Evidence of Life

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Abby had asked the search and rescue pilots to take her up with them. She said she would have a better chance of spotting the Cherokee from the air than they would—it was her car, after all—but they refused, politely. Still, she was hopeful. She thought they would keep going, keep trying, and she was dumbfounded when a few days after Jake’s arrival, they packed up and left as if their job was done. Jake was angry. He asked to borrow George’s pickup to continue the effort on his own.

  “I’ll take you,” George said. “That way you can look while I drive. We’ll go until you want to stop.”

  Kate said she would drive Abby into town, and they went along slowly, giving Abby ample time to examine the roadsides. Kate’s kindness, and George’s, their patience with Abby and Jake, moved Abby to tears. She tried to thank Kate, and when she couldn’t, Kate took her hand. She knew. She said, “It’s all right.”

  They arrived in Bandera and joined an uneasy crowd gathered on Main Street, where it looked down toward Highway 16, and they stared in dumb amazement at the Medina River still pouring itself out of its banks and over the highway intersection.

  * * *

  A week went by and then another, and the earth baked and dried under a heedless sun and gave them nothing. Abby would never remember much about that time, the losing-hope time is how she would come to think of it. She couldn’t look at Jake; she couldn’t meet her own eyes in the mirror. She didn’t want to know what their sort of despair looked like.

  Kate brought it up, though, one day as they were driving back to the ranch after yet another fruitless roadside search. She touched Abby’s knee and said, “You know I love you, chickie, right? That I would only ever want what’s best for you—you and Jake.”

  Abby’s stomach knotted. But. Abby heard Kate’s but. And that meant advice was coming, or else Kate would treat Abby to the awful revelation she lived in constant dread of receiving. But it was neither of those things. Instead Kate said she was worried about Jake, worried how long he and Abby could keep it up.

  “The search, you mean?” Abby’s comprehension was as swift as her sense of offense. “I guess as long as it takes, but I understand if you’re tired of it, of us.”

  “No! Abby, that isn’t what I meant at all. It’s just it’s so hard on you and Jake, going through this day after day. You don’t know how long—I’m just saying, it’s been almost three weeks. You aren’t working now, but Jake has school. Maybe he should go back, try to put some routine back into his life. Please say you aren’t mad.”

  “I’m not.” Abby sighed and wiped her face. “I know you’re right.”

  “Oh, Abby.” Kate reached for Abby’s hand, and when she met Abby’s glance, her eyes were brimming.

  * * *

  Jake argued at first. He didn’t care about school; he didn’t care if he lost the semester. He lay on the sofa in Kate and George’s study, his big feet hanging off the end, and said, “I can’t concentrate anyway.”

  “But there’s nothing you can do here,” Abby said. “Wait, that’s all.”

  Jake sat up. “I told Dad the weather was going to be bad.”

  “You did?” Abby sat at George’s desk. “I did, too. Don’t blame him, okay?”

  “I wish I’d gone with them.”

  “Oh, no, Jake. Thank God, you didn’t. Why would you say that?”

  “If I had, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Abby looked closely at him, feeling somehow alarmed.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t know.” He ran his hands down his thighs. “I should have—”

  “Should have what?” she prompted sharply.

  But Jake either wouldn’t explain, or he couldn’t. “Nothing,” he repeated, and he lay back, folding his elbow over his eyes. He said she was right, that he should get back to campus. “I’ll go tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay,” Abby answered, but it was too easy. There should have been more of an argument, and somehow the lack of one provoked her into pushing him. “Jake? If you know something—”

  “Like what would I know?” He lifted his arm to frown at her.

  “What did Dad tell you about the trip? Did he give you a special reason he wanted to go?”

  “He just said he wanted me and Linds to go camping on the Guadalupe; he wanted us to hang out and fish like we used to. He said stuff like he knew he hadn’t always been the greatest dad. I thought it was weird, if you want to know.”

  “Weird?”

  “It was like he was apologizing. I thought maybe he was trying to make up for ragging on me about law school and for missing freshman orientation.”

  “He had to be in court that day.”

  “Come on, Mom. You and I both know if I had signed up for pre-law, Dad would have found someone to cover for him. He would have made it to orientation; he would’ve broken his neck.”

  “He was disappointed, that’s all.” Abby kept Jake’s gaze.

  “What?”

  She hesitated and then against her better judgment said what she was thinking, that sometimes she wondered why Nick was so adamant for Jake to go to law school in the first place. “It’s not as if he’s always been thrilled with that career himself.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “I noticed.”

  Of course he’d noticed; children were notorious for their perception of their parents. It was foolish to think you could hide much of anything from them.

  “Dad was pretty pumped about being a lawyer when he won all that money for those little kids. Remember? He nailed those guys; he put them down. His closing argument—” Jake paused.

