“Couldn’t what?”
Sondra twisted her bracelets. “The thing is, he kept stalling and I ran out of cash. What else could I do but go back to dancing at the club? Nick was furious; he stopped taking my calls, but what did he expect?” She looked up at Abby and her eyes swam with tears, heartbroken shadows and a softer light of blank confusion, bemusement...some horribly wrong, discordant note that seemed out of place. She sat back and drew her purse onto her lap again.
Abby’s pulse tapped in her ears, light and paper-thin.
“If only he had listened to me last December, he would be alive now. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I gave him every chance then, just the same as I’m giving you every chance now.”
“What do you mean?” Abby asked carefully.
“The last time we met, before the flood, was in Bandera. It was near Christmas. Nick didn’t want to come, but I said if he didn’t, I would call you and tell you everything about us.”
“You were there, with him, at the courthouse in Bandera?” Abby was thinking of Kate’s December sighting of Nick.
“There was a problem with the title on my property. I needed Nick’s help to fix it, but then he ran into some friend of yours, or so he said, and it freaked him out. I don’t know because I was in the restroom, so he could have been lying.”
No, Abby thought. He hadn’t been lying, but neither had Kate, and Abby felt a tiny ripple of relief.
“He just wanted to get out of town after that,” Sondra said. “He swore he would take care of everything from home, that he’d be in touch after Christmas, but he wasn’t. It pissed me off. I went to his office one day and waited by his car. He had to talk to me then, but he was so cold. He said we were a mistake.”
Had Nick broken it off? Abby wondered. Had there even been a relationship between him and Sondra, or was she making it up? But she had Nick’s door key, his jacket had been at her cabin. She was here now as if she had some kind of claim on Nick, however bizarre that seemed. What did it add up to, if not infidelity?
“I didn’t speak to him again until the gas station in Boerne. Oh, you should have seen the look on his face.” Sondra clapped her hands together the way a child might if she were thrilled with herself.
“I thought you were in the car with him,” Abby said, but Sondra seemed not to hear her.
“Fucking weather screwed up everything—” She stopped, and her gaze drifted as if she were studying something in her mind.
Glancing at her cell phone, Abby considered whether she could grab it and run out of the house. She didn’t know, couldn’t decide. What did Sondra intend? Suppose she did have a gun?
“I only wanted to tell him he was going the wrong way, but he wouldn’t listen.” Sondra’s voice rose. “He kept shouting, ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone,’ over and over. He made Lindsey cry. He scared her.”
At the gas station, Abby thought, the Shell station Lindsey had called from, when Abby heard her daughter crying. She bit the inside of her cheek.
Sondra said she had taken Nick’s cell phone from the Jeep. “He left it in plain sight, left the car unlocked. The phone would have been stolen. I took the map, too, and some other stuff, change from the cup holder, a ribbon, I think it was Lindsey’s. I don’t—I’m not sure why I took the other things—” Sondra frowned.
Abby’s mind gave her pictures, unwanted pictures, of Sondra handling Lindsey’s hair ribbon, something Abby herself had cherished, of Sondra inside Nick’s jacket, where Abby had sought refuge. A sound broke from her chest, and she put her hand there. Her eyes clashed with Sondra’s.
“I took the map because I wanted to show him the right way to go, but he pushed me. He called me a crazy bitch. There was no need for that.” Sondra’s voice caught. She pressed her lips together.
“What did you do?” Abby spoke over the heavy frightened thudding of her pulse, even as her sense that Sondra had done something to hurt her family grew in her mind.
“When he left the gas station, I followed him. I only wanted to talk, you know? I drove beside his car and motioned for him to let down the window, but he sped up, so I had to speed up, too. I only wanted to talk.” Sondra rubbed her upper arms briskly. She repeated it, “I only wanted to talk,” once, twice, three more times, a slurry of words. “I tried to keep up, but he kept going faster. It was raining so hard, and I was screaming at him to slow down, but he didn’t and the curve came and he started to slide and then he—the car just—went through the guardrail down into all that water—”
“You ran them off the road!?”
“No, it was him, all him. He wouldn’t stop.”
“Get out!” Abby seized her cell phone and tried to tap out 911, but she couldn’t see the numbers, her fury was so all-consuming, so blinding. She thought if Sondra did not go, she would kill her; she would choke Sondra by the neck until she was dead.
“Stop!”
Sondra’s shout pierced the hide of Abby’s rage. She looked up. The gun Sondra pointed at Abby was small, snub-nosed, ugly. Abby felt her breath go. She felt her knees weaken.
“Put down the phone.”
Abby dropped it.
“Mom?”
“Jake? Get out of the house!” Abby heard his laundry basket hit the mudroom floor and then his car keys hit the kitchen counter. She bit back a cry. She had forgotten he was coming home this weekend.
He appeared in the doorway. Abby looked at him over her shoulder, watched as his eyes widened, taking in the scene. But otherwise he gave no sign of alarm, and Abby marveled at that. He was wearing Nick’s jacket, and she thought that was good. Maybe if he gave it to Sondra, she’d go.
“What is she doing here?” he asked.
