Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,78
they were undertaking at her insistence. But for all she knew, he could have some alternate plan in mind; he could take her anywhere, do anything to her. She couldn’t stop him. And if she were to disappear, no one but his sister Kim would know where to begin to search for her. And Abby wasn’t certain that Kim was right in her mind.
“I guess you got your ears burned off.”
“Excuse me?” Abby turned to Hank.
“I’m guessing Kimmie unloaded on you about Sondra. My wife and sister don’t get along, not even when Sondra’s acting right.”
Abby didn’t want to know what Hank meant by “acting right” as opposed to not. She didn’t want to hear the history behind Kim’s hostility. Kim wasn’t “right” either, nor was Hank, really, and Abby was already unnerved enough. “How long have you been married?” Abby asked the conventional question and hoped Hank would follow her lead, that he would confine their talk to matters that were small and of little consequence. But even as she hoped for this, she knew it was impossible, that their situation had already broken every civilized boundary. Abby somehow sensed that Hank would be as hell-bent on spilling the family drama as his sister.
He answered that he and Sondra had been married nearly twelve years, and he went on as Abby had known, had feared that he would.
“I fell in love with her the second I saw her,” Hank said, “even though I knew I didn’t stand a chance. She was gorgeous. I was nobody. Second-string junior varsity football benchwarmer. She never gave me a second look. She was too busy working her way through first-string.”
The pause that came was as disconcerting to Abby as Hank’s speech.
“She’s that kind of woman, you know? She could dress in a potato sack and guys still wouldn’t keep from seeing, from wanting to—” Hank’s voice crumpled. He cleared his throat, raised his hand, resettled it. “She wants you to. She likes attention. Craves it, actually.”
Abby thought of what Kim had told her, that Hank had caught his wife stripping in a men’s club. Again, Kim had said, as if Sondra had a habit of doing it. Abby studied the windshield, the one unwipered corner where the rain-formed rivulets broke into fat veins of polished silver. She wondered if Hank would talk about that next. She wondered if she asked, would he stop the car and let her out?
“You probably want to know what she saw in a guy like me,” he said. “It’s okay. Everybody does. It’s because I’m safe, see? She can trust me, trust I’ll be faithful, like the family dog.” He switched on the radio, punched the row of buttons, got nothing but a voice swimming in static that reminded Abby of Lindsey’s call from Boerne. “It’s about Daddy—” “I’m in the restroom—” Followed by sobbing. Abby was convinced of it now, that Lindsey had been crying.
“Sometimes my wife goes on, like, these benders. She goes to the men’s clubs and you know—” Hank broke off.
Their gazes collided and quickstepped away.
He said, “It’s what scares me, that some pervert got hold of her. She didn’t do it all the time; she’s not hardened to that life like a lot of those women. In fact it had been almost three years when Sondra went back to it this last time. I thought she was done with it. She was working for the judge and she seemed settled. She seemed normal, you know what I mean? More normal than I’d ever seen her.”
Another pause dithered. Abby twisted her wedding rings on her finger.
“Sometimes I think if I was just a more exciting guy, if I could just keep her entertained, then I think, how can she do it? Why does she? She’s so smart. She’s got a fucking degree in psychology, for Christ’s sake.”
Surprised, Abby looked at Hank, then away.
“After I found out she was dancing again, I tried to talk sense to her. I wanted her to come home,” he said.
“She wouldn’t?” Abby was resigned now. There was something about riding in the car, being pinned up, a captive audience. Somehow it implied intimacy, confession. As if the situation needed further inducement for that.
“Nope. She refused. She stayed in touch with Caitlin, though, through maybe the middle of February, but then nothing. Her house in the Heights was locked up. Nobody’d seen her there or at the club. None of her friends had seen or heard from her either. It