Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,93
he was up to, that he was helping Sondra sell that cabin. I’m sure it’s worth a fortune, more than enough to finance their getaway.” Abby’s laugh was harsh. “Too bad for them Mother Nature had other plans.”
“Oh, Abby, don’t you think you’re way out on a limb—”
“No! The gas station attendant saw them together. Hank said he identified her.”
“That’s an overstatement, Abby,” George said. He added something about Lindsey, the bit about how Nick wouldn’t have taken her. He said, “Don’t you remember? The kid described Lindsey to Dennis, too, but he couldn’t say that he saw her with Nick.”
Abby heard George. She registered the rationality of his argument, but she was too seized by the fruit of her bitter imaginings to grasp that he was offering her another alternative, a different outcome, worse or better, from the one she was bent on believing, which was that Kate had betrayed her, and she, Abby, had allowed it to happen—again. “You did this,” she told Kate. “If you had only picked up the phone and called me, if you had told me you saw Nick with another woman, I would never have let Lindsey go with him. My daughter would be home now and safe—”
“Oh, don’t say it!” Kate reached her hands toward Abby. “Don’t say I’m to blame. Nick was alone when I saw him. I swear it!”
A stunned silence grew cold and stiff, as if all that had ever connected them had died.
Abby turned to Jake. “Who else knows?
He shook his head. “No one.”
George said, “Abby, none of us is guilty of anything except trying to protect you. Maybe Jake wasn’t right. Maybe telling the truth would have been better, but we acted out of love for you and genuine concern.”
“But what is the truth, George? What do you know? Because I would be willing to bet that you still are not telling me everything.”
He sighed.
Kate went to the sink. She filled a glass with water, sipped it and set it down, and without looking at Abby, she said, “This is what I know, all I know: Nick was alone when I ran into him last winter. He told me he was there about property. If he had a woman with him, I didn’t see her. The only other thing I know is that when Dennis went to interview the gas station attendant, the kid thought he remembered Nick from a picture Dennis showed him. He remembered Lindsey getting the restroom key, and he also said Nick was with a woman and they seemed close. The kid thought the woman was—he thought she was the man’s wife or girlfriend.”
“So Hank was right.” Abby felt exultant.
George said, “The kid was seventeen. He was stressed. There were tons of people there that day all milling around because of the weather. I mean, it was all so iffy. It just didn’t seem right to talk about a bunch of maybes. Maybe it was Nick, maybe it was Sondra, maybe they were together.”
“Well, there’s no maybe about what Jake saw, or what Nick told him, is there? There’s no maybe about Lindsey’s phone call to me from the gas station or that she was deeply upset about something that was happening. Something to do with her daddy.”
A pause hung like old dust.
“None of us had all the pieces until today,” Kate said. “Even now, how can we be sure?”
“I’m so sorry, Mom.” Jake raked his hands over his head.
“This is why you’ve been avoiding me like the plague. How long were you going to keep it up, Jake?”
“I wanted to tell you. I just couldn’t figure out how. Then when Dennis called about finding the car, I asked him if there was, you know, a woman inside.”
It took a moment, but once Abby realized that Dennis had known the truth, too, the sense of her humiliation mushroomed. She felt light-headed. Dennis knew things about her. About Nick and her marriage. She’d spoken of her family as if it were sacred. She’d let Dennis see inside her. See her love for Nick, see into her most vulnerable, soft, tender places. And the whole time he must have been stacking up her words, her pretty fairy-tale speeches, her tears and her grief, against his knowledge of her husband’s betrayal. Dennis had assumed her frailty along with the rest of them, and he didn’t even know her.
Abby’s mouth felt full of chalk. She could use a glass of water herself, but she wasn’t asking these