Sondra gestured with the gun. “Get over there next to your mother.”
Jake said, “Okay, but why don’t you put the gun down?” He came slowly to Abby’s side, and his presence steadied her even as she felt terrified for what might happen to him.
“No,” Sondra said. “I came here today because I thought your mom—you and your mom deserved to know the truth about what happened to your dad and your sister, and it was hard for me having to relive it. But I thought, it’s not about me, you know? Now your mom is blaming me. She was trying to call the police like I’m some kind of murderer—”
“She ran them off the road,” Abby said.
“Shut up!” Sondra said.
Abby clenched her jaw.
“You weren’t in the car with them?” Jake asked Sondra, as if their conversation were normal.
“I followed them from here.” She reflected Jake’s ease, and Abby realized it was a ploy, that Jake’s calm demeanor was deliberate. She wondered at his presence of mind, his courage.
Sondra went on. “I had called Nina, you see. That’s how I knew Nick was going camping that weekend. I planned to surprise him at the campsite, but then he got off the interstate in San Antonio and checked into a motel.”
“Because of the rain,” Jake said.
“It was terrible,” Sondra said. “Coming down in sheets; it was like driving blind. The next morning, when it was still raining, I thought he would turn around and come home, but he went the wrong way—”
“He must have missed a turn somehow and he ended up in Boerne at the Shell station,” Abby said, putting it together. “She must have followed them from the motel.”
“I didn’t—” Sondra’s voice stumbled. “He wouldn’t stop, if he’d only stopped.” The words came hard. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She pressed the back of her free hand to her mouth. She looked lost, frightened, as frightened as Abby felt.
“I only wanted him to love me again,” Sondra whispered.
Jake said, “Why don’t you give me that gun?”
She gestured wildly with it. “I didn’t have to come here. I d
idn’t have to put myself through this.”
“No,” Jake said.
“She wants the jacket,” Abby said, hoping to distract her.
“You want this?” Jake opened out the jacket’s front edges.
Sondra nodded. “I thought it would be nice of your mom to let me have it. I loved your dad, too, you know? He hurt me. Very badly. But I still love him.”
Jake eased his arms from the jacket’s sleeves.
“When he left me, I wanted to die. I wish I had been in the car with him. I wish I had gone over the cliff, too. I don’t know why I didn’t.” She looked at Abby. “Don’t you wish you were dead? How can you stand it? Living without him?”
Abby didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“That’s why I bought this gun, because I can’t stand it. You must feel the same, right? I can help you, help us both. I can help him, too.” She pointed the gun at Jake, and what sounded like a squeal rose in Abby’s throat.
“There are six bullets in here,” Sondra said. “Enough for all of us.”
Jake held out the jacket as if he meant to hand it over, but at the last second, when Sondra stepped toward him to take it, he swung it at her, making her stagger.
The gunshot that followed exploded into the room, deafening Abby, even as it seemed to suck the very air from her lungs.
Jake rushed past her, and in a blur Abby saw him hurl himself at Sondra. She lost her grip on the gun; Abby saw it fly; she heard it skitter across the floor.
Jake dove for it a split second ahead of Sondra.
Abby grabbed her cell phone and managed to pick out 911 and give their location.
Jake and Sondra rolled over the back of the sofa in a tangle of limbs.
When the gun went off a second time, Abby couldn’t hear her own scream, but she felt the force of it burn her throat. Flinging her phone aside, she went to Jake, dropping to her knees where he lay underneath Sondra, unmoving, pale. Abby shoved her. “Get away!”
Sondra scrambled to her feet.
“Jake?” Abby put her hands on his face; she touched his shoulders looking for blood, an injury. His eyelids fluttered. He took in a huge shuddering breath.
“Are you hurt?” Abby asked when his eyes opened fully.
He looked dazed, but shook his head. “Got the wind knocked out of me is all.”
Abby saw the gun then. It lay partially concealed under Jake’s leg, and she grabbed it, turning on her knees, leveling it at Sondra. It was heavier than she had imagined, and it felt cold in her hand, like something foreign, evil. Abby felt distanced from it and from herself. She felt as if she inhabited a different world now than the one she had wakened to this morning, but she would not allow this woman to take any more from her than she had already taken. Abby stood up. “The police are on their way,” she said.
“I don’t care what happens to me.” She ordered her hair, straightened her shirt. She didn’t look threatening or off balance now. She didn’t look anything more than exhausted and unhappy. But somehow that felt even more disconcerting to Abby, like the hush after one storm has passed, but you know there is another one coming. The air felt electric.
“My life was over when Nick died.” Sondra went to the sofa and retrieved her purse.
“Sit down,” Abby said.
But Sondra didn’t. She got out her car keys and looked hard at Abby. “You didn’t love him. I see that now and I hate you for it. Why couldn’t you let him go? Why should you have all this?” She jerked her arm in an arc, indicating the house. “You have his son, too. And what do I have?” Bending abruptly, she scooped Nick’s jacket off the floor and brandished it at Abby. “This! This is what I’m left with.”
“You have a daughter,” Abby said.
Sondra looked blank as if she didn’t comprehend Abby’s meaning, and then she turned and swiftly left the room.
