Abby tore off a couple of lettuce leaves and handed them to him. She circled Jake’s waist and gave him a quick hug. “What about you? How are you doing? Really,” she added.
He loaded his sandwich onto the plate she handed him and took a bag of chips from the pantry. They sat at the table, and Abby was relieved when he said a solution to his school woes had been hammered out between his professor and the department head. “It’ll mean a lot of extra work,” he said, “but I don’t care.”
“You’re lucky they were so understanding.”
“They took my circumstances into consideration. I told them I wasn’t ready to come back to campus after what happened. I said you pushed me.”
“Jake, I didn’t.”
“You did, Mom.” Jake was determined; Abby could see that. He’d been waiting a long time to accuse her.
“It wasn’t doing you any good being at the ranch. If you weren’t pacing the floor, you were getting George to drive you all over.”
“Like you weren’t?”
“You were better off in school.” Abby raised her gaze to Jake’s, and her breath caught on seeing that his eyes were welled with tears.
“I wanted to be where you were, Mom,” he told her, and he was blinking, furious. “I needed to be with you. We’re all that’s left.”
She could only stare at him, at his clenched jaw and the muscles under his ears that knotted and loosened, knotted and loosened. The idiot part of her brain was busy wondering when she’d last seen him cry. Not in years. Not since he was a very little boy. Not even the weekend their family vanished.
“You think it doesn’t affect me?” he demanded. “Sometimes, I’m so scared. They were here, now they’re gone.”
“Oh, Jake.” She leaned forward, cupping his arms above his wrists, rubbing them.
“I wish it had been me instead of Lindsey.”
“No! Jake, honey!” Abby half knelt, pulling him awkwardly against her. She felt him shaking. “Let it out,” she told him. “Go on, it’s okay. I’m right here,” she promised.
He sagged forward, and, pushing his plate away, he lowered his head to the table and talked through sobs that grew rough and became uncontrolled. His speech was so broken Abby couldn’t get every word, but the gist of it was that he was a bad person, and he’d been a worse brother. He’d ragged on Lindsey something awful, and once, he’d left her stranded without a ride home after school because he was mad at her. He couldn’t even remember now what he’d been mad about.
Abby tightened her grasp, murmuring words of comfort through the tears that were packed like stones in her own throat. How would they survive? The pain seemed so incredible, so never-ending. When Jake quieted, she hunted around for Kleenex tissues, and realizing she hadn’t bought any, she gave him the kitchen towel. He blew his nose, mopped his face. He looked at her, and in his reddened, swollen eyes, she saw a complicated mix of apology and shame, grief and outrage.
“You can’t blame yourself, Jake.” She sat down. “You weren’t a bad brother. You were a typical brother. Maybe you did rag on Lindsey, but you never minded helping her with algebra or telling her when some new hairdo she tried didn’t flatter her. If it means anything, I always agreed, especially that time she gelled her bangs into that shelf over her eyebrows.”
Jake’s grin wobbled.
“You were typical siblings,” Abby said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.” She glanced away. She would never see now how their relationship might have developed as adults, if they would have been close, if they would have ended up friends.
“I’m not going to law school, Mom.”
She whipped her gaze back to his. “What do you mean? Dad would—”
“Fuck Dad.”
“Jake!”
“I’m sorry, Mom, but if it wasn’t for him, Lindsey would still be alive. We’d still be a family. We could have been a family without him, you know.”
Abby might have argued, but instead, she said, “What is it between you and your dad? It’s as if you’ve lost all respect for him.”
Jake looked out the window. “Want me to mow before I leave?”
“I want you to tell me what’s going on.”
He rose and took his dishes to the sink. “Nothing. We didn’t get along, that’s all. You know that.” He came and put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently, putting his thumbs into the sore places at the base of her neck. “Tight,” he said.
She lowered her chin, stretching, feeling the knots loosen under his touch.
“We have to accept it, Mom.” Jake’s hands stilled. “Even if they never find them or the car, we can’t keep on as if they’ll walk back in here any second.”
“When I was at Kate’s,” Abby said quietly, “I went to San Antonio to see if I could talk to Adam’s wife, Sherry.”
Jake came around Abby’s chair to look at her. “Why? What did she say?”
“She was gone. A neighbor seemed to think she and Adam left the country together.”
“So?” Jake started to unbutton his flannel shirt. “I’m going to see if I can get the mower started.”
“I showed the neighbor a picture of your dad. She thought she recognized him. She said she’d seen him at the Sandoval’s, that he was driving a yellow Corvette. Do you know anything about that?”
“Jesus, Mom.” Jake flung his shirt over the back of a chair. “No! I don’t know anything about that. I’m not keeping anything from you. I’m not,” he repeated. But he didn’t look at her. He didn’t meet her eye.
Chapter 19
Abby studied her reflection in the powder-room mirror. She looked okay, she thought, in her black jumper and white, long-sleeved blouse. Not too casual. She looked like an elementary school teacher, Nick would have said. She had always thought he meant it as a compliment, but now she wondered if he would have preferred she wear tight skirts and form-fitting sweaters. She sat on the closed toilet lid. Once she’d been sure of him, his affection for her, his approval. Now she wasn’t, and it felt awful. Her breath kept hanging up in her throat as if there were a bone stuck back there. She couldn’t imagine facing a classroom filled with second graders. But she had to, or she’d lose herself and Jake, too. He and Mama were counting on her.