  “He was great, wasn’t he?” Abby said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  Jake and Abby had attended the final day of the trial. It had been Jake’s idea. Somehow he’d sensed Nick needed them to be there. Jake had divined—when Abby had not—the extent to which Nick was invested emotionally in winning for those damaged children. In spite of their differences, Abby knew Nick and Jake shared a bond, they understood each other. She remembered in the wake of the trial, Nick had walked on air, and Jake had thought maybe law school wasn’t such a bad idea after all. But all that had gone sour last fall when an audit turned up the awful fact that a huge chunk of the settlement money was missing, and Helix Belle had, in an effort to divert attention from themselves, accused Nick of embezzlement.

  But he hadn’t been himself even after he was cleared, Abby thought. The day he and Lindsey had left, there had been that hurtful moment when she embraced him. “Don’t,” he had said.

  “It isn’t Dad on that surveillance tape,” Jake said.

  Abby wished she could be as certain.

  They had looked at it a few days ago. Dennis had driven them to San Antonio and accompanied them into the D.A.’s office. The quality of the film was as poor as everyone had said. The images of the two men had been grainy and distorted, their movements jerky, like puppets on strings. The detective in charge of the case had pointed out that the fair-haired man on the left was the one they had tentatively identified as Adam. Abby had focused on the dark-haired man on the right. She’d asked to have the video replayed twice and watched the man’s gestures; she’d studied his posture, the tilt of his chin, convinced she would be able to identify whether or not it was Nick from these small details. But she had not been sure, not beyond the shadow of a doubt, and she’d felt sick inside. She’d felt as if she had failed Nick in a vital and substantial way. And not only Nick, but Jake, too.

  “Mom?”

  Abby looked up. “I’m sure you’re right, Jake. It’s not Dad. It couldn’t be.” She offered reassurance she didn’t feel, but Jake took it.

  He propped himself on his elbow and said, “He risked everything when he took on that case, you know? He was like a man on fire. His partners would have cut him
loose, if he’d lost. He said so himself.”

  It was true. Nick had said that. Taking on contingency cases like Helix Belle was the same as gambling. You could lose as easily as you could win, and the loss might not be limited to money. It might cost an attorney his reputation, his profession. Abby didn’t like gambling. Nick knew that; he chafed against her more cautious nature. But there were their children to care for, always their children who had to be considered. That’s what she pointed out to him. That was the authority she invoked.

  Jake said, “I asked him once how come he did it, how come he took that case when he never did anything that crazy before, not with his work.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That you can wait too long to figure out what really matters in your life.”

  Abby tried to sort that out, to make it fit with what she knew about Nick or what she thought she knew.

  “Am I supposed to know what that means?” Jake was as mystified as she was.

  “You didn’t ask him?”

  “Why? He just would have started preaching about law school like he always does. How should I know? He’s your husband.”

  Jake made it sound as if he blamed her, Abby thought. For what? Marrying Nick? For failing to convince him that Jake’s refusal to attend law school wasn’t the end of the world? She considered telling Jake that her and Nick’s harshest arguments were about him and Lindsey, but she didn’t want to go into it. Abby hugged her elbows. She felt as though the boundaries that defined their roles, hers as the parent and Jake’s as the child, were already disintegrating, and it dismayed her.

  Jake flipped onto his belly. “I’m really tired. If I’m driving back to College Station tomorrow, I better get some sleep.”

  * * *

  But the following morning when they said goodbye, it didn’t look to Abby as if he’d slept much at all. He tossed his gear into the backseat of his Mustang. It was vintage, an original 1965 model that he and Nick had painstakingly restored. They’d only finished the project last year, and Abby was still sorry it was over, despite having to fight the grease and the constant sound of tinkering at all hours. She’d loved seeing their heads bent under the hood so close they were almost touching. The occasional rumbles of laughter, even the shouted curses had pleased her.

  “I don’t want to go,” Jake said when he straightened, and Abby was unhinged at the look on his face. She saw the child he’d been, helpless and bewildered beyond explanation.

  She said, “I know,” and stopped to find her composure, “but you heard Sheriff Henderson; he’s not giving up. The search just isn’t official anymore. We have to keep the faith ourselves, that’s all.”

  “You’ll call?”

  “The second I hear anything.”

  Jake looked off, blinking.

  She took his hand, then put her arms around him. “You should get going, okay? It’s best for you.” She held him at arm’s length. “Can you imagine what your sister will say if you blow your freshman year? You’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Jake scoured his eyes with the heels of his hands. “She always has to have the last word, doesn’t she?”

  Abby nodded, mouth trembling.

  “I’d flunk out right now just to hear her.”

  “Go,” Abby said.

  And Jake did. And it was only after he disappeared from view that she sank to her knees and cried.

  * * *

  When Louise called Abby on her cell phone the following afternoon, she was alone. Kate was gone to the grocery store, and George was out helping a road crew with repairs. In her old life before the flood—BTF—Abby might have let the call slide to her voice mail. She and Louise had never been close. Louise had seen to it. She’d made it clear from the moment Nick introduced them, that she didn’t think Abby was good enough for her son. Louise had never said it to Abby’s face, but the sense of Louise’s disdain was implicit. Abby had long ago given up on the notion that Louise would change, that they would someday be friends, but now that they shared this terrible catastrophe, Abby felt her heart reaching for Louise. They needed each other, Abby thought. They would help each other.

