Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,79
was like she vanished right off the face of the earth.”
“You called the police?”
“They didn’t give a damn. They were like everybody else, they figured she got tired of the wife-and-mother routine and took off.”
“Because you were separated.”
“Because she’s done it before. I didn’t think too much about it myself until she didn’t show up for Caitlin’s birthday last April. Sondra wouldn’t have missed that. She wouldn’t have.”
“Poor Caitlin,” Abby murmured, remembering the little girl, her small angelic face, the anguished way she’d clung to Hank. He shouldn’t have left her. Abby regretted her part in it.
Hank said Sondra’s landlord had called him to come and clear out the house in May. “Took me half a day. Besides all the office equipment and business crap, sample books and fabric and doodads everywhere, the upstairs was stuffed with her furniture. The closet and dresser drawers were full of her clothes, there was makeup strewn everywhere. Even her toothbrush was still there. None of it meant a damn to the cops. They said she could buy new stuff. I told them there was no activity on our credit cards, no withdrawals from our joint account. They said she was making her own money, she could get new cards. They said she probably had a new guy and a new life. Assholes.”
After a moment, Abby said, “It’s good you have Kim to help out with Caitlin,” even though she wasn’t sure it was good at all.
“Yeah, we’ve always been close. Even though she’s younger she looks after me. When we were kids, she was always taking up for me and getting whaled on for it. One day when my old man was whipping her with his belt, I went off on him. I couldn’t stop myself. I get like that sometimes. Get pushed to a certain point and can’t think straight, you know? I just explode.”
Abby looked at him. She didn’t know.
“I see red. Literally. It’s like a mist.” He brushed the air in front of his face. “That day? When I took on my old man? He landed in the ER. I was gone by the time they fixed him up. I never went home after that.”
Hank fiddled with the buttons on the dash, bumping up the fan speed on the defroster, and Abby looked at his misshapen knuckles; she slicked her gaze along the tight line of his jaw, where a tiny pulse needled the flesh near his ear. Her heart tapped insistently.
Ahead in the near-distance, a huge flock of geese angled across her view, and she focused on them, their undulating vee-shaped flight. Headed for the coast, she thought. If the weather was good and Nick was driving, she’d ask him to pull over. She would say she had to hear their song. The sound put her in such awe. Lindsey, Jake and Nick had always poked fun at her for it. Abby remembered feeling in such moments as if the four of them were knit into a single fabric from one thread. Now her throat knotted with tears.
They stopped for gas and bought cheese and crackers to snack on in the car, rather than take time for a real lunch. Neither of them commented on it when they passed the Riverbend Lodge on their way through Bandera. North of town, Hank turned west on an unmarked asphalt road. A ranch road. The Hill Country was networked with such roads. The natives knew them as well as they knew the creases on their palms. But someone who didn’t know the land could get lost, utterly, irrevocably, especially today without even the sun to define direction.
After several miles, the land gained a gentle incline. The road surface changed into a jolting bed of caliche and crushed rock. The rain softened. Limestone outcroppings loomed from the mist, pencil sketches in charcoal and gold. Sound was muted, as indistinct as the view. For all Abby knew, the world had disappeared except for this narrow stretch of road they traveled on.
“Eerie out here, isn’t it?” Hank seemed to read her thoughts. “Kind of gives you the creeps. Almost anything could happen. Nobody’d find you, maybe for a long time. Maybe never.”
Abby felt the twitch of his glance. Was he making conversation? Baiting her? Warning her? She didn’t know. She left the pause alone.
“I remember once when I was a kid, my old man brought me and Kim out here camping. He took us to see this place called Boneyard Draw. You ever hear of