby’s former boss. She’d read that he was assistant superintendent of the district now.
“He’s the one who thought so much of you, right?
“Nick always thought it was too much. But he’s harmless.”
“Well, it can’t hurt if someone in administration favors you a little.”
“I just hope there’s an opening, that he’ll consider me, but if nothing else, maybe I can substitute somewhere.”
“Working will help you, Abby.”
“Distract me, you mean.”
“A little distraction can be a good thing sometimes. It can get you through the worst of the ordeal. Then one day, you’ll wake up and the pain won’t be quite as sharp. You’ll find you’re breathing a little easier.”
Abby glanced at the fax from Hank Kilmer pinned to the refrigerator. He had four months on her, but she didn’t think it had gotten any easier for him.
* * *
When she finished mopping the kitchen floor, her back ached and her sorrow seemed wedged permanently at the base of her throat again. But it was late, and she didn’t have the energy to cry. Standing at the kitchen sink, she made herself eat, tiny new peas from the can, applesauce from a batch she’d made last fall. She washed her few dishes and climbed the stairs. She changed the sheets on the bed she’d shared with Nick and hung fresh towels in their bathroom, but then she couldn’t stay there. She thought the sofa downstairs might become her permanent bed. Maybe she’d buy a pullout.
She showered in Lindsey’s bathroom, and it was there, with the warm steam rising around her, that she cried.
* * *
It was near midnight when she wakened. She gathered the quilt around her and padded barefoot into the kitchen. In the dark, she went to the refrigerator, took down Hank Kilmer’s fax and wadding it into a ball, she tossed it into the kitchen wastebasket.
There is a time when you have to be through with grieving, when you have to accept your fate. Pick up the threads of existence. Go on. There is a time when you have to let go of faith. When it’s just flat-out insane to keep on believing.
Chapter 17
The old man led his mule through the cedar brake toward the bank of the creek where he’d make camp for the night. The sound of the water laced with the breeze was welcome and familiar. If he was lucky, he’d have a fat catfish on the hook before dinner, and if he wasn’t, he’d eat the apples he’d filched off those trees a while back. They were his trees anyway, he reckoned. His own granddaddy had planted them. Didn’t mean squat to him if the land had new owners.
Blue shambled behind him, head bobbing low, ready