“I’ll stop her.” Jake took the gun from Abby and went after Sondra. Abby followed him.
“Let her go, Jake,” she called. “The police will get her. Let them handle it.”
But Jake didn’t respond; he didn’t do as Abby said, and when she heard the back door slam behind him, her heart dropped. Where were the police?
Sondra was backing down the driveway when Abby got outside, and Jake was watching her go. Abby joined him. “She won’t get far.”
“What is wrong with her?” Jake ran a shaky hand over his head. “I thought for a second we were goners.”
“Why don’t you put that thing down?” Abby indicated the gun.
He said, “The safety’s on. It can’t hurt anybody now.”
“I think the reason we’re standing here is because of your cool head.” Abby’s voice slipped.
Jake put his arm around her shoulders.
They heard the approach of sirens.
“Thank God.” Abby felt limp with relief.
Sondra was halfway down the driveway when the first patrol car pulled in behind her, blocking her exit. The two officers were outside the vehicle in moments. One had his hand on the butt of his holstered gun and was cautiously approaching the driver’s side of Sondra’s car.
The other was just as cautiously coming up the drive toward Jake and Abby as if he questioned which of the three of them was the danger. Abby would never know why, but some intuition made her turn to Jake and say, “Let’s go in the house,” and she had started that way when, all at once, she registered the hard rhythmic revving of a car engine and the sudden squeal of tires on the asphalt. She heard the police officers’ warning shouts, and now Jake was shouting.
“Holy Jesus Christ, Mom! Run!” He pushed her, herding her in front of him across the drive.
Abby wasted a precious moment looking in the direction of Sondra’s car as it hurtled toward them, but Jake’s fist against her back was insistent. They had nearly reached the porch when the car rounded the corner of the house, coming straight for them. Abby, with Jake on her heels, flung herself toward the porch; they half fell up the back stairs.
She waited for the collision and instead felt the wind when Sondra’s car veered at the last second and tore past them; she smelled the exhaust, the burning rubber. Lying on the porch, breath gusting from her chest, Abby imagined she could smell Sondra’s lunacy, her maddened rage. Or maybe it was the stench of her own fury, her own hysteria that burned down through her core. She couldn’t have said. She was clinging to Jake.
One cop car flew past, siren screaming, and then the second. Abby heard the screech of metal when they broke through the fence.
“Holy shit!” Jake lifted his head off the porch floor. “Are they in the pasture? Where does she think she’s going? She can’t outrun them.”
Abby didn’t answer. She didn’t think outrunning the police was Sondra’s intention.
Moments later, the sound of the crash was horrific, otherworldly. Neither Abby nor Jake saw it happen. They were getting to their feet, dazed, half in shock, but one of the officers told them when he returned from the scene that Sondra had hit the utility pole at the north end of the pasture and was ejected from the vehicle.
“She was going straight at it like a bat out of hell,” he said, “and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. Not much way she was going to survive driving like that.”
Hours passed while the police and other rescue workers did their jobs. The coroner came, and a tow truck was brought in for Sondra’s car. Looking on from the back porch at the emergency traffic strung out over her property, Abby was reminded of Kate’s ranch after the flood. The sight was as surreal now as it was then. It made her feel light-headed.
Charlie came, and Abby was glad for his company, his support. It was some time after he heard what had happened, when he had digested the enormity of the danger she and Jake had been in, that he said, “It’s like that movie. What was it?”
<
br /> “Fatal Attraction?” Jake said.
“That’s the one,” Charlie said.
Standing next to them on the porch, Abby said, “A movie isn’t real.”
The officer who took her and Jake’s statements said that he’d contacted Hank, and that Hank had said Sondra had shown up one day out of the blue around a month ago. According to what Hank told the police, he had no idea his wife had fixated on Nick and then on Abby. He hadn’t known she’d bought a gun. He’d said there were psychiatric issues.
It took the police little more than a week to conclude their investigation. Someone from the department called and explained to Abby that, from the information they were able to gather, it appeared Sondra had for many years struggled with being bipolar. She had a history of going off her medication, and when she came to Abby’s house, she was in all likelihood suffering the effects of some kind of psychotic break.
Abby wasn’t comforted. She felt raw inside and panicky. She kept thinking of Sondra’s last phone call, the one where she’d asked: Are you happy now? Abby hadn’t understood then why Sondra had asked that question, but she did now. She thought if Sondra were here she would ask her the same thing: Are you happy now?
* * *
Jake went back to school on the Tuesday after the incident. Abby helped him pack his car, and she couldn’t stop fussing over him. It worried her that he wasn’t taking enough time to process the trauma they’d both endured.
He insisted he was fine. “Really, Mom. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“No,” she protested, and she was annoyed. She was sick of being worried over.
“I’m just glad you didn’t pull the trigger on that gun.”
“I would have, if Sondra had made one move toward you.” Even as she spoke, Abby realized it was true, that she would have done whatever it took to save Jake or herself.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “You’re tough, Mom, you know it? You’ll make it. We both will.” He sounded so confident. Abby hoped he was right.
* * *
Evidence of Life Page 26
