Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,92

car now, and Abby felt a rush of relief. Then he paused as if there was more he wanted to say, but she shook her head, warding him off. Ducking into his car, he drove away.

Dust from his tires drifted in his wake as lightly as feathers. Abby took several steps toward the house, walking blind. It would come together if she looked at it; if she paused for one moment to consider. If she were to turn around now, she would see the facts, the cruel reality lingering in that drift of dust. And now, abruptly, as if it were there, a physical entity that clubbed her from behind, she bent at the waist, braced her hands on her knees. Her breath came in shallow spurts; her heart swelled painfully against her ribs. She thought it might burst. She prayed that it would and kill her. She was a fool, that was the “something more” Hank had wanted to say to her.

She thought of the looks she’d been getting from Jake and from Kate and George; she thought of their odd silences and the ways she had been manipulated, even patronized. They had treated her as if she were incompetent and weak. She straightened, eyeing the house. Her brain felt on fire. She was hardly aware of climbing the stairs, flinging open the kitchen door hard enough that it bounced off the wall. The three of them, Kate, George and Jake, broke apart from where they’d been gathered at the window as if they could somehow make it appear they hadn’t been watching her every move. “You knew,” she said.

No one answered. Seconds passed. They might have been frozen.

Finally, Jake said in a low voice, “I didn’t want to tell you, Mom. I didn’t want you to be hurt anymore.”

“You saw them in February? Where?” Abby’s throat was so tightened by grief, by her fury and disbelief, that she scarcely knew how the words could pass.

“At his office.” The words tumbled out of Jake. “You know how much Dad liked it when I went there. It always put him in a good mood.”

“You needed money.”

“Yeah, and I figured if I asked him for it there, he wouldn’t yell at me like he did at home.”

“So?”

“So I’m in the parking garage going to the elevator and I see them in Dad’s Beamer and they’re like—” Jake reddened “—all over each other.”

“Did they see you?”

“I didn’t think so, but then Dad came after me and caught me on the road. He tried to play it off that it was all her. He said she was, like, obsessed with him. He said he was only trying to reason with her. It was shit. He was lying.” Jake’s voice broke.

“You lied to me! I asked you and you lied. How could you?”

“I knew it would kill you, Mom, but you can’t let it. Okay? You can’t let him win.”

She didn’t answer.

“I told you to go home, to leave it alone.” He was accusing her now. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I have to know the truth.” Abby looked at Kate. “You saw them together, too, and you told George, but not me.” She laughed. “It’s true what they say about wives being the last to know.”

Jake’s eyes shone with tears. “I thought you had it figured out, Mom, I really did when I heard you found his jacket.”

“Obviously, I’m an idiot. I didn’t want to believe it, to think he could do that to me, to us.” Abby bit her lips. She was sorry for Jake. Sorry for them both, but she was too angry to comfort him. “You should have told me, Jake. And you—” Abby raised her finger at Kate “—you knew last winter. How could you? But then why should I wonder? You’ve done it to me before.”

“That’s enough, Abby.” George said it gently, but clearly he meant it. He went to his wife’s side.

Jake took Abby’s arm. He wanted her to stop, but he didn’t understand. He didn’t know the history she and Kate shared. She shook free of him and confronted Kate. George put out his hand. Abby ignored it. “Has it occurred to you that if you’d had the courtesy to tell me you saw Nick with that woman last December, I could have done something about it?”

“I didn’t—”

“That was such a sweet story you told me, that he was looking at land for us. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you knew the whole time what