  “Where are you?” Louise asked, and Abby was shaken at how frail she sounded.

  She answered that she was still at Kate’s. “I keep thinking any day we’ll get word, something concrete.”

  “Lindsey and I were supposed to go to New York this summer.” Louise’s voice caught on her tears. “I was going to get tickets for the theater. We were going to tour the museums, shop Fifth Avenue.”

  “I know.” Abby went through the house onto the deck. It had aggravated her when Louise had planned the trip with Lindsey as a gift for her upcoming sixteenth birthday. Louise had done nothing so special when Jake turned sixteen. Even for high school graduation, he had only merited a small television from Nick’s mother. So many times, Abby had wanted to ask her: Do you think the children don’t notice how differently you treat them? But Nick said Louise couldn’t help herself, that she had always wanted a daughter, and Abby’s compassion for him, for the sore ground of his childhood, had kept her silent.

  “How did this happen? Why did it?” Louise demanded, and she was fuming now and shrill. Abby’s heart retreated. Louise would cling to her anger, her sense of offense even in the face of these horrific circumstances. Abby murmured something that was meant to placate, to comfort.

  But Louise was beyond that point. “I can’t stand it. I’m telling you, Abby, I can’t! And as if it isn’t enough that my son and granddaughter drowned in that horrible flood, poor Nick’s name is being slandered again all over the television news. You’ve heard, I know you must have heard, from that reporter, that odious Nadine Betts.”

  “She’s contacted you?”

  “Oh, yes. She acts as if we’re friends.” Louise huffed. “As if I would tell that woman or any one of her kind anything.”

  “You haven’t—?”

  “No. I might be old, but my brain still works, thank you very much.” Louise was offended, but then, she often was. “She’s determined to believe that I know Adam Sandoval. She tried to tell me that I’d met him while he and Nick were in school together, as if she could know. I don’t see what difference it makes if that were true. I told her my son would never under any circumstances have involved himself with a crook. Nicky was a good man, an honest man, God rest his soul.”

  “He still is, Louise,” Abby said, and she was more curt than she intended to be, but she had so wanted Louise’s support to counter her own fear and uncertainty.

  “I’ll be relieved when this is over, won’t you? When we can arrange for a proper burial.” Louise went on as if she hadn’t heard Abby. “We won’t have a moment’s peace until then, Abby. Do you know that? Those media ghouls won’t leave us alone; they won’t allow us to move on, if it’s even possible after a thing like this.”

  “Move on?” Abby straightened. “From what? We don’t even know what happened, Louise. I’m not sure anymore why Nick came out here. He and Lindsey spent Friday night in San Antonio for some reason. You don’t know why, do you?”

  “I know he made the trip to give you time to yourself. He was always talking about how much you treasured having time to yourself.”

  “He told you that?” Tears thickened in Abby’s throat. Time to herself. How could she have ever wished for it?

  “Yes. Not that he had to. Anyone with eyes could see—”

  “You blame me, is that it? You think it’s my fault Nick came here.”

  Louise began an answer, but Abby cut her off. “That’s fine, Louise. You’re free to think whatever you like, but as you have often pointed out to me, your son has a mind of his own. I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d begged.” Unless I’d never been born, Abby thought. Unless I’d never met Nick, never married him. She half expected Louis
e to say these things.

  But Louise was backing down. She said she was sorry. She said, “You and Jake are all I have left.”

  But Abby said, “No, we’re going to find them, Louise. You’ll see.” And she wondered when she hung up how Nick’s own mother could have so little faith. If it were Jake, Abby thought, she would never give up searching. She would never stop until she knew exactly what had happened to him.

  Chapter 4

  Abby and Kate spent a portion of every day searching the area around the ranch, or they chose a section near one of the rural county roads that seemed to meander in every direction. Abby knew it was complete folly, and she hated that she felt compelled to do it, that she couldn’t stop herself. Kate went, too, every time, and when Abby struggled to put into words what it meant to her, Kate hugged her and shushed her and said, “It’s all right,” or “Never mind,” or “You’d do the same for me.”

  One day, after searching a shallow gorge, they were coming back to the car—they’d driven Nick’s BMW that day—and they caught Nadine Betts looking inside it.

  “I don’t believe it,” Abby said to Kate.

  “I do,” Kate answered.

  “What are you doing?” Abby shouted, quickening her steps.

  The reporter jumped back. “I was just passing by,” she said as if anyone would find that believable. “I saw the car and thought there’d been an accident, that you might need help.”

  “Oh, right.” Abby shot Kate a look.

  “But now that we’ve met up this way—” the reporter ignored Abby’s sarcasm “—exactly what are you doing out here, Mrs. Bennett?”

  “Do you have nothing better to do than to follow me around?” Abby demanded. “Do you think if you spy on me long enough, I’ll do something that’s, what—newsworthy? Incriminating?”

  Kate said, “Really, Nadine. You need to find another story. Isn’t it bingo night at the Knights of Columbus? Didn’t I hear that Pratt Street United Methodist Church is having a pancake supper?”