She grabbed a few tissues in case her self-control failed her and tucked them inside her purse. In the kitchen, she made toast, ate half and tossed the rest out for the birds. And when she threw her napkin into the trash, she thought of the fax. Buried now beneath yesterday’s coffee grounds and the wrapper from the spark plugs Jake had bought to get the mower running.
She fished out the half-damp, crumpled message, unfolded it over the sink, wiping at the stains. Hank Kilmer’s phone number was still visible, and enough of the letters stood out from the blots to make sense of the words.
My...Sondra has be...miss...for .early a year I don.. recogn....he name ..ck Bennett. May we talk in...so....
Where was Hank Kilmer’s wife, Abby wondered. Who was she? Why would Nick have written her fax number inside a matchbook cover from the Riverbend Lodge in Bandera? Had he and Sondra Kilmer lunched there together that day last December when Kate had seen him in town? Was Sondra the woman who’d been unhappy with Nick over a botched real-estate deal? Abby looked out the kitchen window at the freshly mown yard. She wished she had shown Jake the matchbook. The sight of it might have forced him to tell her what he knew.
Abby glanced at the clock, folded the fax and picked up her purse. If she didn’t leave now, she’d be late.
* * *
She had every intention of keeping her appointment with Charlotte Treadway, but then drove right by Clark Elementary to the freeway and headed south into Houston with the rest of the commuter traffic. She told herself she was crazy. She saw an exit ahead and told herself to turn around. She passed another exit. T
his isn’t rational. Several more exits. How will you explain it?
The city skyline loomed. Now what? She had no idea where to find Hank Kilmer; she would have to call him. She glanced at her cell phone lying on the console near her knee. She pulled onto the shoulder, cut the engine. In the distance the cluster of buildings jutted from the horizon. Their tops were lost in swirls of dirty yellow sunshine. The traffic snaked past her, relentless, hell-bent. How had Nick stood it, driving into this day after day?
Her phone went off, jangling through an assortment of mechanical sounds that was supposed to be Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Abby picked it up, studied the caller ID window.
Mama.
Abby could picture her, happily thinking of her daughter on her way to work, on her way to resurrecting her old life. Of course Mama would call; she would want to wish Abby luck. Abby laid the phone in her lap. She wished she could be where her mama and Kate and Jake wanted her to be, in a schoolroom on the road to recovery. Instead, against even her own better judgment, she was here on the side of the freeway, half-scared but determined to see Hank Kilmer. So there was no point in answering the phone. No point in speaking to her mother. Not now.
Once her mother’s call went to voice mail, Abby dialed Hank Kilmer’s number. Four rings, five. She was trying to decide what message to leave when a man answered sounding breathless.
Abby jerked upright. “Mr. Kilmer?”
“Yes?”
“This is, this is Abby Bennett. We—we have corresponded via fax.” Her voice tipped up at the end as if she were asking him.
There was a moment of silence. “Where are you?” he asked.
“I-45 near the Loop,” she said warily.
“I’m closer to downtown. Are you familiar? I could give you directions to the house.”
“No.” Abby wasn’t so deluded as to think that would be wise. “Could we meet somewhere for coffee?”
He named an IHOP south of the Loop and told her what he was wearing: a brown sport jacket and an orange-striped tie.
Abby pulled into traffic. What sort of man wore orange?
Nick wouldn’t. He wouldn’t think this was smart, either, meeting a man she didn’t know, regardless of the color of his tie. But Nick wasn’t here.
* * *
If it hadn’t been for the tie, Abby might have missed Hank Kilmer altogether. His skin, even his thinning hair, was as colorless as dust. He wasn’t wearing the glasses she’d expected, and he was much taller than she had imagined. Over six feet, but he stooped as if his height pained him. They shook hands, and Abby slid into the booth. Hank folded himself onto the bench opposite her. Even seated, his shoulders slumped forward as if his back were burdened with a sack of rocks. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled the sleeves of his gold shirt into messy cuffs at his elbows. The awful orange-striped tie was loosely knotted at his neck. Everything about him seemed careless and unkempt. Unhappy. Nothing so neat and precise as his handwriting had indicated.
Abby slipped off her own jacket. She glanced around the restaurant full of diners, mostly men, bent over full plates of bacon and eggs. In the booth across the aisle, an older man was speaking intently to a young blond-haired woman as he stroked the inside of her wrist. They looked unnaturally enraptured given the earliness of the hour and the way they were dressed, both of them in business suits.
Not married, she decided. She wondered if they would make it to the office. She wondered if the man’s wife had dropped their kids at school and gone to do the grocery shopping. Had she done the laundry, swept their kitchen floor? Had she planned what she would serve this cheating man for his dinner?
“I can’t believe you called. I’d given up,” Hank said.
“I wasn’t going to,” Abby told him.
“Well, thank God you did.” He sounded fervent, too fervent.
Abby eyed the door, wanting to leave, but when the waitress came, they both ordered coffee.
“So,” Hank said when the waitress was gone, “your husband’s been missing since April?”
Abby nodded. “But your wife’s been gone since February, you said.”
“Late February or sometime in March, near as I can figure.”
Abby frowned.
The waitress reappeared with their order. She set the cream pitcher and sugar shaker on the table. Abby smiled and thanked her, but Hank Kilmer didn’t even glance up. He poured a stream of sugar into his mug, took up his spoon and stirred a series of concentrated circles.
When he lifted his mug to drink, she noticed his knuckles were thick and misshapen. She wondered if it was from slamming his fists into walls. She wondered why he didn’t know when his wife had disappeared.
“We were separated,” he said as if he’d read Abby’s mind. “She’d moved out, but I figured it was temporary, like the other times.”
“You’ve been separated before?”
“Yeah, but she always came back. She doesn’t like being apart from our daughter for too long. Caitlin’s eight. She and Sondra are close.”
“Oh, she must miss her mother.”
“You have no idea.” Hank stabbed the table with his index finger. “No kid should have to go through this. Sondra is Caitlin’s mother, for Christ’s sake. She shouldn’t do this to her own kid. Just disappear without a fucking—aaagh—” He groaned and wiped his face. “I’m sorry. It gets to me sometimes.”
Abby lowered her gaze. She could hear her pulse in her ears.
Hank shoved his spoon around. “I want this nightmare to end. But when you don’t know what the hell it’s about—” He shot her a hard glance. “You understand, right? You’re in the same boat.”
Abby did understand, but she didn’t want to share Hank’s boat or anything else with him. She felt pity for him, this big, moon-faced, homely, infuriated man. She wondered if it was his anger at his wife that had bleached the color from him.
Hank said, “There must be a reason why your husband had Sondra’s fax number.”
“I don’t know of one.”
“Well, is he by any chance an attorney? Is he the same Nick Bennett who represented those kids in the case against Helix Belle?”
Abby said he was, but with reluctance, not liking it.
“I thought so! That’s the connection.” Hank sounded celebratory.
Abby felt her heart stall in her chest. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sondra was a judicial assistant for Judge Payne, Harold Payne?”
“The case was tried in his court,” Abby remembered.
“She went to work for him a couple of months before the Helix lawsuit was filed, worked for him almost two years.”
Abby added more cream to her coffee, even though she hadn’t tasted it.
“Sondra was wound up about that case,” he continued. “She talked about it constantly. She talked about your husband, too, especially after he won. She could practically quote his closing argument from memory. It started to piss me off, frankly. I wondered then if there was some funny business going on.”
“No,” Abby said, and she was thinking of her marriage at the time, that when Nick won the settlement, their relationship couldn’t have been better. Nick himself couldn’t have been happier or more content. She certainly had not been wondering about any funny business.
“I’m not trying to say I’ve got proof of anything between them. But the fact is they apparently worked together, and now she’s gone and so is he.”
“But they didn’t disappear at the same time. You don’t even know for certain when your wife left.”
“Like I said, we were separated. She moved out last January. She’d rented a house over in the Heights and opened up an interior-design business.”
“I thought she worked for Judge Payne.”
“She quit after the holi
days. She said she was sick of getting hit on all the time. It was kind of a shock, to tell you the truth. She’d seemed so happy, then boom.” Hank fell into a fractious silence.
Abby pulled her jacket into her lap; she found the strap of her purse.
Hank put out his hand as if he might hold her in place. “Your husband went missing in April, right? What’s the story there? If you don’t mind my asking,” he added.
Abby gave him the short version.
“Man, that’s rough,” he said when she finished. “I was out in the Hill Country a week or so after the flood. Things were bad.”
Abby already had an idea of what he’d say if she asked why he went there. She sensed—and she’d guess later it was the horrible gift of prescience—that his answer would be the beginning of the end of what was left of her life, the one she believed in, relied on, treasured. But she asked anyway. “You have a place out there?”
“Sondra’s granddad left her some land in Kerr County with a cabin on it. It’s on high ground, but that was a lot of water.”
“It was okay?”
“Yeah, it’s old but solid.” Hank kept Abby’s gaze. “What a hell of a thing, though, your whole family gone.”
She said she still had her son Jake. “He won’t be happy when he finds out I was here.”
“How come?”
“He thinks I’m at work. So does my mother.” Abby glanced at her watch. It was past nine. Charlotte Treadway would be wondering what had happened to her. She would call Hap to complain.
“But you blew that off and called me because you have doubts, right? What are you thinking, that your husband and daughter didn’t drown?”
“There’s no indication that happened. No bodies, not even the car was found.” Abby hesitated. She didn’t want to say any more, and yet she was compelled. She hated how desperate she’d become, how helpless it made her feel. It had robbed her of everything, even her ordinary discretion, her dignity. “I thought they were going camping,” she said and described Lindsey’s phone call, the one from Boerne. “I’ve never been sure what she said, something about her daddy, about how he was taking the scenic route or the easy route. I don’t know. I think she was crying.”
Evidence of Life Page 18
